Energy Bill

I shall speak first to my Amendment 8C. I am trying to be helpful to the Government, as is the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. Where the Government talk about withdrawing authorisation from Green Deal providers, there has to be an authorising body as there is a mechanism within the Bill for those organisations to be authorised in the first place. So there should also be a means, in extremis—we hope it would never be used—whereby authorisation can be taken away from those authorisers as well. I tread carefully here, but on the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, it would be almost impossible to disagree with Amendment 2D which seeks, "““to ensure that assessors and providers have the qualifications and skills””," to perform their functions under the Green Deal. I question Amendment 2G, however. In my mind, the jury is out on this. I have a concern about this whole scheme in terms of quality. I know that this is not what the noble Baroness means, but I am concerned that we have moved towards some kind of tick-box assessment; that if you meet certain criteria, then everything is fine. It is more important in many ways that a level of intelligence is attached to these processes, in a similar way to consumer protection in the financial services industry where there is an overall requirement for suppliers to act intelligently in the overall interests of the customer. While there is a place for standard assessments, they do not always meet that quality element. When we are talking about a programme that is to be as large as we hope it will be, the quality element is of great importance. I am not sure whether just assessment processes with a list of issues completely fulfil that. I am not necessarily talking against the amendment, but I am very anxious that there should be a qualitative demand in the Bill that providers think intelligently and provide plans that are specific to households and people; and that assessors are not working to a completely standardised format but in terms of whether a quality product will be provided within that market.