Home Energy Conservation Bill
9:45 am
Mr Alan Simpson (Nottingham South, Labour)
I begin by expressing thanks and praise to those who have called for further sittings of the Committee. However, my first thanks should be to you, Mr. Benton. It is a real pleasure to be a member of a Committee chaired by you. I count it as the pinnacle of my career—and I shall tell the Committee why. You and I originate from the same place—Bootle, the constituency that has the good fortune to be represented by you. I grew up in
Bootle knowing that it was the centre of the western world, that Liverpool was its best known suburb, and that the world view that emanated from there was based on generosity, wisdom, kindness and good humour. I see all those merits reflected in the qualities that you will no doubt bring to our proceedings, Mr. Benton—as you have done throughout your time in Parliament. It is a privilege to be a member of this Committee.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown for the incredible amount of work that he has done to bring before the Committee a Bill that has the potential to be truly astonishing. It will help move the Government's commitments forward in a dramatic way. It is about delivery, and I think that he is entitled to bask in the praises that would otherwise go unsung for the huge amount of work that he has done behind the scenes.
It would be crass of me to disconnect those praises from the work that has also been done by Opposition Members, particularly by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed). We have had the most constructive parliamentary support that the House could wish for. The Opposition offer the broad brush of support, but focus on ensuring that the House passes good legislation—a Bill that works and is fair. That approach is entirely to the credit of the House.
We need further sittings, because we seem to be in a position similar to that of the Committee that met last year to debate the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Bill. It is what my mother would affectionately call ''deja vu all over again''. Then, as now, a huge amount of work was done behind the scenes. Then, as now, when the Committee met for its first sitting it was presented with a series of amendments tabled in the Minister's name that seemed to head in a different direction from the comments made by all parties on Second Reading. That had the potential to do serious damage to the competence and relevance of the Bill. Then, as now, there was an urgent need for further sittings in order to iron out those differences and misunderstandings.
In some respects, it would have been better not to have started from this point. We may wish to have started from somewhere else, but we cannot. We have to iron out the problem of starting where we do. To all intents and purposes, the framework agreement reached before Christmas by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown is to be changed by a series of amendments that again appear to head in a different direction. That may be the result of misunderstanding or of mischief.
However, I well recall that at a similar point last year, on a different Bill, the Minister with responsibility for that Bill walked into the first sitting of the Committee saying that everything was agreed and we would all be out of there in five minutes. The rest of the Committee had to say, ''No, Minister, absolutely not—the amendments tabled in your name
have not been agreed by the promoters of the Bill, and they are not likely to attract support from other members of the Committee.''
The advice on the basis of which those amendments were tabled was either wrong or downright dishonest. Fortunately, the Bill was salvaged by the intervention of the Minister for the Environment, who, happily, is responsible for the Committee today. On his return—from Brussels, I think, but I am not sure—on the same day, he came into the Committee, looked at the amendments and declared that they did not reflect the Government's determination to eradicate fuel poverty. The Minister for the Environment is an unsung hero of the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000, which sets a target date for the eradication of fuel poverty in Britain. It is in order to give meaning, form and targets to that legislative framework that we introduced this Bill.
In considering the need for further sittings, we must recognise that parts of the civil service are deeply confused about four key areas, although the body politic of Parliament is not. The first of those areas relates to the statutory targets. The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire is right to say that if targets are reduced to aspirations, Parliament risks passing legislation that would discredit it. That would provide a poor service not only to the public, but to Members of all parties who have a genuine commitment to eradicating fuel poverty. The issue of the targets and the references to them in the Bill will form the basis of the Committee's future discussions.
Secondly, there is confusion about the position of residential landlords. It would be nonsensical, and would expose the Minister and perhaps the Government to the most wretched criticism, if we were to be disingenuous in our commitments. We should be willing to impose clear duties on private sector landlords. We have already set targets for the public sector, but if the 600,000 properties that have already been transferred to registered social landlords were found to be among the poorest in the housing stock, we would be denounced as having a cynical disregard for those who occupy public sector housing.
That charge would be unanswerable. It is within our power to include provisions in the Bill to deliver what the Minister has regularly told us must be an inclusive framework for the fuel poverty elimination strategy. For me, the suggestion that that should be quietly pushed to one side is incomprehensible. To do so would undermine the progress that we hope to make in respect of the other two sectors.
There is a third case for ensuring that explicit references to fuel poverty are not excluded from the Bill: that issue is the Bill's raison d'etre, and we ought not to walk away from it.
There is a small but significant omission from the Bill of any mention of a start date. I understand the significance of that in a domestic context. The issue is reminiscent of the difference between aspirational objectives and clear targets. The discussions that I have with my 10-year-old stepdaughter about my aspirational desire for her to go bed at the end of the evening require some clarity on the start date for the
process and the targets governing its completion. I am amazed at her ingenuity and ability to make aspirational moves and incremental gestures, without ever bloody getting there. The clarity that a start date and a target provide is essential to gaining a coherent sense of how our household strategy will work.
The same applies to the strategy that Parliament needs to develop in order to deliver for households across the country by ensuring that the elimination of fuel poverty is achieved by the target date that the Government have already set in the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000. We know we can do it, because we have set the targets and programmes for doing it. I hope that on that basis, the Committee will agree to further sittings, so that we can start at the appropriate point.