Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)

My Lords, I would like to support my noble friend Lord Frost’s amendment because we have to judge this Bill on what it achieves, rather than on the processes it goes through. I have a slight problem, because it seems to me that if you want lower energy prices, you want to recognise the advances made by technology and have lower feed-in prices paid by the consumer. That is the way you get energy prices down; but, of course, if Great British Energy is investing in the companies, it wants the feed-in prices to be as high as possible, so the companies make profits. It seems to me that there is a conflict here, with government standing on both sides of the commercial argument. Let us face it, my noble friend Lady Noakes is right: the price industry is paying for energy as a result of this extraordinary pursuit of net zero is making us extremely uncompetitive in world marketplaces and makes the reindustrialisation of this country something we can only dream about. No company is going to locate in Britain to start a business here if it is paying much higher energy prices than in the rest of Europe, as my noble friend Lord Frost has reminded us. The Government have to be much clearer in their own mind on what they are trying to achieve with Great British Energy. Just saying that it is going to lower energy prices is not quite good enough, really; you have to say how it is going to lower energy prices. That is something we all want to see, but it is very difficult to attain. Perhaps the Minister can explain how all this is going to be done.