Energy Bill [HL]

The Minister is doing her best in what we all appreciate is a very difficult area. We all understand that the tenant’s response is optional. We discussed this in the previous sitting of the Committee. We cannot have a situation where a tenant exercises an absolute veto, because one person might operate a veto on 400 fellow tenants, all of whom agreed to the change. We all recognise that there is no veto. However, there is an issue about a tenant's consent and subsequent payments. The Minister is leading us down some strange paths. Are we saying that the holiday could last for the whole period of their tenancy, however long that might be? Who makes the judgment on the right to opt out of an agreement that admittedly may have preceded their arrival in the tenancy? How do they exercise the opt-out, for how long, in which circumstances and who is the adjudicator?