Energy Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Marlesford is doing his duty with the European Union Sub-Committee in Berlin and has asked me to move this amendment, to which I have added my name with some considerable enthusiasm. I find it quite extraordinary that my noble friend put her name to the previous amendment, the first line of which refers to requiring,

“information to be provided in a form that is clear and easy to understand”.

In preparing for this amendment, I looked at a selection of energy bills from various providers. They are almost impossible to understand. Some of them provide information about the amount that is being levied in order to meet the Government’s green agenda, while some do not. Some provide the information in the form of percentages. But surely an absolutely basic example of justice for consumers is that they should know what they are paying for. If you take your car into the garage to be serviced, you expect to see what the items were that make up the bill at the end of the day. What we have here, I am sorry to say, is a kind of conspiracy within the political classes to load on to people’s bills the cost of the green agenda in a way that is not transparent.

Although the Government’s rhetoric is continually about the need for transparency, as people go about their day-to-day business and receive their electricity and gas bills, they are not able to see how much is going on subsidising windmills and how much is being used to provide for the transfer of electricity by building huge pylons and other infrastructure programmes. For example, a line of pylons is being erected all the way down the A9 in Scotland, going past Stirling Castle, in order to deliver power from windmills which are themselves being subsidised. I believe that most consumers in the country have no idea that all this is being levied on their bills, and as such it is a highly regressive tax that is being paid by the poorest. At the very least, whichever side of the argument one is on, it is right that people should know exactly how much of their bill is going towards government environmental levies, how much is going towards wholesale energy costs, how much relates to raw energy costs, and the various other elements.

During the course of what has been a frustrating day—I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Verma, her special adviser and her officials for discussing this amendment with me—I have found it impossible to understand why the Government are not prepared to ask Ofgem to ensure that all of the providers of gas and electricity break down their bills in a way that is consistent and comparable. It should not be done in percentage terms, but in financial amounts. If the bill is £300 for the quarter, it should show how much of that was spent on the various added components but which are hidden in the bill at present. I have a horrible feeling that there is, among those who are keen on pursuing the green agenda, a desire to keep this quiet because of the concern it would cause among the electorate and in the population; namely, that we are asking some of the poorest people to pay what is a highly regressive tax.

I know that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has promised to roll back these green taxes on people’s bills, which were originally the idea of the leader of the Opposition, Mr Miliband, when he was the environment Secretary. I would respectfully suggest to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister that if he wants to get any credit for rolling back the green levies on people’s energy bills, it would be a good idea to identify them before they are rolled back, because they are likely to be subsumed into the price increases that are being brought forward by the energy companies. Consumers will then be unaware of the impact of the policy, which presumably would mean yet another burden being placed on taxpayers. In the light of recent experience, that actually means the people in the middle, who are bearing the brunt of the additional tax burden which is already being levied by this coalition Government.

I hope that my noble friend will feel able to accept this amendment. If she is unable to do so, I hope that she will at least give us a clear statement of the Government’s policy on this matter. Is it the Government’s intention that every consumer of electricity and gas in the country will receive a bill that is broken down in explicit terms, showing how it is made up and what the costs of the Government’s policies are? They should include the policies in terms of insulation and the policies that are paying for additional, expensive offshore and onshore wind generation. If the Government’s position is that consumers should not have that information, can they explain exactly why they feel that this should not be a priority? I know that my noble friend will say that the Government are in favour of transparency and that they would like to see less complex bills, but we already know that the utility companies are capable of producing them. What we need is a conductor to make sure that they do so on a consistent and comparable basis.

My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has also said that it is important that people should be able to switch in order to get value for money. If you do not know how much of your bill is being spent on, say, insulation programmes—one energy provider may be more efficient than another—how can you choose between different providers according to their efficiency if that information is not made available to you? A cursory scan of some of these bills reveals that the regulator requires all sorts of information to be included. That may be of interest, but not, I suspect, to many customers. What they want to know is how much is their bill and how much of it actually relates to keeping the lights on in their homes and how much relates to other desirable or undesirable policies. I hope that my noble friend will feel able at the least to give a commitment that this shambles, because shambles it is if one studies the way in which these bills are presented, will be put right quickly. I beg to move.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, I am a strong supporter of the green agenda. This is an amendment about transparency, and I like it. I like it a lot and I strongly support it. It appeals to a belief that stands at the heart of my politics: transparency shapes conduct, knowledge and understanding. However, the current arrangements for utility billing make understanding impossible in precisely the way the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has set out in his speech—much of which I support but, of course, much of which I do not.

In the last Parliament I moved a whole series of amendments on a number of Bills. I call them the transparency amendments as they were all based on a simple principle: shine a light, expose the truth and trust the people to make the right judgment. I believe that the issue of transparency will dominate the politics of this century. It will transcend partisan, party political debate. It is the principal driver behind justice, fairness, honesty in administration and personal conduct, integrity in politics, restraint in exploitation—which is what we are considering here—and general enlightenment. It will help restore public confidence in our public institutions and ultimately the private sector.