Energy Bill

My Lords, as has been pointed out, Amendment 5ZA is a manuscript amendment. First, I apologise to the Committee for not putting this down until this morning. This brings me to an issue that the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, raised earlier, about the 101 of amendments. One of the 101s of amendments, after you have got past ““may/shall”” is to look at the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee or the Constitution Committee or some of our other excellent Select Committees to see which points are raised that need to be debated in Grand Committee. Over the weekend, when I was looking at the amendments that had been tabled, I realised that nobody had put down the amendment that flowed out of the eighth report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. However, the other amendment in this group is Amendment 8D in the name of my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, who came to the same conclusion over the weekend because our amendments address substantially the same point. I shall explain the point raised by the Delegated Powers Committee. It relates to the code of practice under Clause 3. The scheme established by the framework regulations, which is in subsection (3) includes, in paragraphs (h) and (i), that those regulations may provide for securing compliance with, inter alia, any conditions of the code and, in paragraph (i), the consequences of non-compliance. We then come to the code requirements, which will be mandatory. Those are found in subsection (4) of Clause 3, and they cover a large number of things which have a financial bearing on those who are participating in the Green Deal. For example, they cover insurance, which has been covered by the amendments that noble Lords have just spoken to. They cover the payment of Green Deal assessors, circumstances in which assessors may charge customers, and quite a lot of things affecting the way the finances are going to work for those involved in the Green Deal. These are not insignificant issues that are going to be found in the code of practice. As the Delegated Powers Committee pointed out, this code is not of the ““have regard to”” variety, which a lot of statutory codes are; this code is of the ““must comply with”” variety. So these are very important. Clause 3(8) shows the consequences of non-compliance with the code. They can include cancelling any liability, requiring Green Deal providers to suspend or cancel liability of a bill payer and requiring a Green Deal participant to pay compensation or a financial penalty. Nowhere in subsection (8) is there any restriction in monetary amounts or any other kind of amount. As the Delegated Powers Committee pointed out, the code of practice which is going to cover all these very significant issues is subject to no parliamentary procedure at all. It is just something that will be decided by the Minister. The report recommends in paragraph (8): "““The use of a code for provision of this kind appears to us to be a form of sub-delegation of statutory prescription into an instrument that would currently attract no form of parliamentary scrutiny. In view of its mandatory nature, and the possible consequences of non-compliance, the Committee considers that the code under clause 3 should be subject to parliamentary control by way of a draft negative procedure, and we recommend accordingly””." Over the weekend, I drafted the amendment to Clause 33 which would have put the draft negative procedure into the relevant clause of the Bill. However, for the purposes of today, I did not table that as a manuscript amendment because the substance to be discussed is whether there should be parliamentary procedure. In my amendment I have merely said that the code has to be made by order; that would then require some parliamentary procedure, but we would need to define that later. I say to my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding that his Amendment 8D has not provided the draft negative procedure. It has provided an ordinary negative procedure. The Delegated Powers Committee intended to go a bit further and require a draft instrument to be laid for a certain number of days before the instrument could be made. That is probably a better procedure to be used in this case. I hope that the Minister will see the force of the arguments made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and will agree to this or some similar amendment. I beg to move.