Energy Bill [HL]

Baroness Maddock Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Maddock]

My Lords, before making my comments, I declare two or three interests: I am president of the Micropower Council, a vice-president of National Energy Action—a charity working in the area of fuel poverty—and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

Few people will have objections to the main aims of the Bill, which are to tackle barriers to investment in energy efficiency, to enhance our energy security and to enable investment in low-carbon energy sources. Of course, there are those who think that we should not be tackling the causes and manifestations of climate change, but what I find difficult to understand is how those who hold that view can believe that we should ignore the fact that we have a world population that is growing ever faster—many of whom are aspiring to higher and higher standards of living—and continue to use the world’s resources profligately. I fail to understand that, even if those who hold that view cannot accept the climate change science. Looking at the list of speakers, I am sure that we will hear such views again today.

We all have a responsibility to do what we can to stop the wasteful use of resources, as my noble friend Lord Teverson has mentioned—that is why I and others support the aims of the Bill—but, like other noble Lords who have spoken today, many people want a little more clarity about how the programmes and policies are actually going to roll out. This House will, as usual, scrutinise thoroughly and help to improve the Bill as it goes through its stages, and we have already been inundated with briefings from all sorts of organisations. Many focus on how the Green Deal will work in practice. Most applaud the aims behind the Green Deal, but there are common concerns throughout the briefings. The briefings come from possible providers of finance, environmental groups and those involved in the building trade and all the other work required for installing energy efficiency products. I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify and expand on the proposals—if not at great length today, then as we go through the Bill’s stages.

What is it that many people want to know? They want to know how the Green Deal will work in practice, as opposed to theory, and how it will encourage more people to take up energy efficiency measures than other initiatives that have gone before. As has been mentioned, people are worried about whether there is the capacity to roll out the Green Deal on the scale predicted by the Government. Will there be the businesses to do the work and properly trained people to produce the energy performance certificates? Another question that has been touched on today is whether the Green Deal is a suitable vehicle for the fuel-poor to escape their fuel poverty. How will the rollout be monitored? People are concerned that the Green Deal will create a top-down approach—my noble friend mentioned local authorities, which I will say more about later. We are set to dismantle many community-based schemes and other programmes in the area of energy efficiency, and my worry is that this is beginning to happen before new schemes are in place and are seen to be effective. Other people are worried that the scheme might encourage short-term energy efficiency rather than look at overall whole-life carbon impacts.

One briefing in particular that I want to draw to the Minister’s attention is a joint statement from the World Wildlife Fund, the Great British Refurb Campaign, the Federation of Master Builders, the Green Alliance, the UK Green Building Council, Marks and Spencer and B&Q. All are concerned and want to be involved with the Green Deal. I shall highlight for the Minister a couple of things from their statement, which says:

“Clarity on the scale of ambition, pace and timings of the programme … is essential for establishing confidence in the programme, giving business certainty and attracting sufficient large-scale investment”.

Another point made by the group is:

“Our experience and research suggests that the carbon and financial savings that householders could achieve through the Green Deal will not be sufficient to drive significant participation. Additional government intervention is therefore necessary”.

The group makes various suggestions, some of which have been referred to already, including:

“Outside of the Bill a framework of incentives that support the emissions reduction aim of the scheme should be developed. This should include complementary fiscal incentives and other tools designed with human behaviour in mind, such as variable rates of council tax, stamp duty reductions, and a reduced VAT rate for retrofits through the Green Deal”.

I am sure that the Minister is aware of that point, and I hope that we will get some clarity as we spend some time discussing this in future.

Not surprisingly, the rest of my comments will refer to Clause 102, “Repeal of measures relating to home energy efficiency”, which will repeal the Home Energy Conservation Act 1995, which I sponsored successfully as a Private Member's Bill when I was a Member in another place. I will remind noble Lords briefly what that Act did—or rather does, as it is still in force. HECA requires all UK local authorities with housing responsibilities to prepare an energy conservation report that identifies practical and cost-effective measures likely to result in significant improvements in the energy efficiency of all residential accommodation in their area and to report on progress in implementing the measures. A “significant improvement” was defined as one that produced a 30 per cent improvement in energy efficiency.

HECA was designed to last for 10 to 15 years from April 1996, so I suppose that we are running out of time, but the way in which the Government have approached the repeal of the Act has been distressing. There are four short paragraphs in the notes accompanying the Bill and there is little more than one page from DECC on the reasons for repealing the Act. I understand why the Government want to repeal the Act, but—as the sponsor of HECA, I would say this—I am extremely disappointed at the cursory dismissal of what the Act achieved. I and many others spent a lot of time 15 years ago, when energy conservation was not mainstream, persuading the then Conservative Government to give a fair wind to my Private Member’s Bill. I make no bones about the fact that a lot of people helped me—I happened to be the right person in the right place at the right time—although I cared passionately about the issue from having lived in Scandinavia many years before. The clincher for the Government was that they wanted something to say at Rio.

DECC makes various comments about the Act and why it needs to be repealed. It states:

“In late 2007, the Government”—

that is, the previous Government—

“held a public consultation exercise on the future of HECA. The Consultation set out the conclusions of a Review of the Act which began in autumn 2006 ... the Government recommended repealing the legislation … on the basis that it had not been, in itself, responsible for improvements in energy efficiency in the household sector and was unlikely to be so in the future”.

That is not entirely accurate. Even as recently as 2005, the then Environment Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, claimed in your Lordships' House that, in its first eight years, HECA delivered savings of 93.4 terawatt hours of domestic fuel. To put that figure in perspective, that is a larger saving than that attributed to the first phase of the energy efficiency commitment, which was 86.7 terawatt hours and where targets were overshot by 40 per cent. It is important for all the people involved that that is on the record.

A lot happened under HECA. Local authorities did the work—I have already outlined the savings—and set up all sorts of schemes. There was a HECA officers network and there were HECA grants. I chaired the committee administered by the Energy Savings Trust that gave out those grants. I recognise that things move on, but I am deeply disappointed that the Government have been so dismissive of the huge amounts of work that were done and of the successes that happened under HECA.

The Government have made great play of their consultation, on which they state that various bodies are happy to see the Act repealed. However, one of those bodies is the Local Government Association, which has been,

“campaigning for a rationalisation of the obligation and reporting requirements on local authorities”.

However, the Local Government Association says that, while the repeal of HECA will reduce the burden on local authorities,

“it must be complemented with a clear role for local authorities within the Green Deal and in the delivery of the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target and Home Heating Cost Reduction Target, if the ambitions of these programmes are to be realised effectively, efficiently and equitably”.

My noble friend Lord Teverson also mentioned the role of local authorities. As we look at the Bill more closely, I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that local authorities will still be at the heart of trying to deal with energy efficiency in our homes. I can recommend to him, and even pass to him, an excellent article by a friend of mine, Andrew Warren, who is in charge of the Association for the Conservation of Energy, written when the Labour Government were trying to repeal the Act in 2008. The Labour Government came into power soon after the Bill became an Act, although they never used it very much. They did not even bother to collect the figures from local authorities and did nothing to set up a decent reporting system to help local authorities to deal with the issue.

As I said, I believe that a lot of good work was done in the days when energy efficiency was not popular. I support what the Government are trying to do here, but I am absolutely adamant that local authorities need to be involved. I look forward to assurances from my noble friend that he understands my point of view on this.