Kerry McCarthy
Main Page: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Charles Hendry
That too is an important point. The fact that Northern Ireland is significantly more exposed than other parts of the United Kingdom in this regard was one of the driving forces behind our request for the OFT investigation. We will work with the devolved Administrations in any way we can to ensure that any particular examples of difficulties in different parts of the country are taken into account.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
About a year ago, the then Secretary of State and I were fortunate enough to be taken up on to the roof of Redland Park united reformed church in Bristol by Rev. Douglas Burnett to look at the solar panels installed there, which had made a huge difference to the church’s fuel bills—it was not having to pay for fuel at all, and was making money selling electricity back to the grid. Is it not therefore ridiculous that under the new feed-in tariffs other churches in Bristol will not be able to follow suit?
Charles Hendry
As my fellow Minister of State has made clear, the previous Government got their estimates wrong. They assumed there would be no large-scale solar developments in this country by 2013, but there have been a significant number of large-scale applications. That would have blown the budget and made it more difficult to deliver for domestic installations, and we are therefore right to review this process.