My Lords, this is an important amendment. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, gave the Government credit for what has been done. A good deal has been done. I am sure that the noble Lord will have studied, as I have, the paper produced last month on the Energy Savings Opportunities Scheme. It now has its own acronym—ESOS. One can read quite a lot about ESOS.
I was very encouraged the other day by reading of a meeting attended by my noble friend Lord Deighton, the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury. To quote from a press release, my noble friend,
“today said he is ‘extremely attracted’ to the idea of reframing home energy efficiency as one of the UK’s top 40 infrastructure priorities”.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, may well be pushing at an open door. My noble friend has very considerable influence on these matters and comes to this House and his job with a very great reputation for what he succeeded in doing in the case of the Olympic Games. As most noble Lords will recognise, he is a figure to be regarded with considerable respect not only in this House but outside it, too.
My noble friend was asked by the Green Building Council chief executive, Paul King,
“whether the Government needed to change the mindset on home retrofit from thinking about 26 million small problems to one major infrastructure opportunity. Lord Deighton said he was ‘seduced’ by the idea of reframing the debate on energy efficiency and that ‘Government should lead’ on the agenda”.
Coming from that source, I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench will sing from the same hymn sheet. It is perfectly clear—as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, eloquently put it—that this policy has no down side and very considerable upside attractions if one can reach the point where one needs to invest less in production because one is saving more and using energy a great deal more efficiently. That seems to be highly desirable.
It is very interesting that an organisation called the Energy Bill Revolution, which sent me a brief on this recently, quotes research from Cambridge Econometrics showing that energy efficiency schemes,
“outstripped all other investments and tax breaks by creating over 70,000 jobs by 2015, and the boosting of GDP by 0.2%”.
It goes on to say that the key reason for those figures is that the high level of job creation is because it is much more labour-intensive than many other forms of energy investment and much less material-intensive than most construction projects.
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As the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, said, it needs to enter into the mindset of all who are concerned with energy matters in the UK. We have quite a long way to go. I insulated my house a few years ago under the CERT scheme. It has made a difference, not so much to our bills because we are getting older and need to be kept warmer, but certainly to the degree of comfort we have, and I commend it. This is supposed to be what the Green Deal is following up.
I do not particularly support the wording of the amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has moved, but his argument that this should have a higher priority in energy policy has a good deal to commend it. It would certainly have my support.