Clause 36
Energy Bill
1:30 pm
Malcolm Wicks (Minister of State (Energy), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Croydon North, Labour)
I will certainly promise to think again about that. I will not go as far as the hon. Gentleman is tempting me to go, for the reasons that I have established about our need to develop a sensible strategy. It is too soon to say whether other recommendations in that strategy will require future legislation, but I suppose that it is possible. There could therefore be future legislative opportunities. For the reasons that I have indicated, I do not think that I can concede that point to him at the moment.
The points that my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland introduced about the cost implications for different social groups are very important. The evidence that I was able to produce from the costs in Germany is important, although the hon. Member for Cheltenham intervened, I think helpfully, on that. I have figures that photovoltaic systems cost around 30p per kW hour at present, against between 6p and 7p an hour for large scale onshore wind. We must be mindful of those things, in relation to various developments and the way in which we support what are inevitably, at the moment, rather expensive technologies.