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Energy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I place on record my thanks to all noble Lords for the spirit of collaboration and constructive criticism that has characterised our formal and informal meetings leading up to this moment. This has influenced not only the Government’s amendments, but also the consultation document and draft secondary legislation which we will soon be publishing. Your Lordships examined the Bill thoroughly when it started in this House and made many excellent suggestions of how it could be improved. These were taken up in the other place and I believe we now have a better Bill before us. I also place on record my thanks to all our officials and their team, who have worked so tirelessly to respond to questions from noble Lords and, indeed, to my own. It is convenient to discuss Amendments 1 to 3 together with Amendments 4 to 32, 96, 97 and 131. Anchoring ambition for household energy efficiency was an issue we debated in depth following amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and the noble Lords, Lord Grantchester and Lord Davies of Oldham. The Bill returns to us with Clauses 97 and 107, which oblige the Secretary of State to take reasonable steps to improve the energy efficiency of the English residential sector by 2020 in order that emissions from this sector follow a trajectory consistent with the UK carbon budget. My noble friends Lady Parminter and Lord Teverson and the opposition Front Bench stressed the importance of an annual report on the Green Deal. This Bill now contains, via Amendments 96 and 131, a requirement on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the contribution of Green Deal policy and the energy company obligation to reduce carbon emissions in Great Britain, and the extent to which such reductions have contributed towards achieving the carbon budgets. As we went into the detail of the Bill, we had considerable discussion on the importance of Green Deal assessors not being able to mislead customers. Noble Lords will now see that Amendment 4 requires that Green Deal assessors should act impartially. In addition, the Government have listened to the concerns raised in the House regarding liability for default on Green Deal payments. Amendment 10 fulfils this, making provision that energy companies will share revenue collected on a proportionate basis with the Green Deal provider in cases of customer default. In this model, the energy supplier will not be liable to pass anything on if no moneys are received from the customer, a feature that is vital to ensure they are not left with significant liabilities that would impact on their balance sheets. Amendment 12 is related to this. It allows the Government to require that energy suppliers, with customer consent, share relevant data on customers’ prior energy bill payments with Green Deal providers at the point of contracting. This is crucial as it ensures that Green Deal providers will be better placed to make responsible lending decisions. Finally, early repayment fees are covered by Amendment 17, which I signalled in this House. Without it, Green Deal providers would find keeping the cost of finance low extremely difficult. I assure noble Lords that such a fee will be limited to Green Deals of a specific length, and the Secretary of State will be able to specify further conditions that must be met to ensure that additional compensation will only be available in appropriate circumstances. Further, the amount of compensation that can be claimed will be subject to a cap set by the directive. I beg to move.