My Lords, I think we are straying into unnecessary territory here—very philosophical points which are no doubt extremely
interesting. I will not rehearse at length the argument I made when this Committee last discussed this matter. However, there is an obligation on government as far as this is concerned because government do not enable us to have some simple system of verifying who we are. When we need to verify our identity, we are required to turn up with a paper copy, sent to us via the post, of a utility bill. All my utilities are trying to move over to sending everything electronically but an electronic copy does not suffice for those purposes. Until such time as we have a system of identify verification, people will rely on receiving paper utility bills.
I have one other point why paper utility bills are important. We are encouraged by government to switch suppliers. This is part of the philosophy of improving competition. You switch suppliers. You move to another supplier. You have a new website to go into and a new password. All these passwords, I am sure, we do our best to remember and not write down somewhere. Of course, you can no longer access the website of your previous supplier because you are no longer their customer. If you need to check back on whether the prices are indeed comparable, that data are no longer available unless you, the customer, spend money on printing them out and keep a paper copy. Surely that is the wrong way round.