Hon JOHN CARTER (Minister of Civil Defence) Link to this
I move, That the Electricity Industry Bill be now read a third time. The bill will give the electricity industry a well overdue overhaul. When this Government took office there was widespread dissatisfaction with the performance of the electricity sector. Prices had risen relentlessly in the previous decade, especially for residential consumers. At the time consumers had been asked several times to save power, because not enough generation had been built to deal with dry years. There was also widespread criticism of the Electricity Commission, which was seen as slow to deal with competition issues and to approve overdue upgrades to the transmission system. Last year the Minister set up a ministerial review to get to the bottom of these problems and come up with a workable and practical solution. The review consulted widely and proposed a comprehensive set of measures to get traction on the issues. The Government carefully considered the recommendations of the review, and this bill implements the final decisions.
The overall aims of the bill are as follows. Firstly, it aims to increase the level of competition in the industry, particularly in retailing and particularly in the South Island. Secondly, it aims to put strong incentives on the industry to better manage the security of supply, particularly in dry years. Thirdly, it aims to streamline the governance and decision-making arrangements for the industry. In terms of improving competition in the sector, the ministerial review concluded that the portfolios of the State-owned enterprises were not well balanced in terms of the location of their assets and activities and the types of generation that they owned. This meant that the State-owned enterprises tended to concentrate their activities in either the North Island or the South Island and did not really operate as nationwide competitors. A major objective of the bill is to compel the State-owned enterprises to compete nationwide. This is being done by transferring the Tekapō A and Tekapō B stations from Meridian Energy to Genesis Power, and through virtual asset swaps between three State-owned enterprises via long-term hedge contracts. We are already seeing a noticeable uptake in real competition as a result of these changes.
There are a number of other pro-competitive measures in the bill. These measures include letting lines businesses get back into retailing, subject to various provisions designed to ensure continued open access to lines for competing retailers and generators; setting up a liquid hedge market so that generators and retailers, especially new entrants and businesses generally, can better manage market risk, including volatile spot prices; reducing the barriers to retail entry by reducing the complexity of line tariffs; and setting up a fund to encourage consumers to shop around. The Minister is also putting pressure on the industry to speed up consumer switching times.
The second main component of the bill is about improving the security of supply. To this end, the bill contains measures designed to improve the incentives for the industry and its participants to better manage the security of supply, and to make public conservation campaigns a last resort, not a first resort. The measures include getting rid of the reserve energy scheme put in place in 2003, and ensuring that the Whirinaki power station is operated commercially. The ministerial review concluded that the reserve energy scheme reduced, rather than improved, the security of supply, by transferring responsibility for managing security from industry participants to the Electricity Commission. The bill also requires retailers to compensate consumers when conservation campaigns are put in place, and it enables a floor to be put on spot prices during campaigns and other supply emergencies. The aim of these measures is to ensure that the industry, rather than the consumer, wears the costs of poor supply management.
The bill also improves governance arrangements in the electricity sector. It does this by replacing the Electricity Commission with a more focused, independent, and streamlined Electricity Authority. Functions better undertaken elsewhere are transferred, such as the promotion of energy efficiency to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, the approval of grid upgrade proposals to the Commerce Commission, and the management of supply emergencies to Transpower. The new authority will be required to focus on getting the rules right, with the objective of improving competition, reliability, and efficiency in the industry. It is also required to set up advisory groups, including a Security and Reliability Council.
Finally, the bill includes the provisions of the discharged Electricity (Continuance of Supply) Amendment Bill. These provisions will ensure that rural electricity consumers will continue to receive secure electricity supply, while allowing lines companies to meet their obligations in more efficient and cost-effective ways.
Overall, the Minister is confident that this bill will deliver a more competitive, more responsible, and more responsive electricity sector. However, we need to repeat a caution: we cannot promise that there will be lower prices. There are a number of upward pressures on electricity costs, particularly the need to build new power stations and transmission and distribution lines. We need to invest over a billion dollars each and every year to replace ageing assets and meet steadily growing demand. As has been said before, we have long since run out of cheap options for building new power stations and transmission lines. We can give assurances, however, that this bill will put more competitive pressure on costs and prices in the industry, and will improve the incentives for managing the security of supply.
In conclusion, the Minister and I would like to thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for its work on the bill, and to thank all those who made submissions. I commend the Electricity Industry Bill to the House.
