Energy Bill
Debate between Lord Bishop of Chester and Baroness Maddock
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I welcome this amendment, which began its life, I think, in an interchange between the noble Baroness and me in Grand Committee. She has pretty much supplied everything that I asked for then, and I am very pleased. The only point that I will make now is that the Government rightly want to make it easy for consumers to switch suppliers. That is a good thing and it is very helpful that this information will be made available one way or another on bills. However, it needs to be made available consistently, in the same form, by different suppliers, so that if you are comparing a bill from one supplier with a bill from another, the information is supplied in the same form on each bill. The noble Baroness did not quite make that point in what she said. I hope that she can assure us that these costs will be disclosed—either voluntarily or by the exercise of the power that she is taking—not only transparently but consistently and comparably by different suppliers.
Baroness Maddock (LD)
My Lords, I have one question for my noble friend. She talked about making environmental costs clear to customers on their bills. In the past few weeks, we have had lots of discussions about eco and green taxes, and it has become quite clear that the big six, in particular, have sometimes not pointed out to their customers, or admitted in their discussions, that some of those costs are social costs. Everything is in a bit of a state of flux at the moment but, depending on how things work out, it is also important that we are quite accurate on the bills about what is a social cost and what is a so-called green tax. I will also just say that I am very sorry that I was not here for the previous stage of the Bill when the noble Baroness accepted my amendment about the clarity of bills. I hope that the point that was raised by the right reverend Prelate will be covered in the amendment that was passed on Report concerning the clarity of Bills.
Energy Bill
Debate between Lord Bishop of Chester and Baroness Maddock(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Maddock
My Lords, my amendment uses nice, simple words. As I said earlier, I am not a lawyer and not very good at this. I discovered that in Schedule 14, page 200, line 43, there is a rather more flowery way of putting it:
“publishing the statement in such manner as the Authority considers appropriate for the purpose of bringing the statement to the attention of those consumers”.
I found that after I had made up my simple amendment, which, luckily, was accepted. It is quite interesting that my noble friend Lord Caithness made exactly this point in his intervention in the previous series of amendments.
Like my noble friend, I am interested here simply because of the bills that I, my friends and my 94 year-old mother have had. You look at them. We have sometimes changed our supplier, and when we got a condensing boiler for the first time—we are on to our second as the first one burnt out—I tried to work out how much gas we were saving. That was difficult. I am an A-level mathematician and I still could not work out with ease whether we had saved. I worked it out in the end but it was very complicated. Gas is the most complicated because they use therms and things that make it much more difficult.
It is from that standpoint that I am concerned. If we really want people to get the best tariff, to understand what they are doing and how much energy they are using and to use less energy, we need better bills and better formats. As the noble Earl said, bills can run to five pages. Sometimes I have had four pages. You also sometimes find that you have something on the first page and then on the third page it is something quite different.
The other thing that concerns me is something that I mentioned at Second Reading. As someone who has produced political leaflets for years, I was told by people who had carried out research what to do if you want to get your message across: where it is on the page, what sort of type you use and the colours that do not work. If there is yellow print on top of something, older people cannot read it at all. There are all sorts of things that surprise me about the way in which companies, the big six particularly, produce their bills. I remember British Gas coming to me and showing me a bill saying, “Isn’t this good?”. I said, “Well, actually, no. The thing you want is not in the place where people look first on a page”. This is quite important. It is difficult to prescribe—you cannot prescribe in that much detail to the energy companies—but it is important that we try to ensure that it is simple so that people can understand it and really compare. They, particularly elderly people, must be able to read it.
Quite a lot of us are older now. We cannot read tiny print in the wrong colour. That is why I put down the amendment. It may not be appropriate at this point in the Bill, I do not know, but it seemed to fit in with what was going on. These might not be the right words but I think that everyone will understand the sentiments. It is quite clear that other noble Lords share those sentiments. I hope that the Minister can give a reasonably positive reply to my amendment. I beg to move.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, if I may make a brief contribution here, I get electricity to my home, which is also in Scotland but in the southern part, from a Scottish company. I have tracked the way in which the bills have developed over the years, and it is a sad fact of the modern age that the more information you can provide, the less informative the document often is. This is partly a feature of the digital age in which we live; the more e-mails we get, the less we understand about the world around us, and so on.
There is one particular matter on which I would like the Minister to offer some reassurance: the various government obligations that arise out of climate change policies. We may have different views about the importance of those policies, but there really should be clarity in bills about just what the government obligation element is. There is the 5% VAT but there is also another percentage that is going up quite steadily and rapidly, and I think that should be listed.
The company I have mentioned, which I shall not name, used to do that. The bills were shorter but they said, quite simply, “Government obligations”, and gave an amount. Now, for some reason and I do not understand why, the company has hidden that information. You can find it if you dig around, but I hope that these bills, in addition to the unit cost—the actual cost of the energy—and the VAT, list as a discrete amount what we consumers are asked to pay to subsidise wind farms or whatever, in the interests of transparency. As I say, I have seen a particular company, for whatever reason, perhaps inadvertently, move backwards on this issue. I hope that this can be taken on board in the interests of clarity and transparency.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
I am all in favour of both. You should be able to put the percentage and say what that percentage is. That is just two parts of one line, isn’t it? The noble Lord has mentioned 11% but the figure that I had in my mind was 7% or 8%. However, I think it will be going up to 15% before long on the track that we have. If we are worried about fuel poverty, and we all are, I would be quite interested to know how many people are put into fuel poverty by these precepts on the energy bills. That is a factor that we have not considered. Still, that is by the by. I just think we need clarity and transparency in an easily understandable way.
Baroness Maddock
On the point about percentages, we need to be careful. Surveys have been done, and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, probably knows this, which show that the understanding of percentages in the vast majority of the population is not very good. They would probably understand better how much of their bill they were paying rather than a percentage.
Energy Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Bishop of Chester and Baroness Maddock
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I wish to speak briefly on this matter and ask for a response from the Minister, possibly in writing as she may not have the information to hand. Quite a few vicarages might benefit from the Green Deal. Older vicarages are typically not well insulated and not particularly well looked after over time by their impecunious residents. They are prime candidates for insulation improvements but they are neither private rented nor social housing as such. Indeed, they are typically occupied under a form of licence. It would be helpful to be told either now or in writing—the Minister may prefer to reply in writing—how the Green Deal arrangements will apply to a considerable stock of houses that are occupied under licence by office holders such as clergy.
Baroness Maddock
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for responding to issues that I raised in Committee. I was anxious that as many dwellings as possible came within the scope of the Bill, particularly in the private rented sector. I discussed the position of agricultural tenancies, certain tenancies under the Housing Act 1988 and houses in multiple occupation. I sought a provision that would enable the Minister to include any property that he considered appropriate. That point has been answered but in Committee confusion arose over agricultural tenancies. In Committee on 24 January, the Minister assured me that agricultural tenancies were already covered in the Bill but on 26 January he changed his mind and said that they were not. Therefore, I am not clear where we are on agricultural tenancies. Some agricultural tenancies are in a similar position to that of vicarages. Even if my noble friend is unable to answer today, there is some confusion on this issue, and I should be grateful for clarification on which other tenancies the Minister is minded to include. I assume that this will be done through secondary legislation, but I am not entirely satisfied that the Minister has responded to the queries on these important issues.