Energy Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his explanation and to my noble friend Lord O’Neill. However, I struggle with his analogy of two runners. One is ahead, so we do not help that one. However, we do not have two runners here; we do not have two sectors in competition. To stretch his analogy, we have two teams. In the team that is doing well, there are some who are lagging a long way behind. A trainer would give support to them. We should congratulate the social housing sector. With a lot of support from the previous Government, it has done extremely well in moving ahead on energy efficiency. However, that is not to say that every single home in the social rented sector is as energy efficient as possible. I recently spoke to a couple who have not had a new boiler for more than 20 years and whose electricity bill for heating last winter was £400. That is shocking. The point is that it is not the kind of house that someone lives in—whether it is privately rented, owner-occupied or socially rented—but the need to have energy-efficiency measures. Housing stock that is 10 points higher in the social rented sector or the private rented sector is quite good but the private rented sector starts from a very low base. Therefore, although it is better, it is not good enough. Last week the Minister said that he wanted to skip out of the Committee, and he almost had the same effect on me when I heard him say that this was a very good idea. At one point I thought I heard him say that he would look at the issue, although he seems to have moved away from that. If he thinks that there is another way within the Bill—