Finance Bill

My decision was based on both factors that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. I felt that there was no point in Members of Parliament trying to preach to the public about the scale of the changes that need to happen in our society if we were not prepared to act ourselves. There was therefore an element of walking the walk as well as talking the talk to the decision. At the time, it was also an economic decision because I was one of the last beneficiaries of the Government’s programme whereby one received a 50 per cent. rebate on the costs of installing solar panels. I was therefore somewhat disappointed when we changed the programme and moved to the low-carbon buildings programme, thus effectively removing such support for PV. The change has effectively doubled the cost of installing PV panels. The panels are so expensive in the UK because, by and large, we have to import them and we do that on a minute scale. Fiscal measures that were introduced in Germany show that, if the domestic market can provide for a programme of 300,000 houses with solar roofs, the unit costs of production and installation drop like a stone. Our problem in the UK is our piecemeal set of measures, which continue to treat microgeneration as an infant industry. The fiscal measures that other parts of Europe have adopted mean that microgeneration has become a dynamic and cost-cutting part of their economy. Hermann Scheer, the architect of the German feed-in tariff law, came over a couple of weeks ago and met the Minister for Science and Innovation. He pointed out that it was calculated that each adult German citizen spends approximately €2,500 a year on energy bills—that is a combination of bills at home and energy costs in the work place. In a Land or region of approximately 1 million people, that meant annual energy expenditure of €2.5 billion. In conventional terms, that region would buy gas, oil and uranium from an external source and coal from internal and external sources. Expenditure would go outside the region for energy sources that are beginning to run out. By actively promoting microgeneration, regions have instead put the bulk of that €2.5 billion a year into their economies. The multiplier effect of that spending creates jobs and skills and generates taxes in the regions. Mr. Scheer argued to our Minister that microgeneration is not a cost but becomes a dynamic cost-saving measure that results in huge economic security. As was said earlier, such measures have given Germany 50 per cent. of the world market in onshore wind turbines and 15 per cent. of the world market in PV. We need to measure against that the effectiveness of our fiscal strategies for promoting a similar sort of dynamic in the UK economy, and our place in the global economy in promoting microgeneration.