16:30 Jesse Norman (Conservative)

The contracts for difference scheme is designed to incentivise the significant investment required in our energy infrastructure—electricity infrastructure, in particular —to keep energy supplies secure, keep costs affordable for consumers and help meet our climate change targets, so that we can play our part in working towards the 2050 targets on climate change agreed in Paris and reinforced at the G20. We plan to run the next allocation round soon. Details have not yet been published, so I am unable to provide hon. Members with those today.

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16:33 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

My second and third questions relate to the detail of that. Whether the available money is a one-off or continuing, presumably it will have to deal with the existing picture of the levy control framework up to 2020 because this statutory instrument essentially extends the period through which the levy control framework will work. If that is the case, we know that the controls set in place with the levy control framework and agreed between the Treasury and the then Department of Energy and Climate Change are likely to be exceeded by 2020.

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16:45 Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. I do not normally speak on statutory instruments, but I have a particular interest in energy. I defer to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test, who is a real expert in these matters, while I definitely am not. However, I assume that this is essentially about Government subsidy for renewable energy, to make up the difference, one way or another, between the price that companies want to charge and the price that consumers are expected to pay. I suggest that if this were taking place in the public sector, we would not have these complications, but it happens to be in the private sector. I have a particular view of the world that may not square with the Government’s.

I was very disappointed when the Government cut back on feed-in tariffs for solar photovoltaics. I have installed solar PV in my own home, but I am comfortably off and can afford the capital costs; for others, feed-in tariffs can make the difference between installing it and not installing it. If every home and building in Britain had solar PV, it might not be as economical as generating electricity through gas, but it would be a massive step forward. I hope that one day we will see solar PV and other forms of renewable energy providing the bulk of our electricity and energy needs, even though we understand that the baseload has to be provided in a controllable, generable form.

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