My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. I am very appreciative for all the support from noble Lords around the Committee on the principle of these amendments and, perhaps, even more delighted that in his absence the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, appears to have pre-empted me and got into the heart of the Treasury the precise intention of the amendment—that whatever else we do with energy efficiency, it needs to be considered on the same level, at the same time and on the same criteria as other infrastructure projects.
There is a lot of experience around this Room, but there is an essential truth in what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said and what my noble friend Lady Worthington said in a rather sharper tone—that infrastructure projects narrowly conceived have an attraction to Ministers that pushes out priorities that might be given to projects that are slightly more mundane but equally effective and important for the future of our economy and society.
It goes a long way back. As a very junior civil servant in the late 1960s, I was in the Ministry of Technology. It and the NRDC, as it then was, had energy efficiency as one of their objectives, but it was pretty low down the list. We had all sorts of sexy and exciting things such as Concorde and nuclear power stations to deal with, and it rarely rose above the surface. Subsequent departments, although they quite often had quite a lot of people working on energy efficiency, did not really improve that status. I become Minister for Energy Efficiency in 2001, and it was a very frustrating job, partly because it was isolated in a different department from other energy issues, but whatever the structure of Whitehall, all Ministers who have had that responsibility have found it frustrating.
In my opening remarks, I spoke about importance and priority, but status is also important. I hope that now we have energy located in one department—it has taken a few years to put it together—that the civil servants dealing with this issue are accorded status equal to that of those who are dealing with big power stations and other infrastructure projects and that that is reflected in the way in which the department operates with other departments around Whitehall, and in particular with the Treasury, which, until I heard the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, repeated by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, I had thought was still going to be an inhibition. It appears that it is now going to be a fairly substantial supporter of the intention of these amendments. I would have thought that that might carry some weight with Ministers at DECC.
We can argue about how much is being done, and a lot is being done. We can argue about its efficacy and balance, but that is a separate argument. We are saying that we have a national infrastructure plan that is revised every year or two—I hope that will continue—and that the projects within it gain status by their inclusion in terms of capital expenditure and political attention which other projects do not have. If we are to bring together all the different aspects of energy efficiency and put it on the same basis as other infrastructure projects, it should be explicit. Indeed, in the energy section, it is arguable that it should be at the top because the degree to which you are successful at
energy conservation and energy efficiency defines the degree to which you have to have new generation projects and speed up distribution and transmission.
I do not accept the Minister’s view that because a lot of things are being done and are reflected in important reports from the Government, the department, the Committee on Climate Change and other bodies we should ignore what lies behind this. Infrastructure is the word of the moment as all political parties approach the general election. I hope that whoever are the Government after the general election, infrastructure improvement remains up there in lights and if other things are up there in lights—“lights” is probably the wrong word to use in an energy debate—energy efficiency needs to be there as well. Whoever produces the next national infrastructure plan should include energy efficiency in an important place within that programme. At the moment, it is not there.
All this is not technologically specific. It is simply saying that whatever programmes there are for energy efficiency, they need to be up there in parallel and justified on the same cost-benefit or whatever analysis applies to other infrastructure projects. I do not think that on reflection the Minister would have any real difficulty with that. It appears she has the support of the Treasury. She has two or three months to think about it before we come back after the Summer Recess. I would have thought that that was ample time. If she does not like my phraseology or we need to make it more clear, defined and acceptable to her colleagues, I am quite happy with that, but the burden of argument in the Committee is that she must come back with something and that the next infrastructure plan must reflect that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.