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Fuel Poverty Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. Opinions differ—suppliers are not all united—on this; some think that the packages pose a potential difficulty in terms of their competitive structure, whereas others are worried that the social tariff that they have introduced provides for a better deal than is likely to emerge in a universal concept. There are many discussions still to be had, but I know that Ministers are having such discussions at the moment and are committed to making progress. It would be wrong for me to prescribe in a private Member's Bill anything that would cut across current work, and I have stressed that throughout in my discussions with everybody on this. My Bill is essentially a permissive one—it would put a duty on the Secretary of State to provide the strategy and it would permit the Secretary of State to bring in a statutory social tariff, but the elements making up that strategy and tariff would be left to the Secretary of State. I make no apologies for that, because this is a highly technical issue and the last thing I want to do is torpedo work that is in progress, but I want to focus that work in the right direction—the one that I think will achieve the best results.