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Energy Bill

My Lords, I cannot disagree with my noble friend on that point either. However, it suggests the challenge that the Government face in coming up with proposals that fit the bill and meet all the different viewpoints. We will have to work very hard in a short time in order to produce proposals that work and are encouraging to the microgeneration schemes that we want to encourage while ensuring continued investment. I do not pretend that this will be a particularly easy task. When it comes to heat, we are looking very seriously at the options open to us. I very much take noble Lords’ point about ensuring that we embrace heat within any amendment that we bring forward. The complex and diffuse nature of the heat market makes a feed-in tariff for heat a much looser concept than it is for electricity. There are also fundamental differences between heat and electricity that will present challenges to delivering an effective and practical financial support mechanism for renewable heat alongside electricity. The Government will have to give further consideration to how to do it. I assure noble Lords that we wish to address the heat issue, but I think that we will have to do it in a way that gives us sufficient flexibility to formulate policy over the coming months. Given that noble Lords have been keen to give the Government flexibility on other issues, I hope it will be accepted that a lot more work needs to be undertaken on the heat issue. My noble friend Lord O’Neill raised a very important consideration about the supply chain. We want every encouragement to be given to the supply chain. Part of providing that encouragement is the need to get absolutely right the issue of investor confidence regardless of whether it is large-scale or smaller-scale investment. The noble Lord, Lord Reay, asked some pertinent questions on costs. We have to address those issues but, as I think he rather expected, I cannot give him any firm figures now. We will make those figures available as soon as we have them. My noble friend Lord O’Neill made some important points about where the costs lie. There will be a knock-on impact on consumer bills, as the noble Lord, Lord Reay, and my noble friend suggested. However, my noble friend’s point was really about equity and a concern that poorer people should not be subsiding middle-class people in this area. He will know that there has been concern about prepayment meters. He will probably also know that, only a few days ago, as a result of the Ofgem probe, my right honourable friend met with the companies concerned to make it plain to them that we expect movement on the issue. The principle that he raises is very important indeed.