Energy Bill

Combating climate change while maintaining secure and affordable energy supplies is one the greatest challenges that our Government face. This is a landmark year in the fight against climate change and today, as many contributors have said, is the start of the discussions at Copenhagen. The world has come together in an attempt to reach a new international agreement to tackle climate change. We are going into the negotiations with a clear plan of the ambitious, effective and fair deal that we believe all the world's nations must agree, and confident that the UK has a track record of taking real action at home to tackle our own emissions. The low carbon transition plan, which we launched in July, sets out a clear pathway that will lead us to a low-carbon world with secure energy supplies and protection for the most vulnerable. The Bill puts into place legislation that will implement that plan. Let me comment on the speeches that have been made today. The hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) simply gave an alarmist account of what this country faces, without any positive reference to the measures in the Bill, some of which tackle the need for energy security in future. He constantly referred to matters that were not in the Bill, reciting a huge wish list of things that he believes could be legislated for. He failed to notice that most of the measures of which he spoke are already under way and do not require primary legislation. It was a complete nonsense of a speech. The hon. Gentleman said that there was a possibility of power cuts, which has been repeated by Opposition Members over and over again. [Interruption.] I shall come to what my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) said in due course, but at the moment I am dealing with the opening Front-Bench speeches. We challenged the hon. Gentleman on the need for assistance to households to make their homes more energy efficient. We still do not know how the Conservatives plan to fund the provision of £6,500 to households. He challenged us by saying that we have only 500 homes in our pilots, but why do we have pilots? To work out what is the best way of incentivising people and how the public are most likely to respond. That is why the pilots are critical. The hon. Gentleman is not able to tell me tonight how the up-front payments for those energy efficiency measures will be made, and he has never been able to say.