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Fuel Poverty Bill

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), who made some telling points in an excellent speech. She always has her constituents' welfare very much at heart, and I appreciate her coming here following her surgery today. I congratulate the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) on his perseverance, on his success in gaining a place in the ballot and on how he has presented his Bill. I am grateful to him for acknowledging the work being done by the Government and for allowing us to have this important debate. I have always valued private Members' Bills, not least because I have successfully piloted two such Bills of my own, under Conservative and Labour Governments. I also pay tribute to Ron Bailey, with whom I worked closely on my Bills, although he has not been so engaged with us on this one. Both my Bills were environmental Bills and both presented the Governments with challenges. But the secret of a private Member's Bill's success is the choice of something additional to what the Government are already doing and something that can be complementary to an established policy direction. Unhappily, this Bill is designed in such a way as to cut across everything that the Government have been doing on fuel poverty and, even more importantly, across the detailed work being done on the strategy in the light of changing circumstances. It also cuts across the consultations already in the public domain on future Government policies on heat saving and energy saving in this country. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome suggested that what he was presenting was compatible with our plans, but I am sorry to say that it is certainly not. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) suggested that the Bill was just aspirational or permissive. It is neither.