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) Link to this
I rise to speak to the third reading of the Electricity Industry Bill, and to signal that Labour will be opposing its introduction into law.
Throughout the consideration of this bill, Labour members have measured their consideration against the three key pillars that we believe underpin responsible reform in the sector: first, does the bill balance the security of supply and transmission? Second, does the bill address the affordability and the predictability of electricity pricing? Third, does the bill enhance the sustainable production of electricity? This bill does not pass that threshold; instead, it promotes competition, streamlines governance, and progresses structural shifts of assets—all of which, we would argue, do not constrain the price of electricity, and all of which rest the security of supply on thermal generation. We just do not think that that is a responsible way forward.
We have concerns about both the proposal to disestablish the Electricity Commission and replace it with the Electricity Authority, and the narrow focus of the authority, which will now not consider issues of fairness and sustainability in the supply of electricity. Although I presented Supplementary Order Paper 163 to include that as a focus for the new authority, the suggestion was rejected by Government members, with little reason. Our concern is that it will be more difficult to ensure the industry operates in a sustainable manner that aims to limit carbon emissions for any new electricity generation.
On the issue of fairness, we do not believe that fair delivery of power to consumers will be achieved. The authority will not be required to monitor the environmental impacts of electricity generation to ensure greater sustainability in the long term. That further highlights Labour’s concern that the Government refuses to take leadership on achieving the 90 percent renewable electricity generation goal in any serious way. That may well remain an aspirational goal with no coherent targets.
A key concern raised by Labour members is the ongoing pressure that households feel with regard to their monthly power bill. Baycorp Holdings predicts that it will be increasingly difficult for many households to pay their power bills and household expenses. I propose that the code that guides the authority be amended to include fair consumer pricing and sustainable electricity generation. That would go some way to ensuring that fair consumer pricing would be actively considered by the authority. Instead, the Government’s solution is to encourage greater competition, and to believe that somehow consumers may see better pricing options. I remain sceptical about that view.
Labour members also raised issues regarding smart meters and a smart grid. We agreed with the recommendation of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and proposed that the provision for a smart grid - enabling mechanism be included in the Electricity Industry Participation Code. That was rejected by Government members, because they believe that rather than future-proofing our grid for the benefit of consumers and retailers we should take a fast-follower approach while technology is developed. That lack of leadership means that right now we have “dumb meters” being rolled out in some of our regions. That does not make sense when the Minister of Energy and Resources could grab the bull by the horns.
A substantial debate on asset reconfiguration has been repeatedly ignored by the Minister. Government members do not accept that there is no evidence that efficiency gains through swapping Tekapō A and B will be achieved. The Treasury regulatory impact team who considered the bill noted that the bill was lacking in certain areas. In particular, the regulatory impact team presented information that more comprehensive discussion was needed to assess the risk of asset swaps. There was no cost-benefit analysis to assess whether asset swaps would fix the problem that the Government believes it is addressing, and there was no assessment of other examples where asset swaps have delivered efficiency gains. The upshot was that it did not make sense to swap assets between State-owned enterprises when there was no evidence of its benefits.
The Minister of Energy and Resources claims that he has received no concerns from Meridian Energy over the asset reconfiguration. But a letter was sent from the chair of Meridian Energy, Wayne Boyd, in December last year to Ministers Power and English to suggest that splitting the management of the Waitaki chain between two operators would result in a loss of efficiency in managing the water resource. From an energy perspective, Meridian Energy would need to hold its lakes higher in order to counter the security of supply risk that it outlined. Advice went on to highlight that that would result in a much higher likelihood of spillage and loss of efficiency. Ari Sargent, chief executive of Powershop, slammed the reforms proposed by the Government. He said that there was a high risk they would lead to both higher prices and to less secure power supply. It was evident that those comments contrasted starkly with those of the Minister of Energy and Resources, and Mr Sargent’s criticisms were quickly removed from his blog.
Labour members have consistently raised through the debate in the House our concern about the rising cost of power prices for those who are more vulnerable—those on fixed incomes. Baycorp Holdings chief executive Geoff Harper noted in his press statement that the number of New Zealand households unable or unwilling to pay power bills on time was set to increase over the next 6 months, according to its debt recovery agency. Baycorp Holdings said that rising electricity prices fuelled by emissions trading scheme levies and the increase in GST were likely to result in people defaulting on their power bills in order to pay more pressing bills such as mortgages and their grocery bills.
