Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Oxburgh Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I hesitated to break into my old mentor’s speech, but I want to agree with him and to say to the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, that in his speech he proved why this is impossible. In this amendment, the Office for National Statistics is supposed to publish all this in an easily assimilable form. Your Lordships' House might suggest that after listening to the noble Lord, Lord Lea, it is quite difficult to feel that it would be easy to produce an easily assimilable form.

The second thing I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Lea, is very important. It is always true that the poorer you are, the more heavily any imposition weighs upon you. It is not new to say that a particular sum is heavier on somebody who has a small income than on somebody who has a large income. That is why it is very important in the way in which we deal with these matters to see that it falls as lightly as possible on those who are least able to bear it. To spend a great deal of time producing this material in a form that I fear will not be easily assimilable and will probably not be read by the very people for whom it is intended does not help this issue. This issue is that in everything the Government do, in everything the coalition do, they have to seek to do it in a way that is as equable as possible. I say to your Lordships that we are already placing huge responsibilities upon the system of government, and to add to those this very detailed, extremely expensive and, I have to say, probably not used collection of new statistics without any real indication that it is going to be of any practical value is unnecessary not only at this stage of the Bill but at any stage of the Bill.

Finally, the thing we should be concentrating upon is enabling individuals to influence their spending. That is what matters, not what the Office for National Statistics says. Individuals should be able to see how much energy they are using, how they can best prevent that energy being used, how they can opt-in to the Green Deal and how they can make their lives more comfortable and happier. That is what we should be concentrating on. We should be moving away from this determination constantly and centrally to mull over, reproduce, redo, represent and reargue all these cases and get down to the real issue. How does Mrs Jones do something about her own energy use? How does she make her home more energy efficient? How does she know when she is using that energy? How is she able to take advantage of lower tariffs by, for example, doing her washing at a time that is not a peak time? All those things demand the fast installation of smart meters. I hope they will not be prescriptive but will merely say what they are supposed to do rather than how they do it. I hear some rather unnerving information from the ministry that sounds as though it wants to be terribly detailed about it. I hope it is not going to be like that. That is what we should be emphasising: helping individuals to make choices that benefit them rather than providing a lot of statistics that I suggest will be read by nobody. If they will be read by nobody, they will do nobody any good.

[Lord Oxburgh]

My Lords, I, too, have some sympathy with the interest of the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, in proposing this amendment. However, I, too, do not feel that this is the way forward. This is a very big matter and requires very careful consideration. At this point, I think I have an opportunity to offend all political parties in the House by saying that within the energy industry there is bewilderment that pretty much all the political parties believe that energy poverty should be treated separately from every other sort of poverty at the expense of distorting our energy market and our energy costing. In the view of many outside, it would be much more sensible to let energy prices do what they must. It is inevitable that we go into a more expensive energy world and handle the whole poverty problem together.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I, too, sympathise with a number of the themes that the noble Lord, Lord Lea, has brought forward, but I remind the House that this is Report stage and, to be honest, I find this amendment quite muddled. I find it very difficult to understand its detail or even what it is trying to achieve in terms of its words. I understand from the noble Lord, Lord Lea, what he is trying to achieve, but I am not even sure that if we put this into the Bill it would achieve that. Subsection (1) of the proposed new clause refers to a range of things including quasi-fiscal instruments. I do not know whether that is a technical Treasury term that the noble Lord, Lord Lea, has got from his friends in the Treasury, but I do not understand it.

I seriously do not understand what proposed new subsection (2) means. It seems to connect carbon budget periods, which as we know are five years, with annual assessments, and I am not sure what it is trying to do. The list in proposed new subsection (2)(a) to (c) exclude the industry that paid for my mortgage in the first 20 years—the road freight industry—inland waterways and shipping, and I am not sure that its purpose is comprehensive.

Proposed new subsections (3) and (4), again, come back to statistics that I think are generally available. It has not been difficult for me to find most energy statistics that I have tried to find.

I agree that we have an issue with the amount of money that ROCs and feed-in tariffs actually cost consumers, as my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding reminded us, and with the way in which these charges affect groups in fuel poverty differently. However, I honestly do not feel that this amendment achieves what we want to achieve within a reasonable understanding of what this amendment actually says. For that reason, I find it impossible to support it at this stage of the Bill.