Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Marland and Lord Deben

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for a very well constructed and well put argument on this amendment. It is fundamental, as he says, that we should deal with recalcitrant and inefficient landlords. I remind the House of what was happening before we brought the Bill forward: not a lot. The Bill has moved us on a long way. The other day I asked the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, “Is there any logic in government?”. He was careful in responding but his silence suggested that there is not. However, his logic here is that provided we get to 2016, there is logic. The answer is that it is not logic that we can live with here, but it is a logic that we can get a long way towards. I shall come to that point in a minute in addressing the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and my noble friend Lord Deben. In particular, I pick up on one remark that my noble friend made about certainty. We have to give certainty; it is absolutely right that we should do so in this area.

I shall address my noble friend Lord Jenkin. I am encouraged to hear that student accommodation has not changed since my day or my children’s day. However, that is a very good test case—one where we have to hit the landlord hard. My noble friend raised the point, as did the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, about local authorities and their attitude towards this. We have to work very closely with the local authorities. I was in Liverpool not long ago, persuading the chairman and chief executive of the local authority of the merits of the Green Deal. We have been to many other towns and cities, persuading them of those merits. I am thoroughly encouraged by their attitude towards this and their desire to ensure that properties in their cities are dealt with on this basis.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, gave a huge number of statistics, for which I am very grateful. I shall read them before I go to sleep tonight—or probably when I am going to sleep tonight. Many of these statistics will be helpful in getting us to where we should be. On a serious note, it is fundamental that these recalcitrant landlords—to quote the noble Lord, Lord Best—should act responsibly towards children and families in need, and that we stamp on them with great authority. Because of the significance of these amendments and the seriousness with which the Government take them, I shall break with tradition and read a script so that we are absolutely clear about the direction in which we are going.

I turn first to Amendments 35A, 35B and 35D, which deal with letting agents and marketing. We have investigated this matter and, under the existing Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, it will be unlawful for letting agents and landlords classified as traders to market properties that do not meet the minimum energy efficiency requirements. In addition, a landlord will not be able to circumvent the prohibition against letting a below-standard property simply by seeking the assistance of a letting agent.

I turn now to Amendment 35C on the implementation of the minimum standard. This is intended to ensure that all properties, regardless of cost and availability of finance under the Green Deal, are brought up to the minimum standard. I stress that “no up-front costs” is an important safeguard. It helps to ensure that our regulations do not have an adverse impact on the supply of properties in this key sector. Therefore, landlords will need either to reach band E or to carry out the maximum package of measures under the Green Deal and ECO, even if this does not take them above an F rating. Within that, there is the matter that the noble Lord raised to do with grade 1 listed houses. We are committed to a significant ECO, which will minimise those who cannot get above F under the golden rule.

Lastly, I turn to Amendment 35E on timing. As I outlined earlier, we amended the Bill and provided a firm legislative position. With this, we also need to provide landlords with a reasonable period in which to prepare and schedule works in their normal maintenance cycles. This is a long-backstop power; our intention is that regulations will bite right at the end of this period. However, the provisions of the Bill as they stand, without amendment, are expressed in terms that do not preclude regulations being made sooner than 1 April 2018. Therefore that possibility, as a matter of law, is left open. I also confirm that we will review progress in the sector annually—an excellent suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Best, for which I am very grateful. If we do not see reasonable progress, we could consider acting earlier. As I have stated, this possibility, as a matter of law, is left open and is within the scope of the Bill. With these reassurances, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Deben]

Will my noble friend take this opportunity to reassure me on one point that may not be in his script, elegant though it was? Does the movement from 2016 to 2018 in any way undermine our commitment to 2016 as the date from which domestic properties that are to be built from then must meet the new highest rating?

[Lord Marland]

I assure my noble friend that properties have to reach the highest rating but for the private rented sector, as I have said, 2018 is the long-backstop date. If we feel, having annually reviewed it—an undertaking that I have given the House today—that we are not making the right progress, we will act accordingly. The department is determined and keen to ensure that there is big take-up. That is why I have made the commitments that I have.

Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Marland and Lord Deben

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Marland]

I am not sure that I quite caught the end of that last sentence. Perhaps it is best that I did not. Suffice it to say that I welcome the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I am grateful that it should have the support of his Front Bench, which is excellent news. It is not the first time that his amendments have found favour with government. We are obviously extremely disposed to look at this amendment. Unfortunately, the timing was too tight for us to consult as widely as we wanted with the national park authorities before introducing this Bill, so we have to do that. Of course, like the noble Lord, I welcome their ambition to generate electricity on their own land and support that commendable ambition. With that in mind, and knowing that we will give this amendment consideration in coming days and months, I—

[Lord Deben]

My experience of working with the national parks was not anything like as cheerful as that presented by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. In many cases, the national parks have not been helpful for enterprises within them. I hope that when he talks to the national parks, he will make it clear that he wants them to make it as easy as possible for others within national parks to generate electricity and that this will not be another occasion for the national parks to make it extremely difficult for anybody who is not themselves to do things within their areas.

