Clause 1 - Targets for energy efficiency improvements
Home Energy Conservation Bill
12:15 pm
Mr Alan Simpson (Nottingham South, Labour)
I am pleased to hear the Minister say that he will table an amendment on Report to address targets in the Bill. I am also pleased to return the compliments that he has paid me. I should declare that he is my friend as well as my colleague. I am his admirer and sometimes a parliamentary and political pest helping to keep him on track. That is what the amendment is about.
The Minister made a point, as did other Members, about the direction in which his amendment seeks to take the Bill. It hinges on the phrase, ''all such steps''. At the previous sitting, Mr. Benton, you will recall that I tried to apply that phrase to my stepdaughter's approach to going to bed. She also takes ''all such steps'' in the direction of going to bed. It is just that at times she does not manage to get there. My amendment specifies
a requirement to implement those measures by that date or within the time-scale.'.
The analogy is that it is not enough to have an intention to get to bed at some stage; one needs an obligation to get there by a given time. That is why the
amendment is so important. It is not enough to talk about steps. That is not sufficient to meet the responses that we currently face from local authorities. They understand that, in the light of everything the Government have been saying, the reality of the debate moves from the why of energy efficiency programmes to the how. They want to make that shift and they are looking to us to provide guidance.
I understand the Minister's concern about costs. In defence of my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown, it seems legitimate for a Back-Bench Member who is presenting a private Member's Bill against the backcloth of the Government's existing climate change commitments and the targets set in the guidelines in HECA 1995, to expect that somewhere along the line, someone would have done some costings on achieving those ends and for the Bill to be a means of assisting the Government in achieving them. The notion that the responsibility for those costings can be placed on the shoulders of a Back Bencher is not entirely legitimate. The Bill does not seek to change Government policy or commitments, only to deliver them.
It is reasonable to expect that among the various ranks of advisers in different Departments someone will have carried out costings at some stage if we are to deliver our climate change commitments. If we are to have guidance to set targets for HECA, how much will it cost? I merely say that it is important that those targets are met within a timetable. I do not want to go over the arguments, which have been well rehearsed by Members of all parties.
I was pleased that the Minister picked me up on Victoria Wood, because that allows me to say that it is not my intention or desire to invite the Minister to lose control. Nor is it the Committee's desire to bend him over backwards on his hostess trolley—as the song goes—to get him to do this. I know that the Minister wants to do it. I know that he is really in the mood. I know that the amendment would assist him in doing so. I hope that the Committee will support it.