Clause 20
Energy Bill
12:15 pm
Steve Webb (Chair of the Election Manifesto Group, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
There is a serious reason that I ask the question. Are the Government confident, first, that those other schemes are going to come forward at all, and secondly, that they will cover the diverse range of technologies? With the Government having decided to be technology-specific—which we are not happy about—the purpose of our new clause is to make sure that the other technologies are tested in the other demonstration projects.
I hope that the Minister is doing more than just shrugging his shoulders. I hope that when he talks in his fluent Polish, or whatever, to his European counterparts, he is saying to them, “How about getting on with your projects and how about these other technologies being looked at?” The Government have locked the UK in for one demonstration project on one technology, but are they using their influence, such as it is, with our EU partners, to ensure that in the 12 we are at least trying to ameliorate the problem we have created for ourselves by ensuring that other demonstration projects test other technologies?