Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill

Debate between Lord Carlile of Berriew and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 11th June 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I want to speak, if I may, in favour of Amendment 23 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. At Second Reading, I referred briefly to my attempts to change tariff with my electricity and gas supplier. I think I described it as a parlour game on a computer system that did not always work. It seems to me that what we need to give the public is, first, clarity and, secondly, the capacity to compare one supplier with another.

Let me give two analogies, one good and one bad. The first occurred to me on Saturday when I was standing at a bus stop in central London alongside a hoarding advertising a new credit card deal. At the bottom of the advertisement, in big letters, it said, “Interest rate 57%”. On the face of it, that is quite a high interest rate, but the company has to advertise that interest rate so that it is really clear to the consumer. That is the sort of clarity we need. The bad analogy relates to train fares. Noble Lords who travel a great deal by train may, like me, go on to one of the internet sites that offer you the timetable and the train fares. With train fares there is absolutely no way of making a decent comparison between the different options available. Indeed, it is so complicated that, if you buy your ticket in Llandrindod Wells to go to Paddington, it may be a different price for precisely the same ticket if you buy it in Paddington to go to Llandrindod Wells.

If we are going to do this job now in the Bill, what is required is to ensure that consumers are able to make a proper comparison between the supplier they have and the alternative suppliers available. It does not mean that they will necessarily take the cheapest supplier. The noble Lord, Lord Lennie, made a point about green suppliers. Some of us might decide that we are prepared to pay a few pounds extra for the purposes of a better environment, but at the moment we have no way of knowing what sort of value green suppliers present. We have to go on to their website and take their word for it, which is not necessarily good enough. Amendment 23 at least makes a start in achieving those joint aims of clarity and the ability to compare.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for setting off a discussion on this important issue of communication with consumers on electricity prices and the cap. I was going to add to the discussion from my own experience as a householder in Wiltshire. I have had a letter from SSE which is meant to tell me simply how my electricity prices are increasing, what I could do and how I might be able to pay less. I have to say that it is very difficult to understand, so there is a problem outwith the legislation that we are putting through. It is also wrong to suggest that energy companies are always trying to dissemble. How well they do depends on satisfying the consumer and the better ones want to be able to say clearly what is happening.

If we were to add to the system a requirement to communicate about the tariff cap provision, it would make the sort of letter that I have already described yet more complicated. My own experience is that these things can be costly to business. When the minimum wage came in, I remember being telephoned by the business department—I was at Tesco at the time—to ask whether we could put the minimum wage on our payslips. Having talked to our ICT people, I discovered that it would cost us an extra £1 million to put the minimum wage on the payslip. It was therefore agreed that the minimum wage could be communicated in other things. I worry that if we in this Committee put down requirements, it could have a similarly escalating effect on costs.

I have looked at the impact assessment—noble Lords will remember that I am always passionate about the usefulness of impact assessments—but this one does not go into any detail. It just suggests that there are savings to consumers. If we were to add extra provisions on communication, we would need to consider the cost of that because it would then get passed through to the consumer. That cost will apply to the small, new entrants to the industry as well as to the bigger suppliers.

That leads me to one final thought. When we took through the Consumer Rights Bill, in which we were also concerned about communication to consumers, the department worked with the industry to produce special communication. That was then used across the retail industry to inform shops as to the new rights that were coming in for consumers. I wonder whether some of the concerns raised today could not be met by voluntary action within the industry, dedicated to improving clarity for consumers in this important area.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Debate between Lord Carlile of Berriew and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 1st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I support this and the other amendment in the group. One of the concerns we have, as expressed on the first day in Committee and at Second Reading, is about disclosure of the actions and steps that have been taken by the Government to meet the undoubtedly genuine, real and merited concerns that have been expressed about the process of leaving Euratom and this Bill.

In that context, I thank the Minister very fully for the letter he wrote to me on 28 February, which has been placed in the Library, relating to the activities that have taken place between the Government and the IAEA, the European Commission and various third countries, which he named in the letter. He has provided a wealth of information which enables us to understand more about the part of the process with which it deals. The amendments seek disclosure about other parts of the process.

Although I support the amendments, I do not regard it as necessary for statutory provisions to be created to provide the information that is set out. What I do regard as essential is a similar generous and helpful approach by the Minister in which the items set out in the two amendments are the subject of an undertaking that the Government will keep the whole of Parliament fully informed about the process and progress of discussion of the items referred to. That is not an unreasonable demand, but is the least the House can reasonably expect.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I agree about the importance of consultation, as noble Lords will know, and also about the proper resourcing of the ONR. However, I am nervous about the precedent set by proposed subsection (9)(b) in the amendment. It would be very difficult if this was established as a new approach to SIs. As the Minister knows, resources are sometimes constrained when you bring in new legislation, but that is not a reason not to proceed with regulations. I recall milk quotas, where a vast amount of administrative work was involved—but that did not mean to say that it was not right to proceed with that part of EU policy at that time.

It is also not clear how many people will need to be involved in resourcing work. I accept that this is a problem in the nuclear area, but I would guard against putting that sort of provision into legislation—although it might be that the amendment is purely exploratory. I very much agree that we need comfort on resourcing for the ONR, and I thought that the Minister gave us some comfort when he last spoke.

I have another question for the Minister about transition. The draft withdrawal agreement published yesterday covers Euratom—slightly to my surprise, because I believed and hoped it would be in a separate instrument. But that is as it is; it is in the draft document. I am interested to know, since the document also covers transition, whether that means that Euratom will be part of any transition agreement likely to be agreed in the coming weeks and months. Confirmation of that would be helpful because it bears on some of the other concerns we have had about the process of bringing nuclear safeguards into UK law—and of course the resourcing and the time for the ONR to do a proper job are critical.