Sustainable Energy Bill
8:55 am
Mr Andrew Robathan (Blaby, Conservative)
Here we are at what is, in my opinion, a fairly ungodly hour, but it may simply seem early to others. I am rather surprised not to see the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) here because I nearly ran him down on my bicycle as I came here this morning, and that was before 8.30.
It seems a pity that we are taking this route, and it is rather mystifying. The hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), who I briefly shadowed, is a man, and was a Minister, greatly committed to a proper, decent sustainable energy policy, and I take my hat off to him for that. I thought that the story about the points of order that he related in his last speech in the Committee last week was one of the funniest things that I have heard, and I shall use it myself.
I welcome the new Minister to this portfolio. I have been shadowing him for some time. I know of his enormous knowledge about broadband and his problems with his colleagues about the Post Office, and I look forward to seeing how he handles energy. I am sure that it will be with great dexterity, but perhaps not with much success. We are in a bizarre situation in which this botched reshuffle—we can all admit that it is botched, including the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, who will come and tell us so later today—is having quite an impact on the progress of legislation in the House.
Yesterday, I was on a Standing Committee dealing with employment regulations. It has to be said that the Minister on that Committee had been dealt what I described as a hostile pass. He had absolutely no idea what he was doing, and it was not his fault because he had only just been given the portfolio. The Sustainable Energy Bill is important, and to face this change suddenly is not helpful. We could have had a smoother transition.
Turning to the amended sittings motion, I think that the Government have to decide—and the new Minister has to pick this up running—whether they want the Bill. Time is running out; the parliamentary year does not go on for ever. There is already quite a
backlog on Fridays for Report stage and Third Reading. To put it candidly, if the Government want the Bill, they have to get their act together, table agreed amendments and get them made.
The Conservative party supports sustainable energy, in general terms, and I have a long history of doing so. We want the Bill to pass through the House. We support the target that we set down of 5 GW of energy capacity from CHP by 2000; we have not yet reached that. We support the Government's target of 10 GW of capacity from CHP by 2010, but the chances of reaching it are tiny. We support the Government's targets in their 1997 and 2001 manifestos of 10 per cent. of energy from renewables by 2010 and 20 per cent. by 2020. The Bill is partly about getting that, and it is about having sensible targets that can be reached. I hope that the Minister will be able to suggest, tomorrow or whenever it may be, some way in which we can make progress on the Bill without all this shilly-shallying and messing around. This is the second sitting of the Committee to be adjourned and, as I said, time is running out.