Energy Bill

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for raising this issue. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, to this debate. I am glad that he was able to enjoy some winter sun while the rest of us were at the coalface here. As always, his contributions are welcome. I have said many times that there is no doubt that consumer confidence is at the heart of the Green Deal. We have to get the regulation framework right so that, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, says, people feel confident about receiving people into their homes and that standards are maintained. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for his practical approach to this matter, having welcomed people into his own home to help him with the Green Deal insulation. I will speak to amendments 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 as they address customer protection for Green Deal customers. Amendments 4, 6 and 7 seek to ensure consumers are protected by adequate warranties and insurance. We envisage that anyone operating as a Green Deal assessor or installer will need to have appropriate professional indemnity cover but the Bill already provides sufficient powers. As to regulation, a subject raised by my noble friend Baroness Parminter, there are plenty of regulations in place for people selling insurance. I speak with some experience in that field. Clause 3(4)(c) makes provision for this to be a requirement within the code of practice, with which all Green Deal participants will have to comply. Clause 3(8) provides for appropriate sanctions and redress should the assessor or installer not meet the Green Deal standards. Clause 5(5)(b) also provides for conditions to be set in secondary legislation requiring a guarantee covering improvements to be included in a Green Deal plan. Details regarding the provision of guarantees will become clearer following further consultation with relevant parties as secondary legislation is developed. This will address matters such as the specific nature of the guarantee, the necessary duration of cover and how the cost of providing the guarantee is met. It is therefore not appropriate to put more detailed requirements regarding guarantees and warranties in the Bill. I hope that noble Lords will be reassured that we intend to include the principle of these amendments in regulations and not move their amendments. Amendments 3 and 5 deal with the detail on how standards will be enforced, specifically through what my official called ““mystery shopping””, which is a new one on me—I hope my wife is not taught about mystery shopping—and through access to an Ombudsman. The regulatory framework needs to be developed in more detail but in essence, yes, it is highly likely to include commonplace means of ensuring standards, such as mystery shopping. However, it would not be appropriate to place this level of detail in the Bill. We will bring forward more details of our regulatory framework during the progress of the Bill. We are committed to providing customers with a simple, seamless Green Deal service and are considering what is the best institutional framework to ensure that it is as simple as possible for a customer to get problems fixed or to seek redress. For example, it is not our intention that customers should have to contact different regulators for each circumstance. We will bring forward more details of our proposed framework during the progress of the Bill. With these reassurances, I hope noble Lords feel able to withdraw their amendments. Finally, Amendment 8 seeks to broaden protections designed for Green Deal products to cover any non-Green Deal services or goods provided by Green Deal participants at the same time. The amendment raises an important issue: the need to safeguard against home owners being sold measures by Green Deal providers that, unknown to them, do not benefit from the same regulation as the Green Deal itself. We have, however, already discussed this point and I have commented that it should not follow that the whole of the Green Deal framework can be applied appropriately to any other product or service.