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Energy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene, and if the Minister had risen quickly enough to keep the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in his seat, I probably would not have intervened at all. Although repetition is a good thing, we must bear in mind that the stated purposes have already been written into legislation and are already so ingrained in all our thinking habits that, frankly, to put them at the beginning of this Bill adds nothing. One problem with the amendment is that it requires ““commensurate contributions”” from two very diverse and very different things that will depend on a great deal of voluntary action by large numbers of people or groups, societies, local authorities, housing associations and so on. To me, the word ““commensurate”” makes this, worthy though it is, in effect meaningless because there are too many outside factors that mean that commensurate action will probably be only accidental because it depends on so many people, either tenants, landlords or the other categories of people whom I have already mentioned, volunteering to take part. It also depends on a lot of other factors, the primary one being the absolute certainty that the energy savings they will achieve, and the value of them, will be greater than the costs that they have to bear. Such arguments were expressed in Committee because of the uncertainty about what might happen with interest rates in the future. The second point is that, even if we put this into place, the far more potent effect in reducing emissions from domestic households will be the work that will have to be done on the supply side of the energy industry to decarbonise the electricity supply. It is far more important to pay attention to that sort of aspect, where the effect can be far greater on a residential level, than this aspect, which will have a beneficial effect—there is no denying that—but not a huge effect because the amount of energy and the cost saved will be nowhere near the cost of making the domestic sector CO2-emissions free. In my view, the effect of the 2050 target implies that by 2050 the whole domestic sector has to be carbon-emission free. We need to focus much more on that effect and take this as it is now. It will be a benefit, of course, but it will be only a small benefit. I do not think that we should complicate the matter, and still less should we try to take actions that depend on the actions of others—that are commensurate—because we simply cannot control the situation with that degree of accuracy.