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Electricity and Gas (Carbon Emissions Reduction) Order 2008

I am grateful and I acknowledge that. I can also sympathise with the noble Lord, having been, if not in exactly the same position, at any rate in what was the same department some years ago, and these things do take time. But, in the mean time, we have a scheme starting under the order on 1 April. The 40 per cent obligation starts then. However, until these pilots have been properly appraised and it has been decided how to roll them out, British Gas will have to go on playing municipal hide and seek. That does not seem very satisfactory. The fact that the noble Lord’s explanatory memorandum did not have a single word to say about this fills me with some dismay. It gives the impression that Defra neither knows about it or, if it does know about it, does not care. That might be an unfair judgment, but anyone reading 79 pages of that explanatory memorandum is likely to draw that conclusion.