Energy Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Barker of Battle and Brian Binley
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) on his typically thoughtful speech, which I thought made an important contribution to the debate and was delivered in a helpful tone. I say to the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) that I greatly welcome the general thrust of the Bill. I believe it will be a major advance, provided we get it right, but there is a lot to do to help it become a better Bill. I hope that Ministers will approach Committee with that thought in mind. I think that, in general, the House wants the Bill to succeed and considers it important, and we should be able to tap into the House’s collective knowledge of an issue that is so important to the future well-being of our country. Knowing the Minister as I do, I am sure that that will be his approach.
Gregory Barker
My hon. and very wise Friend is absolutely right. We want to try to capture some of the positive cross-party engagement that ensured that the Climate Change Act 2008 was scrutinised and improved during its passage. We will seek to draw on the wisdom that exists on both sides of the House to improve this Bill, and we will be open-minded. We are extremely ambitious for the Bill, and we do not want to rule out good ideas just because they were not invented in our Department.
Mr Binley
I am sure that the whole House will welcome the Minister’s generous remarks, and I hope that we can set the stage for a consensual approach to this important matter. I was going to say something about limp lettuce leaves, but in view of my desire for that consensual approach, I shall refrain from doing so.
Mr Deputy Speaker—the change is slightly off-putting, but it is good to see you in the Chair—we all know that improvements in energy efficiency are a vital part of the wider picture of our energy policy, for a number of reasons. They are central to the success of our economy, and to the well-being of the environment that we want our children, grandchildren, and those who come even later to enjoy. They are extremely important to the jobs market. However, they are even more important to consumers, particularly those who are less privileged than many other people in the country. I believe that the Government are genuinely willing to ensure that the benefits of the Bill spread to the sections of the community that we know need help because they suffer from fuel poverty, and I believe that those people would be particularly grateful to the Government if we managed to pull this off.
The Bill provides a welcome opportunity for us to consider the wider question of the direction of energy policy, which chapter 4 of part 1 and chapters 1 and 2 of part 2 refer to in no uncertain terms. Issues such as future generation and supply, low carbon innovation and investment and energy security are vital to the overall picture, and I was pleased to learn that the Minister envisages a review and report in the coming years that will deal with those vital issues more widely.
I think we all agree that a low-carbon energy future offers the strong economic opportunities to which I have referred, but energy can be saved only if there is energy to save. The whole process of generation has become even more delicate and important as a result of happenings on the other side of the world, and the future of energy policy is now a very pertinent matter to which we need to devote serious attention. I do not think that either this or the last Government have embarked on that process to the extent that would satisfy me and, I believe, a number of other Members.
Low-carbon energy provides a tremendous opportunity for us to create new jobs, improve energy security and reduce fuel poverty, and making existing energy supply go further is a positive concept that we would all support. The green deal programme is one of most startling and innovative policies that I have seen during my time in the House. As I have said, there are ways in which we can improve it, but it is a gem of an idea on which we can build, and which will have a massive impact on the people whom we serve. I hope that the rest of the House sees the Bill in the same way. I know that the Builders Merchants Federation will be interested in it, but the federation is only one organisation that will be interested in the possibilities for job creation, let alone improvement of our housing stock and help for those who are less fortunate than many of us in this country.
I am delighted that there will be a focus on the sectors to which I have referred, and I am delighted that those sectors will help to provide the growth that we need to ensure the success of the whole Budget strategy. The Bill is at the heart of that Budget strategy, which is one of the wider considerations that we need to bear in mind in Committee and on Report. However, it poses some difficulties that I think worth identifying from the perspective of a friendly supporter. I find its tone more than a little prescriptive, and I feel that it could have been more flexible at this stage, not least because so much of the detail is yet to be supplied. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will take that point on board.
I believe that we should make the green deal more attractive to domestic and commercial energy consumers. In that context, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). I agree that we need to use fiscal drivers such as council tax rebates and changes in stamp duty. Although the green deal is tremendously exciting, it must be sold carefully and honestly, and the marketing process must contain incentives to change the minds of the many people who may be suspicious about phrases such as “Everyone’s a winner”. Whenever I wanted extra money to spend at the local fairground where the guy cried out “Everyone’s a winner”, my grandmother warned me to be wary of catchpenny deals. I do not want that sort of marketing to be part of this process; the deal must be marketed in a sensible, mature and honest way.
Energy Efficiency
Debate between Lord Barker of Battle and Brian Binley
Gregory Barker
Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I am very interested in such matters, and think there is far greater scope for us to be much more ambitious in terms of community combined heat and power. Such a decentralised energy agenda offers huge scope in Britain. However, for a variety of reasons, both local as well as central Government ones, we have not pushed it. In countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark, however, community combined heat and power make up a substantial part of energy output. As my hon. Friend says, it is much more efficient and I assure him we are looking into it.
As I have said, despite some interesting initiatives in recent years, nothing is commensurate with the enormous size of the challenge we face. The reality is that we still have a multi-billion pound investment gap. It is hardly surprising, however, that progress has been patchy. Since 1997, we have had a veritable alphabet soup of acronyms, schemes and quangos, leaving both the consumer and business somewhat bewildered: EEC, CERT, CESP, LCIF, EST, LCCC, CT, ETF, CRC and CCA. The list goes on and on, and each scheme is accompanied by new pamphlets, advertising and messages, further complicating the landscape for confused consumers and businesses. Individually, all those schemes have merit, but taken together they have failed to deliver on the scale that we need. The fact is that we need to pick up the pace dramatically if we are to reach the remaining 14 million households in the UK within a meaningful time scale.
It is clear that in these difficult times, with a record deficit, the current model is simply not up to the scale of the task. We need a game changer. We must remove the blinkers that have constrained previous policy thinking. We need to bring in new models of installation, innovation to drive down costs, new financing methods and new players to the market to deliver on a far more ambitious scale.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
On innovation, the Minister will respect the fact that coal remains a vital part of our energy requirement for the future. When the Prime Minister was Leader of the Opposition, he promised to create four carbon capture and storage-equipped power plants. Will the Minister give us a quick update on progress, and perhaps a timetable for that, because it plays a major part in the objectives he wishes to reach?
Gregory Barker
My hon. Friend is an expert in this field. He is chair of the all-party group on clean coal, so I speak with respect for his expertise. He is right to say that the coalition Government are committed to carbon capture and storage, which will be a major plank in our efforts to decarbonise our energy supply by 2030; we are committed to the generation of 5 GW of CCS by 2020. We see the potential of CCS, not just for our domestic use and as part of our plan to decarbonise the economy, but as a huge potential export industry for the UK in which we can not only capture new markets for British jobs, but help the world in striving to decarbonise the global economy.