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Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill

We will come on to parish councils shortly. We will want to examine what their role is supposed to be under the terms of new clause 4. We will go through each of the authorities in turn and ask that same question. We might even bring in the Mayor of London, who knows, or the Greater London Assembly. The mayor and the assembly are not mentioned but probably they should have been. That is something that the Minister was not able to explain to us. When he sums up and seeks to persuade us to support the new clause, perhaps he will be answering all these questions. I think that we have reached new clause 4(3). We have identified the fact that an official in each local authority will be studying the energy measures report and deciding what the local authority will do about it. That immediately raises the question of what local authorities will do to improve efficiency in the use of electricity, increase"““the amount of electricity generated””" by microgeneration, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases or deal with so-called fuel poverty. It may be that the answer lies in what the Minister has already told us, and that is that there are some excellent local authorities that are doing some excellent work and demonstrating how some or all of the objectives that we are considering can be fulfilled. In that case, why do we need the new clause or the Bill? There is an apparent paradox in that it is all happening already, and a jolly good thing too—that brings in our old friend best practice. In the days when I had the privilege to serve in the previous Conservative Government, that was one of the buzz terms to which we were most attached. Best practice was supposed to be the answer to all problems. Maybe best practice would be the answer in this instance. Perhaps the local authority umbrella body that has been mentioned with such affection should be contributing by disseminating best practice. Instead of having Bills and other legislation, bureaucrats, bureaucracy, targets and all the other things that we in this place are becoming increasingly fond of, why cannot we have a simple and informal procedure out there in the real world—