Clause 19
Energy Bill
11:45 am
Steve Webb (Chair of the Election Manifesto Group, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
The hon. Gentleman’s amendment ties in with my comment earlier this morning about the omission from clause 19 of matters relating to leaks. I know that Government policy on leaks is normally to have a review that never reports, but I think that we need something better in this case. Therefore, the idea of a reporting requirement, as far as it goes, is not one I have a problem with.
This amendment, however, highlights a more general set of omissions from the terms and conditions set out in clause 19—and indeed, this part of the Bill—which relate to the whole issue of monitoring the security of the storage. We do not just want a report—that there is a big CO2 leak and the licensee reports it to the Secretary of State. That is fine, but does not quite seem to go far enough.
What other models are the Government looking to? Are they considering existing models that regulate, for example, mining, oil and gas, pollution control and waste disposal? A number of parallel activities have their own monitoring reporting regimes and which of them, if any, is being looked at—or is there a completely new approach being taken to the regulation of CCS?
I have no problem with the amendment, although I do not feel that it goes far enough in simply requiring reporting of accidents—and if they are as catastrophic as has been suggested, we will know anyway—but we need to go a lot further than it suggests.
I am puzzled, really, by the absence of much more detail in the Bill about the liabilities of operators and why the list of things a licence may include under clause 19(3)(a) to (h) has nothing about not only reporting requirements, but about penalties and monitoring in the event of leakages. I hope that the Minister can give us a fairly full response to the issues that have been raised by this amendment and clause 19.