My Lords, we come back to a subject we always discuss in energy Bills, whether the dormant Energy Bill or the Energy Prices Bill in front of us today: energy efficiency and demand reduction. Whatever the Government say from their Front Bench about what is being done, it is quite clear that this is not seen as a priority in reality. Indeed, as far as I have noticed, it does not feature to any significant extent in this Bill. However, although I accept that the Bill is very much about short-term measures, we still have to look forward to the medium and longer term and how we make sure that, after the payments we are making and the Bill intends to make into the future—which are substantial, with estimates varying from £40 billion to £100 billion, depending on how long these measures last—we do not go back to square one whenever such a crisis arises again, despite having spent literally billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.
This is a very mild amendment. We are being modest because we hope that the Government will accept that we should have at least something in the Bill about energy efficiency. We are asking for a proper and comprehensive review of costs to do with energy efficiency within six months of the Bill being passed. As noble Lords can see from the amendment, we are asking for a review of the impact of
“the number of homes and business properties which have increased their EPC rating … fitting … solar panels, and … replacement of gas boilers, … increases in renewable energy sources, and … public messaging campaigns”.
I would be interested to understand where the Government are on public messaging campaigns at the moment. I understand that the almost-past Government very much resisted them. Can the Minister give us more of an idea of where we are now?
What I am emphasising here is that it is essential that energy efficiency and demand reduction should be at the top of the list of tools of energy policy as a way forward. We clearly need some reference to them in the Bill, while we are making these huge payments, to make sure that businesses are able to continue in the future and that households can afford their energy bills without going into debt—although I fear that many will in any case. That is the core of this amendment and we take this very seriously. We believe that the Government have not performed sufficiently on this during their time in government.
I will also speak briefly to Amendment 9, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, who is not in her place at the moment, for her support. Amendment 9 looks forward to where we go after this major splurge of public expenditure. I think a consensus is coming—from consumers, consumer groups and energy companies themselves—on how we
need to treat energy Bills in the future, in that we have to move to a different place. One place we could move to is a social tariff. Nothing is perfect in this world. We know that in a situation where people move out of the definition of qualifying for a social tariff, it can have negative effects on income or whatever.
A social tariff would mean those households in fuel poverty being able to solve that issue by paying a different tariff on their electricity from those not in that degree of poverty. We all know that, even without the current crisis, many millions of households are in fuel poverty. This has not been solved by Governments over the years. The long-term way is energy efficiency and demand reduction but, in the medium term, surely we should start planning now for something of the order of a social tariff. I beg to move.