Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan and Earl of Lindsay

Monday 17th January 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

My Lords, when one wishes to be pejorative about processes, the words “tick box” slip easily off the lips. We ought to have a sense of proportion, however. We are talking about treating 14 million houses. We are talking about probably not installing boilers. We are talking already about probably not having internal wall insulation in solid-walled houses on the grounds that each of these is too expensive. So we are talking about having various kinds of insulation, whether it be cavity-wall or roof-attic insulation. This is not the most complex of operations. Sometimes they can be time-consuming, but not that often. We are not going to be installing nuclear power stations in each household. We are talking about a relatively simple set of measures that will be within a budget that we have already heard will not be unduly ambitious given the need to pay back over the period.

We are, however, also talking about a massive job in which there has to be consistency and in which there has to be a squad of people who can go around and speedily assess what is required to be done. They are not going to be quantity surveyors. They are probably going to be people who might have worked in the building trade, but maybe not. They may well be trained to NVQ 2 and, if we are lucky, 3. There are a number of people who are trained by Energy Action Scotland and National Energy Action—two organisations involved in fuel poverty which I have dealings with, and I have an interest that has been declared. They may well be skilled people. I have another interest as a consultant to the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group, which does a lot of work in insulation and heating and electrical work. I would be hard pushed, however, to think that if you wanted to make money out of the Green Deal you would go for being a cavity-wall insulator or an attic insulator when you may well make more money out of installing new boilers and the like.

These people are perhaps not the most highly skilled, but I am sure they will be highly committed. They will certainly not be the most highly paid, and therefore the performance standards that we can expect of them have to be straightforward and easily understood. The complexity of the work they will be required to do will not in itself be that great if we are to achieve over time and speedily the kind of things that the Minister has already spoken about in relation to the Green Deal. So we have to have a sense of perspective about this. If we do have forms and a standardised approach and basic training then it is probably inevitable that people will go round with a clipboard and a biro and tick boxes. It will not be because they are necessarily superficial or necessarily barely competent; it will be that the requirements of the job will be probably little more than that. Therefore we need a sense of proportion.

If we are going to pluck the low-hanging fruit, which is at the heart of this process—Green Deal is about quickly insulating a lot of homes which have not been dealt with already—we will be dealing with the simpler and less expensive projects first. That is not to say that they should be cheap and cheerful or unsafe or that people are going to be taken to the cleaners. I am merely saying that we should have a sense of proportion and that within that we have got to avoid over-prescription. We do not want to have the health and safety approach—the jobsworth of exactly the wrong kind. We need to get this job done quickly and efficiently and therefore we need good training, clear processes and forms that people are not intimidated by.

If you do not have simple forms, you have complicated ones because, as sure as eggs is eggs, there will be forms involved. There will be some kind of hand-held computer which the operators will understand but the person whose house is being affected will probably not necessarily understand it, whether it is in the estimation or the implementation.

We ought to be a wee bit careful when we use disparagingly the tick-box dismissal, because I think that, in some respects, it will be almost inevitable that that will be what is required. If it is required, and if that is the consequence of the nature of our approach to the task, it is essential that these people are trained to the level that the job requires and that they are able to carry it out in a way which is consistent across the country as a whole. I think, therefore, that what we are saying in these amendments measures up to that and, once again, makes it more explicit than the proposed legislation already does.

For these reasons, I would support this amendment; not because, as I say, I want it to be unduly simple—not because I want it to be open to bureaucratic or jobsworth approaches—but rather, recognising the scale of most of the tasks, so that an approach of this nature will be commensurate with the national challenge that we have, which we have to meet quickly. These people will be going into households and probably doing 20 a day, if they are doing their job properly. We will have to get these people in the field doing that pretty quickly, so the training will have to be effective very quickly. I am talking here about something which is a national priority if we are to meet the 2020 and ultimately the 2050 targets. We do not have to exaggerate the significance of the Green Deal commitment. Suffice it to say that, if we do not achieve the Green Deal ambition, then the further targets of 2020 and 2050 will be that much more difficult to realise. I certainly think that the approach that we are taking is inclined to reduce bureaucracy, to keep it simple and straightforward and to give proper recognition to the scale of the individual task that will be required in each household.

[The Earl of Lindsay]

My Lords, the amendments moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, raise a number of important themes. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister would agree with that, given the importance that he places on accreditation in order to guarantee consumer protection and user protection. I just want to comment on some of those themes. I should declare an interest as chairman of the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, which is the government-recognised national accreditation body.

The first point that I want to make is to clear up the common misunderstanding about the two terms “accreditation” and “certification”. I can do no better than refer to the impact assessment that the department produced for this Bill. In paragraph 115, on page 40, it makes the following short point:

“Accreditation and certification are two related but distinct activities. ‘Certification’ is the process that leads to ascertaining someone has a particular qualification, and ‘accreditation’ is the process by which certification is awarded responsibly”.

I suggest, first of all, that we are using the word “accreditation” where perhaps we should be using the word “certification” in some of the debates that we have been having. Accreditation underpins the scheme by which operators and participants will receive certificates. Accreditation therefore determines the robustness of the scheme by which compliance with the required standards will be judged.

