Energy Bill [HL]

Short-term tenants who are in poor-quality houses and move on regularly are not normally the kind of people who will have the time, let alone the inclination, to enter into such an agreement. They may not actually be involved when it comes to the implementation of the scheme, because there is likely to be some time lag. The other side of that is that the kind of landlords who operate in these areas are often unscrupulous and indifferent. Particularly in big cities, we now have substantial numbers of an almost underclass of people who live on the national minimum wage, are in one job that is lowly paid and get moved on to another and, perforce of circumstance, keep moving. There does not seem to be much consciousness on the part of government that such a group of people exist. I am not certain whether they will really be touched by the Green Deal because of the indifference of the landlord, the difficulties facing the tenant, and the persistence of high energy bills due to the inadequacy of the insulation of the houses—that is the simplest form of improvement that such properties could have. No matter how much encouragement we give either to the tenant or to the landlord in these circumstances, I am not sure that much will happen. We might have to fall back on other forms of remedial action, which might not have the market finesse that the Green Deal is supposed to promise.