Renewable Heat Incentive (Amendment to the Energy Act 2008) Regulations 2011

No, I am merely saying that it can be backdated. Obviously, it may take time to process a person’s accreditation, and that accreditation may go into a subsequent year. If you complete your accreditation, and then it takes a while to process it, the backdating could go back to the year when the accreditation was first accepted. I am, as always, happy to pick up comments later but I wish to move on to the subject of waste. We are slightly in the hands of Defra as regards its definition of ““waste””. I am glad to say that Defra has recently extended the definition of ““waste”” to include a number of other types of waste. As was said earlier, the RHI supports some commercial waste. There are doubtless one or two that it does not but we have instructed Ofgem to look at this and to provide a pragmatic solution as regards other waste. Ofgem will be the arbiter of that. I hope that through this process we will embrace as much as possible because, after all, that is our intention. It is not our intention to exclude waste, it is our intention to make it available to as many as possible, and this is a clear way of doing that. The noble Baroness mentioned Regulation 3(2). I confirm that it is not our intention to exclude chemical plants. The intention is to show that we will not support RHI for open-sided warehouses and similar locations, where it is like trying to heat fresh air. Again, we have instructed Ofgem to clarify this issue through the process. We hope that as we proceed, with further advice from the noble Baroness and her team, in the spirit of co-operation we will come up with a good proposal for the RHI. It is an excellent endeavour started by the previous Government, which we have happily brought into legislation. I therefore commend these regulations to the Committee. Motion agreed.