Energy and Climate Change and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

My hon. Friend and many other colleagues have consistently made that point to Government. Not only is the situation unfair for people who are not on the gas supply or whatever but there are other iniquities which mean that they have to buy a tank, pay extra charges and so on. It is absolutely right that provisions to deal with that should be included in the Bill. There was a blinding omission from the Queen's Speech and the proposed legislation, which was touched on by the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) is in the Chamber, and he spoke about this the other day. In 1983, the Social Democratic party was created, and it fought the election in alliance with the Liberals. I fought that election, and one of our commitments was for warm homes for everyone throughout the country. It was obvious then that most British homes were badly insulated, and that was bad for the poor, because they were paying a lot of money, which was literally going out of the window and the roof. As a result, their bills increased, their homes were not heated properly, and harm was done to the planet. Twenty-five years later, we have barely made progress. According to the latest figures, only one in 100 homes is energy efficient. The Government could have announced a serious programme in the Queen's Speech to make every home a warm home, instead of introducing piecemeal schemes: a bit here and a bit more there; a top up for this scheme; a bit of the community energy saving programme, a bit of the carbon emissions reduction target, a bit of Warm Front. There is no reason why the UK should not have a programme, driven by Government and managed locally by local government, street by street, village by village and community by community. That is what we need, but the question of financing then arises. With respect, hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells ducked that question, because the money must be made available up front. If the work is going to be done, even if it is done by loan, apart from work for the very poorest, the loan has to come from somewhere. He made it clear that not a single penny would come from the Government, and he appeared to imply that there would not even be any Government underwriting or support. I do not think that that is possible, and my right hon. and hon. Friends have said so. We believe that such a scheme has to be underwritten by someone, and we believe that it should be the Government, so that people can take out a loan and pay it back. I understand the economics of the system: if someone invests in loft or cavity wall insulation, their bills will go down and they can afford the repayment or top-up, but their bills will still be less than they were before. However, we cannot pretend that this is a cost-free exercise. At £6,500 a time, the total cost would be more than £100 billion. At a more realistic £11,500, it may be more like £200 billion. The Tory party is often wonderful at ideas—talking the talk—but as I could prove on lots of other things, it is slightly less convincing when it comes to walking the walk.