Energy Bill [HL]

My Lords, this amendment brings two different subjects and two different strands to this debate: the role of local authorities and the ways in which we might incentivise the great British public to take advantage of the Green Deal. Ultimately, the measure of success of this scheme will be whether people sign up to see an assessor and say, ““That’s a great deal for me. Go ahead””. I believe that they will and that they should. Something that surprised me when I first read this Bill—I was going to say that with pride, but its sounds as though my noble friend Lord Moynihan has read it in much greater detail than I managed—was that local authorities do not seem to be covered until we get to the need to make sure that landlords behave themselves and participate. They seem to have disappeared from the concept of the Bill. I know that that is not the case, because the Government are heavily into localism, which I strongly applaud. However, in the Bill and in the massive task nationally to deliver energy savings across the nation, we need allies. Natural allies in this are local authorities—the ones with a track record. They have previously been involved in this area and have shown their keenness. More importantly, they know the lie of the land and more about communities, housing estates and roads than do central government or the Secretary of State, and they know more than individual utilities, deliverers or providers within the scheme. That is why it is important to involve them. Another theme that needs to come out with which local authorities could be very helpful—I refer to housing authorities in particular—is the achievement of even greater gains and possibilities as regards energy efficiency and saving, and help as regards fuel poverty. That can be done not only by looking at individual properties and flats or individual business units, but by looking at the opportunities that exist to act together. I do not propose that we substitute individual households participating in the scheme—I am sure that that will always constitute the major part—but I suggest that we bring together communities, streets, housing estates and those in flats of multiple occupation to form a single deal. That will bring better value to individual households and will enable us to complete this task more effectively. This is a probing amendment. I would not for one minute expect it to appear in the Bill because it is not written in the correct language and probably would not work. However, I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on, first, how local authorities can be involved and, secondly, on how we can ensure the rollout of a number of schemes that would be more effectively done on a community basis. As things stand, we will have a scattergun effect, where individual households make their decision about whether to participate. It will be like looking at the Milky Way, or the stars at night, where they appear all over the place with some areas of concentration. I think that it will be extremely effective to have individual street or housing estate action.