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Energy Bill

My Lords, I can certainly assure the Minister that I have never doubted for a second the Government’s ““intent”” to try to solve the problem. My difficulty is that they keep talking about identifying and targeting, but it seems still to be a comparatively difficult task. The information that I have from the industry may be a little different from the Minister’s. I am told that it still finds it difficult to find households—for instance, in the poorest areas—which have not already benefited from the Warm Front programme. They send their agents round only for them to find that the households concerned have their insulation already, which does not count towards the 40 per cent target because it happened earlier. I am waiting to see how the clause in the Pensions Bill will be carried into effect through the regulations. The noble Lord, Lord Mogg, may know more about what will be in them—he shakes his head, so he does not. What mechanism will be used to fulfil Ministers’ intentions, spelt out by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, and emphasised again by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, today, to target that particularly vulnerable group of pension credit recipients? I shall wait to see what happens. This is an issue on which we need to keep up the pressure. I recognise and have no doubt, as the Minister said, that great efforts are being made, but how effective are they? One should recollect that the cost of the CERT programme to every single householder in the country—I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Mogg, because this is another Ofgem figure—is just short of £40 a year. It is the consumers who are paying, not the Government, and it goes on to bills, as do ROCs and other things. How many consumers know that? It goes on to the bills not only of consumers who can pay them but of everyone, including those of the fuel-poor households. I would not say at this stage that it is a flawed programme, but I have considerable doubts whether it will achieve the targets. The Prime Minister has again heaped another great obligation on the industry and received a lot of publicity for it. We will wait to see what happens. I shall not let the matter go, but I shall for the moment beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.