Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

I think I can agree with that. My hon. Friend is right to say that our reforms will boost solar power, help more families and reduce costs in consumer bills.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

The way in which this has been handled has been a bit of a disaster. I accept that the Minister has made some changes, but they have been detrimental to the overall confidence in the scheme. Putting that to one side for a moment, may I ask him to look seriously at enabling bigger entities such as community centres, schools and other community facilities to benefit from the scheme, to provide a kick-start over and above that given to the householders who participate in it?

[Mr Davey]

In our proposals, smaller community projects will benefit from the decision to apply only the lower aggregated tariff to generators with more than 25 installations. We are now consulting on a definition of “community” and on how that could be used, including a possible tariff guarantee process and a higher rate for community-owned multi-installations, compared with commercial ones. I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that that type of community approach was not in the old scheme.