I beg to move amendment 17, in clause 21, page 17, line 34, leave out from ‘are’ to end of line and insert ‘not to be paid into the Consolidated Fund unless there is no other alternative.’

This amendment would require the Government to consider alternatives to the absorption into the consolidated fund of sums held by a revenue collection counterparty on behalf of energy bill payers.

Amendment 17 takes aim at a different part of the undergrowth we are dealing with in the often fairly complex arrangements related to the revenue collection counterparty and all that goes with it. In this instance, we have two subsections in italics because they include a Treasury implication. Clause 21(5) says:

“The provision that may be made by virtue of subsection (4) includes provisions that sums are to be paid, or not to be paid, into the Consolidated Fund.”

In that regard, subsection (4) states:

“Revenue regulations may make provision about the application of sums held by a revenue collection counterparty.”

Effectively, that subsection allows regulations to be made about the sums held by a revenue collection counterparty. We have already discussed how long they may be held for and the circumstances under which they may be paid back—[Interruption.] The Minister and his Whip are discussing when we will finish, I suspect. They must not worry; we will finish on time.

The clause adds a new dimension to the question of where the sums held by the revenue collection counterparty may go and, indeed, suggests where they might go, presumably, after the process outlined by the Minister. At a certain stage, the existence of surplus amounts held by the revenue collection counterparty is established and then there is an issue as to where that money goes. Clause 21(5) says that the money may be paid into the Consolidated Fund, which is the Treasury. It therefore gives rise to the idea that money could have been raised from customers and paid into the revenue collection counterparty by suppliers. Levies are raised on customers and possibly overpaid, as my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich has just said. The money sits in the account of the revenue collection counterparty for a time and then, when the decision is made about what to do with the money, the Treasury nicks it. That is not right and it is not what should be done. As we have established, if there are surpluses in those funds, they should certainly be returned to the supplier and the supplier should make sure that they are returned to the customer.

As we have said on a number of occasions, the customer is at the heart of the process as they are funding it through their bills. They are not paying free money into the Treasury but paying into the process on a reasonable basis of allowed costs. If those allowed costs prove to be more than is required, the least they should reasonably expect is to get their money back.

There should be no talk of the Consolidated Fund in the Bill; I do not think it is right that it should be in the Bill. We have sought to suggest in the amendment that only if there are no other recourses for the payment of those funds should it even be considered that money go into the Consolidated Fund. I can conceivably imagine circumstances in which nothing else could be done with the money but put it into the Consolidated Fund, but it is a real squeeze for me to think that.

The Secretary of State must be able to think of better purposes for the money than for it to go in that direction. The amendment strengthens the Secretary of State’s ability to do that. I hope that the Secretary of State—the Minister; I am promoting him again—will be happy to accept it as a clear understanding of what we want to do with the money unless absolutely pressed to do otherwise.

I rise to speak briefly to amendment 17, because it relates to an important matter that builds on our earlier discussions. I listened to the Minister and heard what he said about the revenue collection contracts arrangement seeking to replicate the tried and tested CfD arrangement, as he put it. The thing that makes what we are talking about different is that there has never been a CfD arrangement of the size of the RAB nuclear model. The scale of the capital commitment involved in a nuclear project dwarfs anything that we have seen before. The changes in total nominal amounts that are likely to happen from year to year in the scale of that capital value could mean that we have large fluctuations in the amounts being collected by the counterparty.

The Minister has said that regulations will address that and are forthcoming via the affirmative procedure. He expects that the reconciliation process of attempting to ensure that the revenue stream matches the allowed expenditure will happen twice a year, but there is the possibility that very large sums will sit within the counterparty, even if just for months. The amendment tries to address the possibility of those funds, or a proportion of them, finding their way into the Consolidated Fund.

It surely has to be the case, and I assume that it is the Minister’s intention via regulations, that the reconciliation process should be as frequent as possible so that the revenue stream matches the allowed expenditure at any point in the construction. I foresee circumstances in the production phase, however—perhaps not in the construction phase, because it is unlikely that a future nuclear project will come in under budget given their history—in which a company’s revenue from power sales might exceed the allowed revenue. There is a chance that we could see large mismatches and, therefore, lots of funds being stored up in the counterparty.

