Finance Bill

The point that I was making, Madam Deputy Speaker, was that microgeneration is at the core of energy services companies, because they relate to how we use microgeneration at a collective level to support community energy needs. In the Netherlands, fiscal measures have been used to support the introduction of microgeneration systems involving ““hot road”” technologies in school car parks and playgrounds, and in the car parks at health centres. Those measures are driven by fiscal incentives that get built into the costs and allowances that apply at the design stage in the framework of the approach to the built environment in the 21st century. That is a result of a Treasury lead that changed the rules of the game. As I said earlier, it frustrates me that, during this Parliament, in every Bill that has been enacted in which targets have been set on climate change, fuel poverty eradication and carbon reduction, the Treasury has exempted itself from the duty to report. All the evidence from elsewhere in Europe and across the globe shows that real change comes when it is driven from the financial heart of the Government. Such change cannot happen if it does not start with a duty to report. What follows from a duty to report is that, when we know what will work and what will not, we can move on to a proper debate about the scale and direction of the programmes that will work. Until we get the Treasury to take ownership of that central co-ordinating role, however, we shall be left planning in fragments. If this is the biggest challenge of our time, it will be sad to record that, at the heart of the Government, when Members on both sides of the House and members of the public in every part of the land were knocking on the door, there was no one in at the Treasury. I hope that the Minister will accept the amendments and give the lead that Parliament and the public have a right to expect.