Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I have some fairly trenchant views on agriculture, transport and local government. Indeed, I fully support the noble Lord, Lord Rogan—without his eloquence and scriptural references—in his campaign for daylight saving and I hope the Government heed him on this. However, I shall confine my remarks to energy and environmental policy. We are on the eve of Copenhagen and the possibility that the nations of the world will come to an agreement on climate change. I am all for open debate on the issues of climate change, in particular on the most effective forms of economic and technological measures to deal with it—I do not believe that the Government, industry or scientists yet have all the answers—but we are past the point where we ought to deny that climate change is happening. While I have great respect for the noble Lords, Lord Reay and Lord Lawson, who is not in his place—although I have read his article and his book, in which there are some good points—I believe that it behoves politicians of all countries and all parties to recognise that this is the biggest change facing us. In both our domestic policies and individual household and business policies we must recognise that we need to change our behaviour. I declare an interest in that I am on two quangos which are relevant here, the Environment Agency and Consumer Focus. I spend quite a lot of my time trying to intellectually reconcile the imperatives of an environment policy with those of consumerism. To a large extent I succeed in this but there are contradictions and clashes. In discussing energy policy it is important to recognise the complexity of the brief that my noble friend the Minister has in reconciling its various objectives. It is one of the most complex and important briefs. Before I come on to that, I shall refer briefly to the Flood and Water Management Bill, which I welcome. We have only to look at the events of the past few days to see how improvements can be made in flood management. We need to do more in the organisation of flood defences and drainage but the Bill is a good step in the right direction on that front. Although I understand the shortness of this parliamentary Session, I regret that parts of the Bill which were consulted on last year in relation to water management and water resources are not in this Bill. I hope that those who lead us beyond the next election, whoever they may be, will pick up the very good work set out in that Bill, in particular in relation to extraction licensing, time-limiting of extractions, water metering and the introduction of greater competition, innovation and efficiency in the water sector. One of the side-effects of climate change is not so much the extreme events which may or may not be caused by climate change, but the inexorable pressures on water supplies in this country and throughout the world. Unless we have all the measures in place in regulation, in industry and in government policy we will suffer seriously from that effect, particularly in the south-east of the country. On energy policy, there are multiple objectives: reduction of carbon, energy security, the need for a big investment programme and some very serious social concerns. In the short term, I, wearing my consumer hat, will argue that some energy bills should come down; that the relationship between the wholesale price of energy and the retail price of energy to consumers and to businesses is out of kilter; and that the energy companies should reflect that. In the medium term, however, the reality is that the price of energy is going to go up. If we are to meet the climate change objectives we need to ensure that the cost of energy reflects a switch to greener forms of energy whatever they may be—nuclear power, renewable energy or whatever. Bills at the moment will not be offset by the current efforts on energy efficiency, either by government expenditure, by tax incentives, which are fairly limited, or by measures in industry and households to improve the energy efficiency of their own buildings. The failure to link tariffs with improvements in energy efficiency is one of the problems of the current regulatory regime. This will mean that the longer we go on, much of the cost of energy efficiency and much of the cost of switching to green energy will fall on consumers, and on disadvantaged consumers in particular. We have an energy Bill most years. I was grateful to the noble Lord for being flexible and including in his energy Bill last year measures such as feed-in tariffs, and I urge him to get on with turning them into secondary legislation. I assume that he will be equally flexible this year. There has not been an energy Bill in the past eight years where Members of this House have not argued that something else should be in it, and I will be among those who argue it this time. There are some good elements in this Energy Bill which I strongly support. I welcome the extension and clarification of Ofgem’s powers, and I welcome the support for the fuel poor. As my noble friend Lord O’Neill indicated, the price of energy to the poor and the failure of incomes to keep pace has led to a doubling of the fuel poor in this country. I join my noble friend in urging that the Government’s measures in the Bill for support of the fuel poor should cover all the vulnerable groups that he mentioned. It is an odd point for the Government to be cutting back on their direct expenditure on insulation of homes of the fuel poor. I declare a past interest as an adviser to eaga. Whether you use the Warm Front programme or other means of delivering the programme, it is important that the effort expended on improving the insulation of our homes and other buildings is co-ordinated and has the same measure of support that the Government have given it. They probably need to double that support, directly or indirectly, in order to offset the rising price of energy. In the energy market, the bills that we receive through our post from our energy suppliers are regressive. The poor pay more per unit than the rich, and those who use a lot of energy pay less per unit than those who use the smallest amounts. This is a complete negation of two of the key objectives of energy policy. Meanwhile, within that, the costs of this plus the growing costs of subsidies for renewable energy, which I support, are near enough poll taxes. We need to look at the totality of the energy structure and try to ensure that those who suffer from fuel poverty and who have not yet been helped by our energy efficiency programmes pay less than the average consumer, and that the energy efficiency effort offsets the bill for all consumers. This is, unfortunately, against the background of an increasingly unequal world. We have a less than progressive taxation system and, as we regrettably know, inequality has grown in this country over the past 25 years. There is no offsetting factor under which the poor can meet growing energy bills and we can meet our environmental and energy security objectives. The poor should not bear a disproportionate cost of the change in the energy market and the need to switch to decarbonised energy. The same is true on a global scale. Our leaders, who are in Copenhagen this week and next, should also recognise that the poorest countries should not pay a disproportionate amount to deal with the global problems of greenhouse gases and climate change. I hope that they solve some of these problems in Copenhagen, or at least get on the road to so doing, and I hope that the Government and all parties here will commit themselves to doing the same at a national level.