My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who took part in the debate. I thank the Minister for his response. The issue of value for money, as my noble friend Lord Stunell pointed out, is a central part of the Bill. All we are asking is that the value-for-money assessments the Government rely on are published. I am pleased that the Minister said that they will be published, albeit not at the stage we would wish them to be. That is some progress at least, but it puts the slightly bizarre argument that this is not an issue for amendment in that context.
Regarding universal credit, the Minister said that it would be administratively difficult because the electricity suppliers are charged the RAB charge and would have to pass it on to consumers. It would, of course, potentially
be possible for the Government to exclude the relevant amount for universal credit and other legacy benefit users. It would also be possible and open for the Government, if they wanted to, to assess whatever the RAB charge is and give that as an additional benefit to those people. But the essential issue is that we cannot put further burdens on people who are already suffering enormously with the cost of energy and cost-of-living increases. This has to be solved. I am sure it is not beyond the Minister and his colleagues, if he says that there are technical problems with putting universal credit or other legacy benefits into the Bill, to correct that when it goes back to the Commons and bring forward an amendment that they think would work.
Overall, we have to take some action to protect these very vulnerable consumers. I think we can all agree on that and I hope the House will support the amendment when we come to it. As I said to the Minister, I am grateful on the issue of value-for-money assessments. I am sorry he could not go further on the impact on consumers’ bills as a whole. We really need more transparency on that.
Finally, I say to the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, that I am absolutely delighted by his interest in Liberal Democrat policy. Knowing his deep and clear affection for the Liberal Democrats, as shown in these debates, I am surprised that he has not already read our excellent policy paper Tackling the Climate Emergency, which sets out in comprehensive detail, as only a Liberal Democrat policy paper can, how to decarbonise the grid without the need for new nuclear. However, if by any chance he has not had the chance, I would be very happy to send it to him. With that, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 1.