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Energy Bill

Hon. Members have this afternoon said that the Bill is a modest one. It is indeed modest if one goes by the number of clauses or what it provides by way of new legislation in the light of what we know are the challenges ahead. However, when considering Bills it is important to understand clearly what we need to legislate on at particular times. It is important to ask what has already happened legislatively and what is still required. It is also important to ask what the role of regulation is and what are the roles of future initiatives, which stem from powers given by the Bill and other legislation, in meeting the energy challenge ahead of us. The reality is that the Bill builds on the Energy Act 2008 and a number of other items of legislation to make some progress on various issues relating to the energy challenge. In any event, regulatory powers are already available and financial investments can and are being made. There is a strategy for ensuring that a new low-carbon energy economy properly protects those who are in fuel poverty, and for ensuring that the future base load of our energy supply, which will inevitably concern coal and gas in future, is properly developed as far as the low-carbon form of energy supply and CCS are concerned. The regulator has the base powers to regulate the energy market as it becomes much more sustainable. They may appear to be modest legislative achievements, but they underpin a much greater step forward. What we have heard this afternoon concerns me. The Opposition claim that they will allow the Bill a Second Reading and make changes in Committee, but they would, were they to have their way, have a huge legislative programme. They make declaratory statements on everything under the sun as far as energy policy is concerned, including on a great deal of legislation that, unless they have been completely oblivious of what has been happening in the House, they would notice has already actually been passed. For example, we know that as a result of the 2008 Act, a feed-in tariff for smaller-scale electricity generation will be introduced soon. We know that the year after that a renewable heat incentive will come in. Incidentally, that will be the first introduced by any Government anywhere in the world to ensure that renewable heat is part of a programme of moving towards low-carbon domestic and commercial energy for providing heat. Having that legislation in place will help when it comes to the next stage in energy efficiency for households and domestic properties, because that will require not just passive insulation and energy efficiency measures but active measures such as the installation of small-scale or district generation in domestic properties. That can reduce the carbon footprint of a house radically over time. Therefore the future relates to regulation following from legislation that has already been passed, and the will to ensure that that happens actively in the future. The claim that an opportunity to pass legislation has been missed in those areas is to misunderstand how one makes progress with a renewable and sustainable energy policy. I do not claim that that is a deliberate misunderstanding, but a misunderstanding it is, nevertheless. It concerns me when that misunderstanding is compounded by simplistic claims about how progress can be made on these issues. We have heard the suggestion —it was repeated this afternoon—that every household should be given £6,500, and that that will sort out the whole question of insulation and active energy generation concerns. As a result, it is suggested, we will have fully insulated and approaching zero-carbon households, but it is akin to the other short-lived policy we heard about a while ago, whereby everybody was to put £8,000 into the pot and they would then have their health and social care needs taken care of for the rest of their lives. That policy ran into similar mathematical difficulties. The mathematics of the £6,500 policy—over and above requiring loan guarantees of some £160 billion to £170 billion to be injected into the economy if the guarantee is from the public purse—would require savings of £360 a year, if the loan is to be serviced and assuming that it would not be just given out to householders.