Clause 1
Green Energy (Definition and Promotion) Bill
2:30 pm
Peter Ainsworth (East Surrey, Conservative)
May I begin by saying what an enormous pleasure it is to be serving on a Committee under your chairmanship, Miss Begg? It is quite a pleasure to be serving on a Committee at all; I have not checked the record, but I have a nasty feeling that the last time I served on a Public Bill Committee was in the 1990s. For one reason or another it has passed me by, but I fear the Committee of Selection will not be so lenient in future.
Thank you, Miss Begg, for chairing these proceedings on what is a beautiful, sunny afternoon. I am extremely grateful to all hon. Members who have come here hopefully to move forward the Green Energy Bill in a positive way when they could be participating in all sorts of things, including an interesting debate on the Iraq inquiry. If all goes to plan this afternoon, to outside observers and the uninitiated we may be looking at rather a strange situation. It is not my intention that clause 1 be passed; in fact it is not my intention that many of the clauses be passed into legislation. To the uninitiated, this may look as if I am trashing my own Bill. Unlike the Government, who axiomatically take the view that all legislation that appears for Second Reading is by definition perfect—except when they later table vast numbers of amendments—I have taken the view that this is not perfect legislation, but it is a perfect way of advancing a very important agenda.
To that effect, I make no secret of the fact that I have worked with Ministers and their officials to try to move this forward. I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), who, before the revolving doors in the ministerial corridors revolved once more, was the Minister responsible for these matters. I am also grateful to the current Minister for the support and encouragement she has shown in the course of developing these thoughts. I am particularly grateful—I do not know whether it is appropriate to say so, but I am going to anyway—to Rachel Crisp, the civil servant in charge of work on Bills at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, who has worked extremely hard, particularly on developing the new clauses but also in a liaison capacity. I thank her very much. I know she has been burning the midnight oil on more than one occasion—not that a civil servant at DECC has any business burning oil at all; I hope she was using energy-efficient light bulbs.
I do not intend to proceed with clause 1. I am very content with new clause 4, tabled by the Government, which concerns the interpretation of the terms of the Bill, and I am happy to support its provisions. They contain a very clear definition of an energy-efficient measure and also make it clear that the term “dwelling house”, though inelegant, includes flats. I therefore commend new clause 4 to the Committee.