The central thrust of what the Opposition are trying to do with the Bill is to protect consumers and ensure that they pay the lowest possible amount to get a project such as the one that we are talking about onstream. It is therefore really important that we ensure that the Treasury cannot in any circumstances, unless it has exhausted all other options, take part of the funds that may sit with the counterparty for relatively brief periods. The Treasury could decide to take sizeable amounts, and it is important that they flow back to suppliers and, ultimately, to customers. That is the thrust of the amendment.

As the hon. Members for Southampton, Test and for Greenwich and Woolwich laid out, amendment 17 addresses the situation in which funds held by the counterparty may be paid into the Consolidated Fund, which of course is the Government’s general bank account at the Bank of England. Currently, the legislation allows the revenue regulations to provide for sums to be paid into the Consolidated Fund. The intention of the amendment is to narrow the scope of that so that the regulations can provide for sums to be paid into the Consolidated Fund only where there is no alternative.

I thank the hon. Members for the amendment, which they explained well. It certainly echoes my sentiment that consumer funds should not generally go into Government accounts. I reassure Members that we envisage the power to have limited but important uses. For example, it could be used to ensure that the counter- party repays a loan given by the Government—by the taxpayer—to respond to an emergency. That is not a hypothetical situation. We saw the importance of it quite recently in the course of covid, when the Government did indeed have to provide a loan to the counterparty for the contract for difference regime: to the Low Carbon Contracts Company.

The taxpayer should be able to be repaid that loan, but the amendment provides that sums cannot be paid into the Consolidated Fund where there is an alternative. I could see a number of people making an argument that different things that could be done with that money would provide alternatives to what is being envisaged: in this case, repaying the taxpayer. If passed, the amendment would unnecessarily narrow the scope of the power in a way that would limit its use. I hope that my explanation has shown Members the importance of the power, which is in my view unlikely to be used. However, I have given a real example from the last couple of years of where exactly such a situation arose.

The Minister has given the example of an emergency loan, but surely the regulation is all about

“apportioning sums…received by a revenue collection counterparty from electricity suppliers under provision made by virtue of section 19”.

Clause 19 is about collecting money from electricity suppliers; ergo, the example of a loan does not equate to what this is about.

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. My understanding is that the loan would not be repayable if an alternative were there. The ambiguity of an alternative would unnecessarily narrow the scope of the power, though I appreciate where he is coming from.

I ask the Minister to read clause 21(1)(a), which contains the reference I quoted to clause 19, which I do not think covers the emergency loan situation.

We will just have to agree to disagree. I think the amendment unnecessarily narrows the scope of the power in a way that we would not wish to see in terms of protection of the taxpayer. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Southampton, Test to withdraw it.

I thought that this was the most reasonable amendment by far that we have tabled. I am sorry that the Minister has responded in the way that he has. He made the point that some money that had come from the taxpayer might be sitting in the funds of the revenue collection counterparty, and should therefore be paid out of it. That would actually be covered by the amendment, which would insert:

“not to be paid into the Consolidated Fund unless there is no other alternative.”

If someone were trying to pay back a loan that they effectively got from the Consolidated Fund in the first place, there is no alternative other than to pay it back to the Consolidated Fund, so the amendment would cover that. We want circumstances in which the Treasury—I am sure that the Minister does not particularly want to be a high-ranking Treasury Minister in the future—

Again!

Again—indeed. I think the Minister will know from his previous experience that the Treasury is not above, shall we say, treating all Government money as essentially its own. In circumstances in which the Treasury thinks that it can get hold of certain amounts of money, it may well do so. Obviously, the purpose of Bills is not to be written to keep the Treasury’s hands off money that it really should not have, but it might not be such a bad idea at least to put that in regulation so that it would be fairly hard for that to happen. As the amendment is drafted, however, it is not a prohibition; it just says that there needs to be a pretty good argument—the argument made by the Minister about the loan, for example—for that money to be paid into the Consolidated Fund. That, really, is all the amendment says, and I think that is a wholly better construction than what is in the Bill.

Dr Whitehead, are you pressing the amendment to a vote?

Given the circumstances, I think I will.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 7.

Question accordingly negatived.

Clause 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.