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Energy Security

It is acceptable if gas supplies are maintained. In fact, the hon. Gentleman's colleague, the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey gave a good, detailed analysis of the capacity and reserves, which I encourage the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) to look at. That demonstrates that diversifying our supply and moving towards a low-carbon supply is good not only in relation to climate change but in addressing the potential problems of security of supply, fuel poverty, jobs and investment. Moving towards a low-carbon economy has a range of advantages. On fuel poverty, which is related to energy supply in the current circumstances, I welcome what has been done on insulating people's homes through the Warm Front programme. Energy efficiency is one of the cheapest and most effective ways of reducing energy demand and helping to meet social demand, and it improves the availability of supply. However, we need to do an awful lot more in the private rented sector on creating mechanisms to improve insulation. Incidentally, I welcome the improvement in cold weather payments: my constituency will be receiving two weeks' payments. I know that this is not the responsibility of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, but there are some eligibility anomalies, because some people on disability living allowance do not receive the payments. Those anomalies need to be addressed in discussions with other Departments. We need to encourage more renewables. I welcome what has been done, including the recent announcement of the enormous expansion of offshore. That is of particular local interest in my constituency. The Humber is very well placed to be a centre for the construction and maintenance of offshore wind farms, and for CCS and biomass development. Jobs in engineering and support go with those things, not least in the construction of the steel that will go into the towers that will be built. Those developments will mean jobs and investment, much to the benefit of local people. I want to make one last, quick point. We need to encourage as great a diversity of supply as possible. Micropower has enormous potential, which has not yet been realised. I very much welcome what the Government have done on feed-in tariffs; it is exactly the right way forward. However, what is being proposed is not enough to kick-start the sector. It would be a lot better if the measures could be front-loaded to a higher feed-in tariff, which could then be tapered off, to give some incentive to get the industry going. Other measures could be introduced, such as extending the boiler scrappage scheme, which I also welcome, to combined heat and power boilers; I know that we are at the beginning of their commercialisation. We need to use every tool and every incentive available, because we have to move to a low-carbon economy as quickly as possible. All political parties have a responsibility to get that message over to the public. The changes have to be made. We must have the planning procedure that brings them forward and we have to get behind the investment incentives, to make sure that it all happens.