Clause 4 - Guidance on eradication of fuel poverty
Home Energy Conservation Bill
11:45 am
Mr Alan Simpson (Nottingham South, Labour)
I shall be relatively brief. Many of the views expressed by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed) will be shared by both sides of the House and by all members of the Committee. I want to put this in a slightly different context. I am loth to blame the Minister for our predicament although we could have done without the confusion about the Committee's sittings, especially the Minister, whose time is probably under greater pressure. Our predicament does not reflect a lackadaisical approach by the Government to the commitment to eliminate fuel poverty. The Minister has probably done more than anyone to ensure that fuel poverty is on not just the political but the legislative agenda of this Parliament.
The issue of definitions to which the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire referred is important. It is also contentious. I have sheltered behind the Minister at several conferences where the passionate views about the importance of getting the definition right come over with a degree of enthusiasm that is not far short of vehemence. I am pleased that the Minister, and not I, has to take that flak. The Minister more than anyone is aware of how important it is that we get the issue of fuel poverty right.
I suspect that the problems that we faced as a Committee result partly from confusion about whether clause 4 or new clause 8 is a duplication of what we can already do. The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire was right to spell out in detail why that presumption was based on a misreading of the provision under the Home Energy Conservation Act 1995. I was involved in taking that legislation through the House and the powers that were given to Parliament under that Act were about the production of reports, not the delivery of a strategy to eliminate fuel poverty, which is the object of the Bill.
The Government have already made a commitment to eliminate fuel poverty within 15 years, which is why the words originally used by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown sought to spell out the connection with fuel poverty in the Bill and why, in perhaps more eloquent terms, they are also included in new clause 8. I am not particularly precious about which of those alternatives should be used, but I endorse the point that it is essential for the credibility and parity of the Bill that we do not leave out references to fuel poverty. It is not an optional add-on or cake decoration, but central to one of the most important policy commitments made by the Government, which as yet awaits clarification not about their determination to achieve it, but about the mechanisms that they will use to achieve it. That is why it is important that, in one way or another, the Committee ensures that a clear reference to the elimination of fuel poverty is contained in the principal terms of the Bill.