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Energy Bill

First, I thank everybody who has taken part in this. Secondly, in the light of the position that the Minister outlined to the Committee this afternoon, I recognise that there has been a sea-change in the Government’s position since as recently as last January, and I welcome that. I claim no credit for having stimulated it, although the noble Lord was kind enough to indicate that perhaps I might have helped. The important thing is that there now seems to be a way forward by building on what has been put forward for the Pensions Bill and the other non-legislative methods. The noble Lord suggested that there needs to be a lot of information about the people who might be targeted. For the purposes of the CERT order, no information is required. The categories in the schedule are absolutely clear: those in receipt of certain benefits, certain tax credits, certain pensioners and so on. There is no question of having to see what their energy consumption is, what kind of house they are living in or anything like that. That may be necessary for the purposes of social tariffs for the electricity companies, but for the moment I have been concentrating on the CERT order. I hope that that will not be lost sight of by adding the additional difficulties if one is going to try to target the fuel poor as a whole. The noble Lord gave me rather more comfort than perhaps I had been expecting in the wake of last January’s debate. For that I am very grateful. We want to study very carefully what he has said. I will consider whether it is necessary to return to this matter on Report. I understand if one is dealing with the Data Protection Act and human rights the smaller the group one is identifying, the easier it is to justify under that legislation; the larger the group, the more difficult it is. There must be some way of approaching this. I have no doubt that the Government have this very much under consideration. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for what he said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 90 agreed to.