[Lord Marland]

I note what my noble friend Lord Deben says. If we are going to look at the national parks and what they will do with their microgeneration, we should obviously encourage them to practise as they preach, which I think are the words he is looking to hear from us. With that in mind, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Judd, will withdraw his amendment.

Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Marland and Lord Deben

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Marland]

The first point is that these amendments come under the section relating to the Green Deal, apart from the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, which comes along later. The substantive issue here is the Green Deal, but the other substantive issue is that it is not for us to impose on local authorities what they should and should not do. As I said earlier, it is for us to produce a product that they are incentivised to put into homes and which they encourage other people to put into homes. This is what we are doing with the Green Deal. There are other elements relating to the energy sector, and of course we will encourage local authorities to set themselves achievable carbon reduction targets. However, it is for local authorities to buy into that; at this point, it is not for government to be prescriptive. I know that it is a tradition of the Labour Government to decide what everyone must do, and when and where they must do it. However, that is not the tradition of this Government. We are saying, “Here we are. Here’s an opportunity. Get on and do it”.

[Lord Deben]

It is not from the Labour Government that this comment comes. This amendment would impose something on a local authority to enable them to do things in common. If we do not do this, different local authorities will not easily be able to do things in a common structure so that they can actually work together. There is a practicality there. Furthermore, it does not impose anything on them to say that they have to produce a carbon budget. If they really want to be difficult, they can always produce a budget that does not mean very much, but then local people will know what they have thought of this. There is a very important localist and democratic position here. I want to know precisely what the Mid-Suffolk District Council thinks about these issues and what its carbon budget is. Happily, I think that I know the council well enough to go round there and bang on their door and say, “I really want this”. But it is a piece of information that the public should have.

I ask the Minister to think again about this being an imposition. It is a request to ensure that local authorities can work together and that the public can know where they are on these matters.

Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Marland and Lord Deben

Monday 24th January 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Deben]

I did try to get in rather earlier, but I am now able to say that I would be very unhappy if the Minister were to go down the route of putting in another pause. We have had enough pauses in this over the past 20 years, so really we have now got to get on with it. I also have a slight difficulty believing that there is a connection between green bias and green ideologues. I hope that one is not a green ideologue, but I hope that there is a green bias. If there is not, the world will be in some difficulty. The concept that the opposite of that is a person who is somehow independent and not of that kind worries me very much. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will not go down this route.

My problem with the first part of the clause is that I fear the Minister will be in real difficulties. Under subsection (1)(b)(ii), he has to consider that the regulations,

“will not decrease the number of properties available for rent”.

Let us consider this in imaginary terms. When you think of some of the landlords we have, I can see a number of them saying, “I don’t want to spend anything and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. If there are regulations, I will take my property off the market”. In those circumstances, how on earth will the Minister be able to say that he does not consider that there will be a decrease in the number of properties available for rent? He could say that someone is off their head or make any number of comments, but the wording of this sub-paragraph could mean that he might be under judicial review if it could be adduced that any landlord had taken this view.

I am closely following the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, here. The problem is that this is one of those rare occasions where the actual wording is dangerously total. It is does not say “significant” or perhaps that there is “good reason to believe” that the number of available properties would decrease in more than a marginal way. There is nothing about whether the situation might change over time. It is a dangerous sentence and I hope that the Minister will agree at least to think about it again. I think that it is wrong.

The second reason why I am a supporter of the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, is that I think that, although it is reasonable to say that regulations should not be made until the report has been published, it is perfectly reasonable to say that, once the report has been published—notwithstanding the worries of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes—it should then be for the Minister to make his decisions in the context of the report. Picking out two things in the way that subsection (b) does will limit his ability. After all, this is a Government who do not believe in and do not like regulation; they turn to regulation only when necessary. My fear is that regulation may be necessary simply because the people in this business—or a very large number of them, as the noble Baroness opposite said—are not an easy lot to get to do things in a rational and sensible way. However, we are going to do our best. No one can possibly imagine that this Government will not go as far as it can to help people to do their best.

