Member

I cannot remember whether it was for 18 years, but certainly for the 13 years that I was in the other place I represented the York Handmade Brick Company, which is an outstanding company. Obviously, it is a very high energy user, because it uses a furnace to bake bricks. Does the Minister agree that, by setting such a challenging timescale in the original greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme, we are not just increasing the cost to households and businesses but, regrettably, making businesses like that less competitive? I do not know how expensive it would be to import bricks from another country—heaven forfend—but China, for example, does not have to meet anything like our energy costs. I think most of the EU has lower energy costs.