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Fuel Poverty Bill

The hon. Gentleman is right as far as the law stands. That is exactly what the High Court said in the previous case and I would not object to that. It is a sensible approach to adopt. The Government have a duty to do that, balanced out against all the other obligations and duties that the Government have to meet. That is what the judge said. I cannot conceive that that point could be taken to entail that whatever the expense, so long as it was not disproportionate, the Government should be obliged to expend whatever it takes. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but the trouble is that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome does not. He says that it has to be an absolute duty. Fuel poverty is an overriding priority and so what the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) says would not apply if the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome gets his way with the Bill as phrased. That is his bull point—from his point of view, it is the absolute priority of the Bill. That is what I have to take exception to, because I think that it is unrealistic. It is a Trotskyite transitional demand. It is superficially designed to please and to be attractive, but it is not a practical proposition for any Government to accept or, in my view, for any Parliament to pass. The fact remains that it is unrealistic and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome must accept that. We would all love to be able to say that the Government had a duty to ensure that we eliminate entirely illiteracy, waiting lists and people having to hang around in accident and emergency, but that cannot be done in those terms. We can have the aspiration to do so, which is why I agree with clause 1, or the duty to do it, as in the definition set out by Mr. Justice McCombe, which is the right way of setting priorities and the right relationship between the legislature, the Executive and the judiciary. Or we can have it the hon. Gentleman's way, where he does not give a monkey's about health or education so long as he gets his way on this point. My bull point of concern—where I really fall out with the hon. Gentleman—is that issue. That is not the end of the Bill, of course. There are other practical problems. We have to achieve this by 2016 in absolute terms, but that might be unrealistic depending on how the world changes. The hon. Gentleman has already conceded that clause 2(3)(a) will have to go. When he drafted the Bill, he did not realise that only 30,000 properties in the whole country would meet that criteria and that the cost of that would be £50 billion plus. Even to do what he is talking about in clause 2(3)(b) at present prices will cost an extra £20 billion on top of the £20 billion we have already spent. The hon. Gentleman is on to something with clause 3, which concerns the fuel poverty strategy. I do not disagree that it would be a good idea to set a fuel poverty strategy and for it to deal with all the points to which he refers. It would be helpful to have a strategy set out as a way of benchmarking Government performance. That is one way in which we can do that much more effectively. A benchmarking system whereby we have a strategy that links in to the fuel poverty annual report required by clause 4 would be very effective. I hope that it would mean that every year we would have a debate in Parliament on the strategy and on how far we had got in achieving it, and we could hold the Government to account in the legislature for their performance. That is the right way of holding the Government to account—not in the courts, but by asking the Minister to come to the House, stand at the Dispatch Box and say what they have done or have not done, as well as answering questions and facing challenges from hon. Members on both sides of the House. That is the correct democratic way of dealing with the issue. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to require the fuel poverty strategy to be set out and I do not think that I would take issue with any of the points that he has set out that should be required in the strategy. I particularly agree that it would be useful to include provisions about microgeneration installations. I have no difficulty with that. I do, however, have difficulty with the hon. Gentleman's references to the time scale for the fuel poverty strategy. I do not think that he has considered the correlation between clause 3(1), which sets out a time scale of six months, and clause 9, which deals with consultation. I agree that it is good practice for any Government to consult interested parties and organisations—in this instance, Friends of the Earth, Age Concern and the other organisations that the hon. Gentleman mentioned earlier—and to try to reach agreement with them about what should go into a strategy. However, the Government are always being criticised for having sham consultations, for not allowing enough time for consultations and for not taking into account anything that anyone says. They are criticised for just going through the motions. My concern is that the Bill would make it a duty to produce the strategy within six months, because clause 3(1) states:""The Secretary of State must, not later than six months…publish a document"." Bearing in mind the length of time it takes to write Government documents, proof-read them and print them, I am worried that clause 3(1) and clause 9 would be mutually exclusive, in that it would be very difficult to have a proper and effective consultation involving consideration of, and reaching agreement on, all the suggestions, as well as publishing the document, all in the space of six months. That is not realistic. I hope that that matter will be corrected in Committee, but I wanted to draw it to the hon. Gentleman's attention now. I agree with the aims of both clauses, but there is a significant difficulty there. Clause 3(5) states that the Secretary of State""shall take such steps as are necessary to implement the Fuel Poverty Strategy."" I shall not repeat my previous argument, but this provision is draconian and probably unachievable in its present form. Clause 10 is welcome. It puts pressure on the suppliers to introduce energy assistance packages, and it is quite right that the energy companies should play their full role in helping to deal with the problem. I am worried, however, that the hon. Gentleman seems to want to let them off the hook, because clause 10(3) states that the lower tariffs should be available to customers only""until such time as their homes have been made fuel poverty proof."" Those people are probably on the lower tariff in the first place because they do not have very much money. I would like to see that final provision removed from the clause in Committee, because we ought to be aiming for lower tariffs to be more generally available throughout the fuel companies' charging structures. This picks up on points that were made earlier. Clause 12 relates to expenses, and states:""There shall be paid out of money provided by Parliament…any expenditure incurred"" as a consequence of the legislation. As I said earlier, the hon. Gentleman has not put a price tag on this. Indeed, I am not sure that he has one. The best estimate from the Government is that it would cost £20 billion to meet the band C requirement set out in clause 2. This raises the question of whether we would need additional taxation to finance these provisions. I am not sure what £20 billion translates to in terms of income tax, but it could be 4p or 5p in the pound. Or would we need to cut other things in order to pay for this?