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Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill

My hon. Friend makes a good point but he slightly misunderstands my point. I was not talking about his scheme but considering the burden on local authorities. Braintree council’s scheme gives a council tax rebate. The problem is that, if a local authority gives, without support from the centre, a rebate to one citizen, it is a burden on all the other citizens in the local authority area. If we burden local authorities and do not support them through central Government grant, thus driving up council tax, that will be detrimental to those in the poorest communities. They may find that they have even less spare funds available to purchase necessary fuel. Perhaps the Minister for Energy would like to comment on that later. I want to consider the sale of electricity. I freely admit that I am not an expert or an engineer. Perhaps hon. Members with such backgrounds can advise me. The hon. Member for Lewes referred to losses in energy transmission. If we made a success of the approach that we are discussing, and millions of people throughout the country had their own micro-generation capacity and produced electricity that they wished to sell back to electricity companies, the Bill obliges the energy companies to purchase the energy at market rate. Hon. Members of all parties have welcomed that. I have a concern, which the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) also mentioned, about transmission charges. If we lay on electricity suppliers a requirement to purchase electricity, what physical infrastructure would be required to enable the transmission of those relatively small quantities of electricity into the local distribution network? How efficiently would that happen, and at what cost? If the obligation to purchase the power causes electricity companies to spend a great deal of money, the cost must be borne either by the person selling the electricity back to the transmission network—that would probably offset the amount of revenue they get—or electricity companies. In the latter case, the cost would be passed on to many consumers.