Electricity and Gas (Carbon Emissions Reduction) (Amendment) Order 2010

My Lords, I should like to welcome the Minister to the world of order-making and the familiar cast list of noble Lords present who spoke in a similar debate a year ago. The Community Energy Saving Programme is extremely important and we see this as a critical part of how we can help people to make energy savings, cut their household bills, and contribute to permanent reductions in CO2 emissions. Over the years that the schemes have been in operation, millions of households have been helped. However, as noble Lords have suggested, there is no room for complacency. That is why the previous Government consulted on the scheme a few months ago, and on the amendments to the existing framework. I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. I will also ask a question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. I, too, have read the brief report of the Merits Committee, and I am grateful to the committee for its work and comments. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said, the committee noted that the detailed impact assessment, which runs to 77 pages, is attached to the statutory instrument that we are debating today. The committee said that it had not had the time to make a detailed assessment of the instrument, given the speed with which the Government wish the SI to proceed. Like the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, I ask the Minister for an explanation. I am confused: surely the Merits Committee must be given enough time in which to do its job properly. I speak as the first chair of the Merits Committee, the point of which is to have time to go through statutory instruments in order to make a judgment on whether it should draw to the attention of the House that scrutiny of a statutory instrument merits special attention. If it does, it is marked with an asterisk on the Order Paper, which usually will lead to a debate in the Chamber. The Minister should explain why the Select Committee has not been given proper time to do its job. I am sure that, when the SI goes back to your Lordships' House, I will raise this matter on the Floor of the House. We must look at the order in the wider context of the necessity of making a major effort on energy saving. There is no doubt that greater energy efficiency has huge potential to help the UK cut its greenhouse gas emissions. That was very well laid out in the 77-page RIA, which points out that the UK's housing stock retains substantial opportunities to improve its efficiency. With heating accounting on average for 60 per cent of household energy demands, there are still millions of British householders yet to take advantage of opportunities to improve their thermal efficiency. There is an enormous challenge still to be tackled. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, raised the point made in the Explanatory Memorandum about costs to consumers being reasonable. I hope that the Minister will say more about costs. I have debated these matters with the noble Lord, Lord Reay, over 20 months. I fully agree with him about information. It will be interesting, when the Energy Bill comes, to see what progress can be made. I am sure that we disagree about the general measures taken by the previous Government to move towards a low-carbon energy structure, and the undoubted costs that that will cause to consumers. The previous Government and I always took the view—we would always pray in aid the Stern analysis—that it was better to go for it now than to delay, and that it would be more cost-effective to take measures now rather than wait for catastrophe to hit us. However, it is also right that the public should be aware of the implications and costs of policies. In that way, we are more likely to get consumer ownership.