12:48 Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)

In 2011, Labour, under my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), a previous Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, supported a full market investigation. The former Secretary of State opposed that. [ Interruption. ] No, I am sorry, but this is a very important point. Labour supported an investigation two and a half years ago and the Government opposed it. Labour then looked at ways of reforming the market, short of a CMA. The truth is that we welcome the CMA, but we also know that we should not allow this issue to be kicked into the long grass. We should be planning our reforms now. The Secretary of State cannot ignore that.

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13:48 John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)

Let me explain something to the Secretary of State. He obviously does not understand what the word “freeze” means. It means that something is stopped. It is solid and it stays where it is. He seems to have missed that. I noticed that he said he had challenged the big six. I would be interested to know when and what he did to make them do anything, other than be very nice to them and help them to increase their prices, as they have done. The Energy and Climate Change Committee has done more to attack the big six and make them toe the line than his Government have done.

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the importance of working together across the parties. Does he agree that, if the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills did not have the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) standing guard over them to ensure that they keep to the Conservative line, we would get a much more rational response from this Liberal Democrat Secretary of State?

When more than one Department is involved in this place we always have a problems—it does not seem to matter what is done. If we involve a Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and a Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, they are going to have their own drivers, which are not always the same. A Minister put in place to cover both Departments has a hard job, because it cannot be easy dealing with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, let alone the other one. So good luck to the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks—we will see where he goes. We certainly need to look at how energy is governed, and it should not be done across Departments. One Department should be dealing with it, although it could be done by a bigger Department.

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14:02 Mr Tim Yeo (South Suffolk) (Con)

There is general agreement across all the parties that there are three principal aims of energy policy. The first is security of supply, which is fundamental. I do not think the public would tolerate the kind of cuts that occurred in the 1970s. Modern life, both domestically and in business, depends now on a continuous supply of electricity. The second aim is affordability, which is much in everyone’s minds right now. The third is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which the latest Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change report underlines should have equal priority to the other two.

On the third test of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, a price freeze is at best neutral. I am afraid that I have to conclude that the Opposition’s proposal for a price freeze has the damaging effects of cutting investment, increasing the risk of the lights going out, and raising prices and consumer bills faster than otherwise would happen, at the same time as doing nothing to reduce emissions.

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14:17 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), the Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee. He made a number of points in his contribution, not all of which support what the Secretary of State was saying this afternoon.

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14:23 David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)

How does that plan contrast with the Opposition’s policies? As we have heard, the centrepiece is the price freeze. I thought that the Chairman of the Select Committee made a good point about how the freeze will impact on the various components of decarbonisation and security. I also thought that the Secretary of State made some good points about how the freeze would work in action as regards tariff levels as well as to which tariffs it would apply and for how long.

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14:30 Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)

However, the two events do, I suppose, allow both sides to claim some success. This afternoon the Government have claimed that competition works, while the Labour party points to its idea of a price freeze, and of course the two-year investigation has the added benefit of kicking difficult decisions to the other side of the general election. What it does not do is take action to deal with the huge contradiction that sits at the heart of energy policy. We all agree that we want our constituents to get relief from high energy bills, but we also want the massive investment that is required to meet our future energy needs, and to decarbonise the electricity supply.

In the very week when the IPCC issued a very alarming new report on the current impact and probable future impact of climate change, these are issues that cannot simply be swept aside as we struggle over how we get relief from higher energy bills for our constituents. The argument about how we got to the position of the big six energy companies will not take us very far. It is undoubtedly true that the privatised companies, at least initially, did not take adequate action to deal with future energy security, but like all newly privatised concerns set about making sure that they were attractive to investors and maintained a high share price. This offers one explanation for why most were quickly swallowed up by multinational energy companies and the big six came into being, with only SSE and Centrica still being independent UK-based companies.

The hon. Gentleman clearly is not listening. I said it would make the situation worse. I fully appreciate that we need this investment. It is not happening sufficiently now, but it will get worse under this. The hon. Gentleman should perhaps listen a little more closely. Effectively there will be a slow down in investment whatever happens now, and that could be disastrous since it is only by investment in new renewable energy that we can break away from the dependence on carbon-emitting generation and bring down bills permanently in the long run.

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15:03 Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)

One sign that this Government’s policies are not working is the rise in the number of people using food banks. We are also seeing people having to return food to food banks because they cannot afford to pay for the energy to heat food that requires cooking. I have been away for a couple of weeks with the International Development Committee, and coming back this week I have had a sharp reminder of how the Government are in absolute denial on so many levels. There was denial from the Prime Minister today about the fiasco of the sell-off of Royal Mail. We heard denial yesterday from the Treasury Front Benchers, who would not acknowledge that people will be worse off at the end of this Government. Today we have heard denial from the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who on his own website is seen supporting the “Mind the Gap” campaign. How ironic—the gap is between the Government’s rhetoric on fuel poverty and their action on it.

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15:13 Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)

The Chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo) was right to say that we need to be honest, and we need to be honest that this did not start with a pledge for an energy freeze. Rising prices have become such an issue for our constituents. They are hurting so many households that we need to do something. That is why the Leader of the Opposition made his pledge and that is why the Opposition are suggesting policies. We are talking not just about a freeze, but about fixing the regulator, which has some powers it does not use and needs more powers to intervene.

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15:18 Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), who is a fellow member of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change. One of the disadvantages of speaking at the fag end of any debate is that everything that can be said has been said, but, of course, not everybody who can say it has said it, and I am no exception to that rule. Although I will try not to repeat other contributions overmuch, some points will be worth repeating.

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15:28 Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson), who has been a constant, dogged presence on the Energy and Climate Change Committee, like many Members in the Chamber today, made a persuasive case, as he often does, about the impact of policies and market failures on his constituents and those across the UK who struggle to pay their energy bills.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) referred to marine energy and to the nascent technologies that could have an impact in the 2020s and beyond. We need a long-term commitment to decarbonisation and a 2030 decarbonisation target to maximise those opportunities.

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15:38 The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)

The fact that the referral of the energy market to the Competition and Markets Authority commands cross-party support is to be welcomed, as is cross-party support for our reforms to the electricity market to support clean energy generation, and the cross-party consensus on meeting our climate change objectives. Consensus on energy policy is not a product of the soggy centre, but something to which a responsible politician in government, or opposition, should aspire.

A clear demonstration of policy grip was shown by the Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), whose speech I thought was a tour de force. In his characteristically elegant way he made the key and most important point—which was completely lost on the Opposition—that the Government cannot control the global wholesale price of gas, and that that is the key price maker for UK electricity. The Government can no more control the price of gas than King Canute could command the waves, and to pretend otherwise is to con the British public. My hon. Friend’s second point, which is that an attempt by any Government to freeze prices with such a draconian arbitrary intervention in the energy market would have a terrifying chill on investment across the sector, was heard loud and clear across the Chamber. As my hon. Friend said, we know the price freeze is a cynical political manoeuvre, designed to prop up the dominance of Labour’s big six.

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