Having been responsible for the housing policy of the United Kingdom for some years, I have to say that private landlords—even the good ones—are not the easiest group of people to corral. There are some—rather fewer than some people think—who are certainly not good and who are impossible to corral. Given that that is what we know now, this may be an area where—however hard we may wish to bear down on regulation—we may need to do something. If we come to that conclusion, surely we ought to leave it in the hands of the Minster, who will, after all, have to argue his case for doing something that he has said that he does not want to do. He will have to argue his case against the general view of the coalition parties in both Houses of Parliament, and he will have to lay the regulations. Therefore, there are quite a number of hurdles in his way anyway in addition to any psychological dislike of regulation.

I would much prefer the Secretary of State to be faced with the simple statement of the report. The report will say to him these things, and he will have to make up his mind about it. That is what I would prefer. I would be happy to accept subsection (1)(a) of Clause 37—although, as no such amendment has been put down, I would be prepared to go for not having subsection (1) at all—but it seems to me that the Minister has undermined his position in a way I would have preferred him not to have done. Therefore, I would like him to accept this amendment. Certainly, I think that he would be well advised, if I may say so, to look at subsection (1)(b)(ii), because whatever bits of notes he gets handed to him from behind, I suspect that he will rue the day that he included that provision, because somebody will make mischief over it—even if it is somebody who just wants to push this off because they do not really believe in it.

[Lord Marland]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, for his remarks and to others for the remarks that they have made. Before we start, to get us on the right footing, I would like to say that his excellent remarks about Amendment 20PA and subsection (1)(b)(ii) are very well made. Of course we will consider his comments, take them away and see how best we can improve matters. I am very grateful that he and the noble Baroness have drawn our attention to that particular issue, because these things do need tightening up.

On Amendment 20Q—some of this was answered by my noble friend Lord Deben—I agree with my noble friend Lady Noakes that it is an admission of failure for Government to regulate. That is a primary tenet of this Government, as my noble friend Lord Deben has said. If we cannot encourage people through these actions to participate in this opportunity—this great opportunity—then we will have failed and we will, therefore, have to regulate accordingly. However, as I said earlier, regulation is made on the basis that we have a “one in, one out”, arrangement, so we will have to look at the matter very carefully. I am not into “what if” scenarios about ideology, but I think that Government have quite a strong track record of choosing someone to do a review. That individual has to withstand the brickbats and the challenges of both Houses as to whether they are competent or going to give fair reason. Of course we must remind ourselves, as we do periodically, that the Green Deal will be a market-led product. We have to have confidence in the market without imposing too much regulation if the people involved are to be the proponents of the market. On that basis, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, to consider withdrawing her amendment.

Amendments 20PA, 20P and 20Q would impact on the preconditions ahead of a Secretary of State being able to make these regulations. The Secretary of State will be able to make regulations only following publication of the review and only if he considers that the regulations are necessary to improve the energy efficiency of domestic private rented properties and would not decrease the number of properties available for rent. That is the framework that I mentioned earlier.

I hope that that largely covers the questions that have been asked. I invite noble Lords to withdraw their amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben]

Would the Minister not agree that there is a difficult issue here? We have to do things in this uncomfortable way because we could not have a situation where the landlord puts pressure on the tenant to refuse the Green Deal in order that he himself can claim that he was therefore not subject to the local authority’s rules. It has to be a little uncomfortable because we know there are landlords who will bring pressure on their tenants to do a number of things, and it would be very difficult to stop this. Therefore, we must accept that this is an uneasy but reasonable compromise.

[Lord Marland]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. The situation is not ideal, but we have to live in a regulatory framework and the landlord-tenant framework that exists. In an ideal world, we would insist that everyone did this at a particular time, but the world is not ideal so we are going as close as we can to achieving that. I think that the noble Baroness makes a very valid point. When we review this, we will see whether there are other nudges or encouragements that we can make in respect of landlords.

Climate Change: Cancun

Debate between Lord Marland and Lord Deben

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

Does my noble friend accept that the cost of not acting now is much bigger than the cost that the head of the Green Investment Bank has suggested? Will he therefore make sure that we do not stop or slow our actions against climate change?

[Lord Marland]

I thank my noble friend. I am glad that he has not taken a train anywhere and that he has stayed to allow me to answer his question. I am grateful for that question from my own Benches; I am not really used to it, as a matter of fact. There is no doubt that the climate is changing: we have seen the worst ever flooding in Pakistan in its history; there have been record-breaking temperatures in Moscow; and 17 countries in the northern hemisphere alone have recorded their highest ever temperatures. It is a substantial problem. This Government are committed to being the greenest Government ever and to supporting all endeavours on climate change.