In my point of order earlier I said that this was a 328-page Bill. That was what it was when it came from the House of Lords; it is now a 427-page Bill, which we are expected to debate in detail in three hours, on a day when we had two relatively lightweight statements. That really seems to me not the proper way to have scrutiny in this House. It does not allow this House to do its proper job of looking at the detail of legislation—it is as if we had abdicated it entirely to their lordships.
I have supported my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) in a number of amendments, every single one of which has basically the same aim: to ameliorate the burden this Bill will place on all our constituents. Throughout the Bill, we are creating cost, regulation, penalties and obligations. New clause 42 is there to say that the lowest possible cost should be at the forefront of the mind of the Government in everything that they do, irrespective of how the energy is generated. If that means fossil fuels, let it be fossil fuels. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said, we need to keep people with us, and we risk losing them if we put undue burdens on them.
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What other burdens did we seek to take away? Well, the hydrogen levy, of course. I am all in favour of hydrogen; I think it could be the fuel of the future—I remember that when I was a child, coal was advertised as the fuel of the future. Hydrogen may have a better opportunity, but that cannot be done by levies and imposts, and I hope that what the Government have done will not be a power that they use to create a levy and an impost.
On entering people’s homes without a warrant, a warrant is not the protection that one would like it to be—we saw the scandal of warrants just being agreed
by the courts willy-nilly to insist on the installation of prepayment meters—but at least a warrant is some protection. Let us protect our voters. Smart appliance regulations are the EU’s approach to regulating rather than the market approach. Surely we on the Conservative Benches believe in market forces determining how things should happen.
Our amendment 67 deals with a Henry VIII clause to try to stop legislation being changed by fiat. Most importantly, on amendment 66, can it possibly be right to criminalise people, and potentially put them in jail for a year, for muddling their energy efficiency certificate? No, it cannot, and we should not do it.