Energy Bill

My Lords, when one wishes to be pejorative about processes, the words ““tick box”” slip easily off the lips. We ought to have a sense of proportion, however. We are talking about treating 14 million houses. We are talking about probably not installing boilers. We are talking already about probably not having internal wall insulation in solid-walled houses on the grounds that each of these is too expensive. So we are talking about having various kinds of insulation, whether it be cavity-wall or roof-attic insulation. This is not the most complex of operations. Sometimes they can be time-consuming, but not that often. We are not going to be installing nuclear power stations in each household. We are talking about a relatively simple set of measures that will be within a budget that we have already heard will not be unduly ambitious given the need to pay back over the period. We are, however, also talking about a massive job in which there has to be consistency and in which there has to be a squad of people who can go around and speedily assess what is required to be done. They are not going to be quantity surveyors. They are probably going to be people who might have worked in the building trade, but maybe not. They may well be trained to NVQ 2 and, if we are lucky, 3. There are a number of people who are trained by Energy Action Scotland and National Energy Action—two organisations involved in fuel poverty which I have dealings with, and I have an interest that has been declared. They may well be skilled people. I have another interest as a consultant to the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group, which does a lot of work in insulation and heating and electrical work. I would be hard pushed, however, to think that if you wanted to make money out of the Green Deal you would go for being a cavity-wall insulator or an attic insulator when you may well make more money out of installing new boilers and the like. These people are perhaps not the most highly skilled, but I am sure they will be highly committed. They will certainly not be the most highly paid, and therefore the performance standards that we can expect of them have to be straightforward and easily understood. The complexity of the work they will be required to do will not in itself be that great if we are to achieve over time and speedily the kind of things that the Minister has already spoken about in relation to the Green Deal. So we have to have a sense of perspective about this. If we do have forms and a standardised approach and basic training then it is probably inevitable that people will go round with a clipboard and a biro and tick boxes. It will not be because they are necessarily superficial or necessarily barely competent; it will be that the requirements of the job will be probably little more than that. Therefore we need a sense of proportion. If we are going to pluck the low-hanging fruit, which is at the heart of this process—Green Deal is about quickly insulating a lot of homes which have not been dealt with already—we will be dealing with the simpler and less expensive projects first. That is not to say that they should be cheap and cheerful or unsafe or that people are going to be taken to the cleaners. I am merely saying that we should have a sense of proportion and that within that we have got to avoid over-prescription. We do not want to have the health and safety approach—the jobsworth of exactly the wrong kind. We need to get this job done quickly and efficiently and therefore we need good training, clear processes and forms that people are not intimidated by. If you do not have simple forms, you have complicated ones because, as sure as eggs is eggs, there will be forms involved. There will be some kind of hand-held computer which the operators will understand but the person whose house is being affected will probably not necessarily understand it, whether it is in the estimation or the implementation. We ought to be a wee bit careful when we use disparagingly the tick-box dismissal, because I think that, in some respects, it will be almost inevitable that that will be what is required. If it is required, and if that is the consequence of the nature of our approach to the task, it is essential that these people are trained to the level that the job requires and that they are able to carry it out in a way which is consistent across the country as a whole. I think, therefore, that what we are saying in these amendments measures up to that and, once again, makes it more explicit than the proposed legislation already does. For these reasons, I would support this amendment; not because, as I say, I want it to be unduly simple—not because I want it to be open to bureaucratic or jobsworth approaches—but rather, recognising the scale of most of the tasks, so that an approach of this nature will be commensurate with the national challenge that we have, which we have to meet quickly. These people will be going into households and probably doing 20 a day, if they are doing their job properly. We will have to get these people in the field doing that pretty quickly, so the training will have to be effective very quickly. I am talking here about something which is a national priority if we are to meet the 2020 and ultimately the 2050 targets. We do not have to exaggerate the significance of the Green Deal commitment. Suffice it to say that, if we do not achieve the Green Deal ambition, then the further targets of 2020 and 2050 will be that much more difficult to realise. I certainly think that the approach that we are taking is inclined to reduce bureaucracy, to keep it simple and straightforward and to give proper recognition to the scale of the individual task that will be required in each household.