Our concern remains that the differential between domestic and industry users will not be fixed by this particular bill. We still do not think that the solution offered by the Minister will go anywhere near to addressing these very important issues. The bill increases bureaucracy and there is little evidence to suggest that asset swaps will be efficient and without risk. It lacks leadership to progress the measure that all new energy generation be from renewable resources. It fails to address fairness to consumers and the huge differential between domestic and industrial electricity users. It fails to address price predictability at a time when people need greater assurance. So for those reasons and several more, Labour will not be voting to pass it.
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) Link to this
I will take a brief call on the third reading of the Electricity Industry Bill. As this bill progressed through the House and the Finance and Expenditure Committee there was good opportunity to traverse the detail within it, and I do not want to go over that again.
I will summarise in very fundamental terms what this bill is driving at, which is really three things: it is putting in place more effective and efficient governance in this most important of sectors; it is increasing competition, particularly in the retail sector—which is of interest to me, being from the South Island—and it is focusing on improving security of supply.
If anyone is in any doubt about how fundamentally important it is to get our electricity sector working well, they have only to look at the chaos that was brought about when electricity was taken away from much of Canterbury after the earthquake, and when it was taken away from much of the North Island after the recent storms. We all know how dependent we have become as a nation on an effective electricity supply.
Equally, we know that over the last 10 years the growth in power prices has been unacceptably high. We saw growth of 72 percent under the 9 years of the Labour Government. National has never pretended that we can stop power prices rising, but what we absolutely must do is slow the growth in power prices. We are determined to do that, and this bill is, fundamentally, a step in the right direction towards that. I am very pleased to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) Link to this
I notice that when Amy Adams stood up she said she did not want to traverse the details of the Electricity Industry Bill, and that is because the details of the bill and the details of the evidence that the Finance and Expenditure Committee heard on the bill are that it probably will not work and that it does not address the major issues confronting the electricity sector. There was a huge amount of criticism of the bill. So I am not surprised that National members do not particularly want to talk about the detail of the bill, because no robust case has been prepared or presented to justify what they are trying to do here.
Let us be clear what this bill is all about. Firstly, it is about making the State-owned enterprises Meridian Energy and Genesis Energy more attractive for privatisation. The rearrangement of the assets is all about making them more attractive for privatisation. Although the National Government promised New Zealanders before the last election that it would not privatise them in its first term, we know that the work is under way to privatise them in the second term, should it get one. That is one of the reasons why New Zealanders will reject the National Government at the next election and return a Labour Government. They do not want to see the National Government hocking off the family silverware.
Hon Maurice WilliamsonMaurice Williamson knows all about that because he was involved in privatising the assets last time around. In fact, I think he was an Associate Minister of Energy and Resources last time around when it was busy hocking off Contact Energy. That was Maurice Williamson. He cannot wait to get his hands on the other State-owned enterprises. That is what this bill is all about. It is about preparing those State-owned enterprises and getting them ready for privatisation. There is no business case for the asset swaps. Treasury noted that the business case had not been prepared, and the Ministry of Economic Development noted that the business case had not been prepared. The Institution of Professional Engineers submitted to the select committee about not only the business case but also the inefficient management of water that could result from the asset swaps. It noted that a case had not been made, and that in fact it could have the opposite effect to what the Government claimed—that is, that it would result in more competition, when it could result in less.
I want to traverse that for a moment. The Waitaki water scheme is one coherent system. Water flows from one lake into the next, into the next. This bill takes the Tekapō A and B lakes, which are power stations relatively near the top, and gives them to one company. That company will control a large amount of the water supply flowing into the other lakes and the other power stations further down the water system. If it is going to operate in the way that Gerry Brownlee wants it to operate, which is in a competitive market model, its incentive will be to maximise its own use of the water, potentially at the expense of the other power generators further down the hydro system. That is one of the reasons why the Waitaki system operates most efficiently as a monopoly, because then the operator of that system can work out how to generate the maximum amount of electricity from the given amount of water that is available. That was the view put forward by a number of technical experts to the select committee, and that evidence was ignored by the National members on the committee, who used their majority to push this legislation through.
