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Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill

Again, we will come to that later—but to touch briefly on it now, it has not yet been demonstrated to me that solar panels or windmills necessarily have an acceptable pay-off period, or a yield that will give the results that are claimed for them. I have never been persuaded of that. If they did, presumably every roof in the country would already have solar panels and, within existing planning constraints, we would all have windmills, as leading members of our party apparently say they will have. I am not convinced that there is an acceptable pay-back in terms of the investment required in a windmill or a solar panel to give us an overall advantage in fuel terms. I have had a quick look at some household expenditure figures from 20 years ago and now to see where fuel and power fitted as a percentage of spending. I could go into a lot of detail but I am eager to reach some of the later debates, which will be much more substantial than this one. This is just a taster, after all; there is some meaty stuff to come later. Suffice it to say that the figures I have been given by the Library show that in the year 2003–04 the proportion of household expenditure spent on housing—rent, council tax and so on—was 17 per cent., on food and non-alcoholic drinks 16 per cent., on motoring 15 per cent., on leisure services 13 per cent., and on household goods 8 per cent., but for fuel and power it was 3 per cent. That suggests that we should be careful about analysing the proportion of household expenditure—