Clause 8

Part of Energy Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 2:45 pm on 14 January 2010.

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Photo of Simon Hughes Simon Hughes Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change 2:45, 14 January 2010

I, too, support the initiative by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test. His second proposal, new clause 6, has clearly drawn support from across the House, including from the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, who is not an unimportant co-sponsor of the new clause.

I have a supplementary point to add to the positive comments made by the hon. Member for Wealden. Not only is there a huge amount of technology and science bubbling away around the country, but there are people on the front line who want to tell us of all the opportunities.

The other day I went formally, for the first time, to the Building Research Establishment headquarters just north of London with some of my parliamentary colleagues. We had the sort of fascinating half-day that I expected, and saw what new opportunities exist for making a house as environmentally friendly as possible. We all have the opportunity to encourage those sorts of innovations in our constituencies. The more the systems run themselves once they are installed, and deliver benefits without further interference, the better for all concerned.

I hope that the Minister will be positive, and take the principal point behind the amendment and the new clause. We want people to benefit from not only a cashback option or other differential payment options, but having other technology in their homes.

I want to reinforce a point that I have made elsewhere in another context. The prerequisite to this initiative working well for everybody is a proper, comprehensive survey that identifies what can be done. Not everything can be done immediately or be within the scheme that the Government buy into when asking utility companies to deliver a system to alleviate fuel poverty. We have household surveys—local authorities such as mine are doing their stock condition survey again.

If local authorities, along with the industry, lead the process of ensuring that they offer the service in Northampton, Sussex, Yorkshire, London and so on, we can identify the opportunity. Crucially, the service will not be offered by the utility companies—they would be perceived to have a self-interest—but by local government, which is still trusted to give good, independent advice, although it may well buy in an agency or get the BRE to give advice.

Science develops, of course; a technology that does not exist today may save a lot of money when it is rolled out tomorrow. I would like the Minister to say that the prerequisite should be for people to have a service that  shows them what their home could benefit from, so that everybody can understand. Moreover, people who are at the bottom of the income scale should be just as easily able to understand the benefit of the new technology that saves the waste heat and re-pumps it, or that saves it from the fridge so that it does not have to be recharged in order to heat it up on a regular basis. I hope that the Minister will be positive and either accept the amendment and the new clause or say that he will return with something similar on Report.