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Department of Energy and Climate Change

My Lords, from these Benches, I very much welcome the Minister to this portfolio and we very much look forward to what I know is his strong commitment and his ability to persuade not just the rest of the House but the rest of the Government about the importance of this area. He is clearly already making good progress. We absolutely welcome this Statement. It goes further than I could have hoped and would have expected. That is a very positive sign indeed. We also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Turner, on his work in the climate change committee and in many ways regret that he will be moving on, although his appointment to the FSA is clearly good. On the movement from a 60 per cent to an 80 per cent target, the Statement shows how Britain can indeed lead the global debate around the need for action on climate change, but I remind the Minister that the way that that 80 per cent is defined allows all sorts of ways in which this country can get around that target internally. No doubt, we will have that debate when the Climate Change Bill comes back to the House. Including other greenhouse gases in those targets is logical and ties in with the Kyoto process. We on these Benches were arguing for that within the Climate Change Bill. The Government will have a 10 per cent better start in terms of the 1990 figures than they would have had if they took account of carbon dioxide only. I hope that that will help us to meet the targets. Aviation and air was an area that I was particularly interested in. The Statement, says that, "““they, too, should play their part in reducing emissions””." We would all agree with that, but I ask the Minister to clarify whether those emissions will be within the 80 per cent target or not. That is what we need to understand. The feed-in tariff has been particularly successful in generating renewable energy, particularly within Europe. Another reason that we welcome it is that it has one other effect, which is that it allows much greater participation by smaller organisations and individuals, households and families, who can involve themselves in, and benefit from, the generation of renewable energy. However, there is still a huge challenge in the area of fuel poverty. Clearly, we welcome the fact that oil energy prices have come down to a more sensible level over the past couple of months, and I hope that the same will also apply to gas, but at the same time we do not want those energy prices to be too low. However, there will be great challenges to households. Reining in the number of people who move back into fuel poverty will require the Government to take decisive and strong action—perhaps more than is suggested in the Statement—and we look forward to a further report from the Government on how this action will move forward. Again, we on these Benches congratulate the Government on taking the bull by the horns in terms of the Turner recommendations, and we very much welcome this as the Minister’s first Statement in his new role.