Energy Bill

My Lords, this is another broad and, in some ways, probing amendment. I have gone through the Bill. The Minister might be able to put me right but I could not see anywhere that there was an actual duty on the Green Deal providers to make sure that they actually provided the best deal that there was available. I then had to think what is the right deal to put forward in order to write this amendment. Even with the broad strategic messages that I had written down, that became quite difficult. It is important that it should be made clear in the Bill, which is the primary legislation, that there is a duty on the Green Deal providers, who are in a position of preference—and I was going to say that the noble Lord, who is not here any more, used the right phrase—to make sure that it is the best deal. What is that? I believe that they need to show some sort of documentary evidence—and we again come back to the assessment argument or the list one way or another—in the way that financial services providers have to, that they have gone through certain processes, not just generic ones but ones to do with the situation of the property and the household itself. This is not just about property. It is in a way about what that household can actually afford, or the payback period in which they can work. There are variations within the golden rule. The golden rule must be met, but it perhaps can be met in a number of different ways. There is a duty of care here. I would like to think that there was also, where possible, options and choices—not too many, not too complicated and not for their own sake—and that there should be some ability to have a discussion about what is the right solution out of a number of possibilities. I also believe that, for the energy plan that is agreed, there should be, at the end of the day, a carbon emissions statement that brings that area back into the consumer’s view. Why are we doing all of this? It is to save energy and to be of benefit to the consumer and the household individually. However, it is also very useful to illustrate on the plan that this is also about decarbonising the economy and reducing carbon emissions. In this amendment I am trying to make it clear that—again, I quite understand that there is a complicity below this—there is a duty on Green Deal providers to make sure that households are able to make good decisions from good information. In a way it comes back again to that debate that we had before. It is very important that there is not just a quality check in terms of assessors but that they have to use their grey cells as well as just a checklist to make sure that the scheme that is put forward is a good one. I would like it to look beyond the Green Deal issue.