Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)

I thank noble Lords for their insightful contributions on the designation of a company as Great British Energy and the ownership of such a company. I welcome the amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Vaux and Lord Cameron—Amendments 4, 6 and 7. They were designed to probe the benefits of having flexibility to allow minority external equity ownership of Great British Energy. However, I cannot disagree with anything that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said about introducing private equity into what is, in effect, government-underwritten risk, which means that it really should be debt. The fact we are debating this indicates that there is no clarity about the substance and purpose of the Bill or about the exact ownership of Great British Energy. Given that we are debating £8.3 billion of taxpayers’ money, and that there is no limitation on how that financial assistance can be given or structured, we have a concern that will continue through Committee. The experience of the House was brought into the debate by the noble Lords, Lord Howell and Lord Hamilton, who looked back over previous generations to instances of how overarching powers given to Secretaries of State can be used if not abused, sometimes with the best of intentions. Again, it speaks to how there could be more clarity in the Bill about how those powers will be allocated. We believe that accounting and reporting measures are absent from the Bill and that we need further detail and clarity on the priorities and plans of Great British Energy. I expect that we will return to those matters on Report but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.