There is no robust case for saying that separating Tekapō A and B from the rest of the Waitaki system will lead to more efficient use of water, or lower power prices, or even increased competition. In fact, the committee received some strong advice that any modest increases in competition that may result from this asset swap would be more than offset by the potential downsides of it. The Government did not respond to that. It did not engage with the detail, as Amy Adams said they were not going to, because, simply, the details were not on the Government’s side. The details have not been on the Government’s side, all the way through. The Government has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to electricity.
The three major issues in the electricity market are sustainability, affordability, and security. That is what the Government should be focused on. Before the last election, we had National MPs and National candidates up and down the country doing their best to give New Zealanders the impression that under a National Government, power prices would come down. Not only have they not delivered on that but also, suddenly, they have changed their tune. They are not talking about lowering power prices any more; they are talking about stabilising the cost increases. What they are actually saying to New Zealanders is that power prices will keep going up, and they have given up on any notion that they will lower power prices. That is what they promised New Zealanders before the last election, but now they are simply talking about increasing power prices by a slightly lesser amount.
When National members boast that power prices have gone up less in the last 2 years than they did in the 9 years prior to that, they are ignoring the fact that we had a drought for a big part of those years prior to that, which significantly increased the cost of power in New Zealand. When the hydro lakes are half empty, it means we are more reliant on non-renewable energy, which is more expensive. The responsibility for the mess in the electricity industry that led to some of those hydro shortages rests with people like Max Bradford and Maurice Williamson, who created the mess in the first place with this idea that if we just had more competition and just carved up the electricity industry into all these different parts, and made everyone compete against each other, then the power prices would go down.
It has been 14 years since Max Bradford and Maurice Williamson promised the House that carving up the electricity sector and introducing competition would result in lower power prices. They were proved to be spectacularly wrong. Now Gerry Brownlee is coming here and saying “Gosh, if we just introduce a bit more competition and if we just go back to that original idea that Max Bradford and Maurice Williamson put forward in the first place, maybe we could lower power prices.” Well, it did not work the first time and it will not work this time.
If we want to talk about really lowering power prices, we need to look at the cheapest form of electricity out there. Renewable energy will be cheaper in the longer term than non-renewable energy. As oil and gas supplies continue to diminish, as they are a finite resource and there is a limit to the amount of oil and gas that is available, the price of them will go up. In New Zealand we have no excuse for being reliant on non-renewable sources of energy, when we have such an abundance supply of renewable energy. We are already very fortunate in the sense that most of our electricity already comes from hydro energy. It means we are already well ahead of the rest of the world. We could easily reach the 90 percent renewable electricity target that the Government says it aspires to, but is doing nothing to move towards.
There was not enough, I tell the member. I would say there could have been more, because the previous Labour Government largely kept in place, up until about 2003, the regulatory and legislative framework for the electricity industry that was put in place by Max Bradford and Maurice Williamson. Labour changed it and started to focus on renewable electricity, but we did not start to see those benefits until the last few years. Electricity is a long-term game. It takes a number of years for an electricity-generating plant to go from the planning stage to actually producing electricity.
Hon Tau HenareIt was not long enough; that is right. In the next 9-year Labour Government, we will have a lot more renewable electricity. Given the spectacular failure of this National Government, another 9-year Labour Government is not an unrealistic prospect at the end of this very short term of National Government.
I come back to electricity. In particular, we need more renewable electricity because in the long term renewable electricity will be cheaper. That is where the Government should be placing its focus. It will also potentially, if we diversify the renewable sources of electricity we have, increase the security of supply. If we do it right, it will ease the constraints on our transmission system. One of the big constraints on the system at the moment is that we have the hydro all in the South Island and a lot of the gas and geothermal generation increasingly in the North Island, so electricity is flowing one way or the other over quite long distances. If we move to a new approach based on having smaller-scale renewable energy spread throughout the country, then we can ease some of the real pressure on the transmission grid, thereby reducing the amount of money that will need to be invested in upgrading the transmission grid over the next little while. That has to be a good thing.
Those are the three things we think the Government should be focused on: sustainability, affordability, and security. Those things go hand in hand. If we deal with the issues related to sustainability, then we will in part deal with the issues related to affordability, because unsustainable energy sources will be more expensive in the long term. If we deal with the issues related to sustainability, then we will also deal with some of the issues related to security, because, as I have said, we can ease the constraints on transmission and so on. We can get a much better, much fairer electricity system if we focus on those three things. This is a bad bill, and Labour will be voting against it.
