Lord Fuller (Con)

My Lords, there is a reason why UK energy prices are some of the most expensive in the world. We are starting from a high base and we are increasingly vulnerable. At the moment, our gas prices are six times higher than you might find on an ex-NOLA basis: that is, exported from New Orleans. We are more expensive than the rest of Europe, apart from Germany, which has its own particular industrial problems, and we are increasingly vulnerable because we are trying to run our 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year economy on energy sources that do not work at night or when the wind does not blow. I understand that, and I am not against using renewable energy—we need to have an energy mix—but the way we are going at the moment is to put too many eggs in the renewables basket. With this statutory instrument, the name is on the tin: it is all about nuclear energy, but the speech that the Minister gave was not really about nuclear at all, but about the mission creep that has led to us having the world’s most expensive industry, whereby we are deindustrialising. Only today, what a shame that the Huntsman Group has announced that the Wilton facility, that last vestige of ICI at Billingham, could be closed. How ironic it is that the obituary of Sir Ronald Hampel, the architect of ICI, was in the Times this week: he must be turning in his grave. This debate has all been about carbon capture and storage. I did not realise it was going to be, I thought it was about nuclear, but there we are. Carbon capture and storage is expensive, technically challenging and hard to implement. It does not work, it is the most expensive way of doing it and it is unproven. If it were proven, it would be eligible to be discounted against CBAM, but it is not. One of the main things by which this Government want to take carbon reduction on board—they are parroting and trumpeting carbon capture and storage—is ineligible for the headline carbon reduction process. Can noble Lords not see the incompatibility here? What we have heard so far in this debate, and I know it is early days, is that—