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Energy Bill

It would be remiss of me not to add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) on all his achievements. We have all been harangued by him in the nicest possible way, and mysteriously come round to his way of thinking. I pay tribute to him, and to those who have briefed and lobbied us, including Friends of the Earth, which has been mentioned. We welcome their Lordships' addition of a feed-in tariff, but the Liberal Democrats have added our names to amendments that support more definition of deadlines and the financial subsidy mechanism. Perhaps we are still not quite there on urgency. The Minister will be familiar with the 100 months campaign, which was launched at the start of August. It talks about 100 months before reaching a tipping point for climate change. We are already three and a half months through that time. We need a new way of thinking about such matters, which does not involve a consultation, a discussion paper, a Green Paper, a review or a period of further reflection. We are past all that. Like the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), my worry about the Minister in another place, who said that he hoped that we could achieve the aim in 18 months, but perhaps we cannot, is that not acting quickly is not an option. It is far better to get something roughly right by, as the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) said, locking people in a room for a weekend, and then perhaps refining it, than to try to wait until it is perfect—it probably would not be perfect anyway. I am worried by the mentality that assumes that we have to work according to financial years. I do not know whether I am right, but I sense a presumption about 6 April. I hope that that is not the case. I do not know where 6 April comes from—perhaps pagan festivals and the spring equinox—but it should not govern when we have to act. Things are far more urgent. We should get on with it the very day, week or month that we determine how to act. I therefore support amendment (a), which would set a deadline of within 12 months of Royal Assent. We could fill any time available—we could spend six years thinking about this—but we urgently need to get on with it. I therefore urge the Minister to accept amendment (a). Even if he were not forced to do so, I am sure that he would want to pull out every stop to ensure that action was taken in 12 months. I welcome amendment (f), and if the Minister does not feel able to accept it, I hope that we can test the House's opinion on it. It deals with combined heat and power. One could be a purist and say that, because that is not a renewable, it should not be included. That would be an argument, albeit one that I do not accept. However, if we intend to include combined heat and power and recognise its contribution, the low threshold is odd. I know that the Minister will try to justify it shortly, but the contribution of combined heat and power, at least in the transitional phase when we try to move to very low carbon, if not zero carbon, is demonstrable. To constrain it so much, up-front, in primary legislation is odd. Tariffs can differ according to technology and at varying thresholds, so the potential to treat small micro-CHP differently from larger CHP already exists. Removing the constraint simply gives the Government more power and flexibility. I therefore hope that the Minister will accept amendment (f). A potential downside of the feed-in tariff has not been mentioned. We support and welcome the feed-in tariff, but I hope that the Minister will reflect on that possible downside. Who pays for it? If we are not careful, we know which small-scale community groups, hospitals and schools and householders will do small-scale generation. We know who will have a solar panel and—dare I say it?—a small-scale wind turbine on the roof. We know the social groups and the income bands that will do that and to whom the feed-in tariffs will be paid, if we are not careful. Everybody else will pay for it in their bills, and that will be bad news for fuel poverty. We have a combined Ministry dealing with climate change and energy. Part of the energy remit is obviously affordable energy. Clearly, there is a tension. However, given that we want feed-in tariffs, and that we want them to be generous enough to make things happen, does not that place a great onus on the Government to get serious about social tariffs and tackling fuel poverty by other means? If all we do is introduce a generous feed-in tariff that results in an increase in fuel bills across the board, we will worsen fuel poverty. None of us wants to do that. What will go hand in hand with feed-in tariffs to ensure that we do not make fuel poverty worse? I hope that part of the answer is insulation and so on, but that is happening anyway. We hope that other energy efficiency measures will be taken, and that companies will introduce social tariffs, but there is precious little evidence of that so far.