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) Link to this
The Electricity Industry Bill remains as flawed today as it was when it first appeared before the House. The purpose, as stated in the bill, is as dense as it is brief. It is “… to provide a framework for the regulation of the electricity industry.” The bill claims to reform various areas of the electricity sector, to increase market competition, and to ensure security of supply. It seeks to modify governance arrangements by replacing the Electricity Commission with the Electricity Authority, which is to be more independent. It will allow lines businesses back into retailing, and it will reconfigure some of the assets of the three State-owned enterprises—Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, and Genesis—amongst themselves.
The Finance and Expenditure Committee heard 91 submissions. Many opposed provisions of the bill or cast doubt on their likely efficacy. These warnings were largely ignored by the Government, whose mind had been set long before the select committee process. We have argued before that this bill is simply another round of marginal tinkering with the problematic electricity industry. We contended that the underlying challenge was missing. This was the need for a genuine regulatory framework that would make the playing field level for more sustainable, renewable energy. We said that the Government was in danger of missing the whole point. The Government ignored that, as well.
This bill is significant beyond its own terms. It is symptomatic of the general approach of the Government to energy in general. The draft energy strategy of the Minister of Energy and Resources confirms the public’s fear that ideological blinkers are preventing this Government from moving purposefully towards a low-carbon economy. The Minister’s petroleum action plan of late 2009 to unlock the potential of our fossil fuel resources was in the same vein.
The Minister’s thinking, which lies behind this electricity bill, was on display at the New Zealand Petroleum Conference held in Auckland earlier this week, which I attended. In Mr Brownlee’s keynote address, he advanced a breathtaking comment. He invited New Zealanders to consider the potential for an accelerated oil and gas discovery programme that can be achieved in an environmentally responsible way. In fact, he went further and told us to mend our ways of thinking. He said: “people need to shift their thinking on exactly this issue.” He stated: “The development of New Zealand’s natural resources and the protection of the environment are not mutually exclusive … it is only through a strong economy that New Zealand can afford the expenditure required to look after and improve our environment.” According to this suicidal logic, we should mine and burn more oil and gas, hastening climate change, in order to become rich enough to deal with climate change.
Recently I questioned the Minister in the House over what phased milestones he had in place to achieve his stated goal of reaching 90 percent electricity generation from renewable resources by 2025. His reply was that his Government did not determine the investment decisions needed to increase the availability of renewably generated activity; rather, it sets the regulatory and policy environment in which investments are made, such as an amended Resource Management Act and the moderated emissions trading scheme. He observed: “Phased milestones would be possible only if we lived in a command and control - style economy: we do not.”
Mr Brownlee is correct. We do not live in a command and control economy; we never have, although a National Prime Minister came closest three decades back. But we do live in a country that is part of an unsustainable global economy. Its most obvious symptom is dangerous climate change from excessive carbon emissions. Switching to renewable energy sources and developing a low-carbon economy within a short time period is a condition of enduring economic welfare, both for New Zealand and for the world.
It is generally recognised that this switch must be completed within two decades at the latest. New Zealand’s goal of having 90 percent renewable electricity is one part of that transformation. Identification of phased milestones is a legitimate part of obtaining that goal. It does not reflect Kremlin thinking; it reflects an agreed aspiration through consensus to ensure that a final goal is more likely to be obtained with the public and private sectors working together. Most people, and most Governments and organisations, do that. The Government has a phased milestone, signed by the National Cabinet in 1997 in the Kyoto Protocol, to achieve the goal signed by the National Government at Rio in 1992. That goal is stabilising the global climate at a level that is not dangerous to the planet’s life-support systems. The UN has phased milestones under the well-known Millennium Development Goals. They are: to halve global poverty, to improve educational attainment, and to increase maternal health and longevity.
We all have milestones, I say to the Minister. It is not a betrayal of the private sector as the driver of the national economy to lay down midpoint milestones to measure how well we are moving towards a stated target. In fact, the Government itself has milestones, or at least has access to them. The Electricity Commission’s draft statement of opportunities released in July is intended to provide interested parties with independent information to consider in assessing the potential for grid management efficiencies and, in particular, investment in upgrades and transmission alternatives. The chairman of the commission stated that the statement “is not a plan for the future development of the grid or of generation … Rather it is a set of scenarios as to how the transmission and generation of electricity may develop given a range of reasonable assumptions.”
