Energy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support this amendment. In the past I may have conveyed the impression that all landlords were bad. That is not true and it was not my intention to do so. There are, however, too many landlords who are not very good and some of them go up the Richter scale to very awful. We know that some of them will not be moved by the spirit of this Bill, either to get people’s homes well insulated or to save the planet. We recognise that it is preferable not to be unduly prescriptive when legislation is being introduced, but if we find there are abuses which we could more speedily remedy through regulation, we need not necessarily have that within the agenda of the review committee, worthy though its endeavours may turn out to be. We know that there are landlords who do not enter into the spirit of even the existing legislation and if they are shown to be as recalcitrant following the new legislation as they have been in the past with the old, then we should move with all reasonable speed. That does not necessarily require us to make their activities the subject of a review procedure, some aspects of which may not be relevant to the problem and may require a more leisurely and rigorous approach to dealing with it. If there are abuses and there are remedies available to deal with these abuses, it should be incumbent on the Government of the day to move with all desirable speed to address these challenges. Even with the best of endeavours, we are not going to produce an ideal piece of legislation which will inspire the desire to follow on with the good work or inspire fear in the part of the more recalcitrant landlords whom I consider, for the benefit of the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, a minority. Sadly, the nature of their abuses makes them a significant minority in a number of instances when we realise the pain they impose on, very often, vulnerable and disadvantaged families.