My second point is that the word “accreditation” can mean different things to different people. Given the importance of accreditation to consumer protection, it has been recognised at an intergovernmental level that, when the word “accreditation” is used, it should mean the same thing to all parties. In fact, the European Union passed a regulation two or three years ago that requires every member state to have a national accreditation body, and for the use of the word “accreditation” by that Government to refer to a consistent set of disciplines and rigour. Thus the previous Government passed a regulation in December 2008 which recognised UKAS’s role as the de facto national accreditation body and formalised our role in that purpose. Therefore I can speak with some authority on what, at an intergovernmental level, accreditation should mean, by way of reassurance to those who are users and consumers of goods and services.

First of all, the assessment and verification when accrediting a regime looks at technical competence, and this of course is a point that Amendment 2D focuses on. It measures the capability of a participant, be it a company or an individual, to deliver that competence and to deliver the services underpinned by that competence. It looks at the ability of individuals and companies who might be certified by accredited certification to maintain that competence and that capability over a period of time; in other words, it is not a one-off assessment but an ongoing assessment of that company’s or that individual’s capabilities. It therefore looks at reliability, integrity and governance. Very importantly, it looks at outcomes and performance, making sure that outcomes and performance deliver against the standards that have been preset; in this instance, they would be preset by the Minister and by the Government. In other words, accreditation should mean a wholly comprehensive judgment about the ability of the certification system to properly certify either individuals or companies in terms of their performance, their goods and their services. It really should be a badge of confidence to anyone who has any doubts about the goods and services they might be acquiring.

The Minister over and over again has made the point—as indeed have other Members of your Lordships’ House, in Committee and on the Floor of the House—that the accreditation and the certification which this Bill requires as underpinning the Green Deal must deliver that high level of consumer protection and public confidence. It must deliver the guarantee of quality that I know the Minster wants to see. It must deliver the trust. I understand exactly why the noble Baroness has raised this Amendment in order to explore this area. I think that it is a very important attribute which is going to underpin the Minister’s ambitions in terms of how the Green Deal delivers the outcomes that the wider public, homeowners and others can have confidence in.

I am not sure about Amendment 2G and agree with my noble friends Lord Teverson and Lord Jenkin about the standard assessment measurement. I understand the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, when he says that there needs to be some methodology that enables a large number of participants to operate across a large number of diverse circumstances and deliver some sort of consistent output. The point about consistency of outcomes is where I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, but to require a standard assessment measurement could lead to some unintended consequences. I speak with my full experience of other schemes that we accredit on behalf of the Government.

I will give you an example. The gas safety scheme that was called CORGI benefits from the fact that we accredit five or six different routes to certification. If you are a gas installer and you want to be certified, those five or six different options for certification offer different types of assessment measurement. They do not offer a standard approach, the value of which is that it encourages innovation, competition and flexibility in order to provide the certification process best suited to different types of gas installer. I would strongly suggest to my noble friend the Minister that we want the same arrangement with the Green Deal. We want to avoid an absolutely rigid, standard assessment process.

The important point is that, however one achieves accredited certification as being compliant with the requirements of the Green Deal, you meet the standards that have been set down. As long as you meet the standards that are set down, how exactly the measurement has been made is less important. UKAS, though, guarantees on behalf of the Government that, if the certification process or body is accredited as being capable of delivering that standard, it is consistent with what the standard requires. That we avoid a too rigid approach to the exact process is very important.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. It was not my intention to say that there should be some kind of Napoleonic order whereby a single method should be approached. We have to recognise that there may well be differing situations or challenges. However, the point that I was trying to get across is that a consistency within that is still needed—a consistency that sometimes sacrifices and reduces complexity to make it a little more simple and straightforward. It should not be a rigid one-size-fits-all approach. I am sorry if I gave that impression because I do not think that we are more than a few millimetres apart on this issue.

[The Earl of Lindsay]

I do not believe that we are. I am grateful to the noble Lord for that clarification. We are in the same space. We both agree that flexibility can be a strength of the scheme by which certification to the required standard is sought. The important thing for the Government and for those who seek, as it were, to use the Green Deal, is that there is consistency with which all those who participate comply with the standard.

On the amendment of my noble friend Lord Teverson regarding suspension and expulsion, I make a brief comment about the broader point that an accreditation scheme run by UKAS should make sure that, long before the Minister has to step in in order to suspend or exclude, the system itself should make all those judgments within its own processes. The point of certification should be able to judge non-compliance. If it is major non-compliance, one needs to make a judgment between suspension and permanent withdrawal. The accreditation body should be capable of suspending or withdrawing a certification system if they are similarly not meeting the required standards that the scheme expects.

This group of amendments raises some very important issues. I am not persuaded that the way that the Bill is currently written needs to be changed in order to deliver the strengths that I believe that the Government are looking for. However, I am grateful. We have had an opportunity to debate some of the key attributes that the Green Deal will be underpinned by.