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Energy Bill

moved, as an amendment to Amendment No. 26, Amendment No. 26A: 26A: After Clause 83, line 8, at end insert ““including interim targets for implementation”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for introducing his amendment. My Amendment No. 26A would set interim targets for implementation. I shall also speak to Amendment No. 27, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, to which I have added my name and which reflects the policy of both our parties. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is right to say that the roll-out to domestic households is absolutely necessary. Many of the measures that we need to implement to address climate change will work only as part of a comprehensive strategy. Smart meters are critical not only to energy savings at home, but will soon be inextricably linked to the feed-in tariff, just as CHP is inextricably linked to micro-generation and so on. To look at each policy as if it were a stand-alone issue independent of every other initiative is to ignore the wood for the trees. The Government appear only recently to have come round to this. With enormous reluctance and only in the face of concerted opposition by so many, they have finally made some movement on feed-in tariffs. I hope most sincerely that there will be a similar acceptance of the inevitable on this issue. This Government’s policy on smart meters has been particularly lacklustre. So far they have resisted the idea that smart meters must be extended to domestic households and have certainly opposed any suggestion that there should be a clear timetable for doing so. They are still talking about ““if”” and ““maybe”” when the questions that need to be answered are ““when”” and ““how””. That is why I and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, have tabled our amendments to that moved by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. Can the Minister really conceive of an effective climate change policy that does not include smart meters in people’s homes? The Government’s ambivalence over such a crucial part of a coherent energy policy makes the clear statement of an implementation target with interim targets so that progress can be monitored an absolute necessity. The implementation target has become critical because of how long it has taken us to get the Government even to look at the issue properly. Ofgem not only recommended that a working group look at the advantages of the new ““smarter”” meters as far back as 2001, but expressed concern about the strangling effects of regulation on their uptake. How can the Government complain of not having had enough time? Indeed, in the energy White Paper published in 2007, the Government were thinking in terms of a five-year implementation for businesses and a 10-year plan for households. We are doing nothing more with these amendments than hold the Government to their own promises. There is simply no more time for delay. I beg to move.