The scenarios show a trend for each year for all energy sources between 2010 and 2014. Each renewable source—geothermal, hydro, wind, tidal, solar—is expected to increase. The Government and the public will have this available to assess the effectiveness of the energy strategy over the next decade.
The policies of the previous Government, through the thermal power station moratorium and its emissions trading scheme, were broadly on target for the market to deliver a 90 percent renewables goal by 2027. The Green Party’s Getting There document of August 2009 showed how we could achieve a goal of having 90 percent renewables by 2025. This Government’s repeal of the moratorium and the weakening of the emissions trading scheme has left that goal in tatters. Without a clear signal through Government leadership, the market will not deliver on time.
The Minister’s energy strategy speaks of fostering the deployment of new renewable sources, such as marine and solar. How the Government plans to foster marine energy is left unclear. I say to the Minister that if all he does is state an aspirational goal, leave it to the commission to postulate scenarios based on assumptions, and leave unclear how he will foster new renewables, he will simply not attain the target. Yet attaining the target is an imperative for our children’s generation, and the Minister has the ministerial responsibility.
Here are a few personal thoughts on how to facilitate the attainment of a 90 percent target. Let us assume a population growth of 0.8 percent per annum and electricity generation growth of 2 percent per annum. Under that scenario, national electricity generation would rise from 780 petajoules in 2010 to 1,050 petajoules in 2025. Based on these assumptions, it is possible to picture a scenario where a goal of 90 percent renewables can be achieved by 2025. Hydro might remain static at around 55 to 60 percent, with some ageing stations being decommissioned. Geothermal might remain static at 13 percent. Wind power could, with a level playing field, increase over 15 years from its current 4 percent to, say, 12 percent. Tidal power, possibly the most promising of all, might, with supportive action of the kind the Government extends to the petroleum industry, be introduced and grow from nothing to, say, 10 percent.
This is not a command plan; it is a heuristic tool to help policy makers and the public envisage a sustainable future. It also shows the magnitude of the challenge of switching to a low-carbon economy when energy consumption is growing exponentially. The reality will not be precisely like this, but unless we all—householders, voters, farms, companies, local authorities, and Government—have some idea of the phase-in and phase-out trend we need as a nation, we shall never get there. The only way to get there is by having a robust carbon price signal for the market economy to react. There the Government is failing us as well. Instead of a whole-of-Government strategy envisaging a switch to low-carbon bases for our power sources, the Minister is content to tinker with the imperfect framework of the electricity sector in the name of an outmoded notion of market competition. The Green Party will be opposing this bill.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this
I will take just a short call on the Electricity Industry Bill. The Government supports the bill; contrary to what Opposition members have been saying, this bill is in the best interests of the electricity industry. It will promote competition, and that is in the best interests of consumers. National is very proud of the way that prices have stabilised under this Government, compared with those under the previous Government. Thank you.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER Link to this
The question is that the motion be agreed to. Those of that opinion will say Aye; to the contrary, No. The Ayes have it. I call on Government orders of the day Nos 2 and 3.
SUE MORONEY (Labour) Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We called for a party vote on the bill, but no party vote was taken.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER Link to this
I am afraid I did not hear a call for a party vote. The Labour Party supported the bill; only one party voted against it.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER Link to this
I am happy to reconsider the matter. If I was wrong, I am certainly happy to reconsider it.
Hon JOHN CARTER (Minister of Civil Defence) Link to this
I seek the leave of the House to have a vote on the Electricity Industry Bill.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER Link to this
Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.
A party vote was called for on the question,
That the Electricity Industry Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 66
Noes 49
Bill read a third time.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER Link to this
I just make the point that when a party is calling for a party vote, it needs at that time to exercise its right to call for a party vote. I cannot second-guess, and I certainly did not hear that call for a party vote. I apologise to the member, but I did not hear her call. Had I been remiss at the time, the call for a party vote should have been brought to my attention by way of a point of order. Of course, I had moved on to the next order of the day, and I am informed that I am not obliged to go back. However, leave was sought and I was prepared to accept it. In future can we make it very clear that if a party wishes to exercise its right to have a party vote, it does so at the time and not when we have moved to the next course of business.