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Clean Power 2030 Action Plan: Rural Communities

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, in discussing these various means of producing energy and transmitting it and whether it is best to do it in the sea, agriculture or somewhere else. Then, of course, we have this debate about whether we should have pylons or hydrogen. Nobody has yet invented a sky-hook, which would sort out all the problems.

I congratulate my noble friend Lord Nagaraju on a really interesting maiden speech. He did not have very long for it, but I can see that in future he is going to give us some really useful tips and thoughts about how we can improve what we do on these issues, including on access to rural communities. I hope he will take it upon himself to challenge the Government, the Opposition and everyone with whom he may have an issue, because the more experience we get here, the better it will be for everyone.

We have had many debates on rural communities and the need for special fuels to fuel people’s boilers, so I will not repeat them. I really welcome the boiler upgrade scheme of £9,000 for off-grid households that the Government recently announced, but it is worth noting that there are still uncovered costs of some significance in installing heat pumps. It is not a question of just having them delivered off the back of a lorry and plugging them in. They work well, but they take a lot of time and are quite expensive. In the past we have debated some communities, especially people in Cornwall, where I live, who have got together and saved quite a lot of money and made efficiencies by working with one supplier to create the right amount of power at a reasonable cost.

I have a question or two for my noble friend, because there are some issues that may need a little more thought. There is the cost of electricity, which we can go on debating, but putting in a heat pump can mean a problem with building regulations, and it is not always possible. If something goes wrong and you have to revert to what you had before, which is probably an oil burner, and you suddenly find that the building regulations do not allow you to replace it, what are you going to do?

I am quite sure it will work most of the time, but can my noble friend the Minister tell the House—now or, if necessary, in writing—whether, if an off-grid consumer finds that heat pumps are inadequate or unaffordable, with very high running costs, there are any measures in place to give them a bit more protection? In other words, what can the rural communities who rely on oil do to help themselves?

One of the big debates we have had in the last few months concerns the balance in demand between the new fuels to be used in the air sector and the fuels to be used in our heat pumps. When my noble friend the Minister comes to respond, I hope he will confirm that government policy does not give either of those two options strong priority over the other, or suggest that it is more important for people to fly than to stay warm. That would be a very dangerous attitude to take and I do not think my noble friend is taking it, but it would offer some comfort if, when the subsidy comes, we look to do our bit for the rural communities as well as trying to fly.