My Lords, Amendment 274B was added to the Energy Bill during the previous consideration of Commons amendments. As the House will be aware, the amendment was debated in the other place last week and the Government Motion to disagree to the amendment was passed with a substantial majority.
I can confirm to the House that our position remains the same. The amendments would commit the Government to a consultation on the barriers preventing the development of community energy schemes. The amendment sets out with whom we would consult and commits the Government to bringing forward proposals to remove identified barriers to community energy within a brief six-month timescale.
I welcome the constructive engagement from across the House, in particular from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. I welcome her continued efforts throughout the passage of the Bill to ensure that the interests of the community energy sector are heard in this Chamber, but I reassure the noble Baroness that, on this issue, the Government have already made a clear commitment to the consultation.
As part of this commitment, we have outlined that we will engage in an open and collaborative way with the community energy sector, via the community energy contact group, to design the consultation. In fact, officials are already engaging on exactly that, and earlier this month held a very constructive discussion on the consultation with the group. Given our existing commitment to consult, and our ongoing engagement with the sector, we therefore believe that it is of no additional value to put the specifics in primary legislation.
In addition, there are further issues with the previous amendments that meant that we could not support their inclusion in the Bill. We clearly cannot commit to putting forward proposals to remove barriers that are preventing the development of community energy schemes before we know what barriers are raised in the consultation, or the implications of removing them. It would be remiss of us to agree to put that into primary legislation. Placing this obligation on the Government would be putting the cart before the horse.
However, I reassure the House yet again that the Government will carry out the consultation and continue to work closely with the sector to do so. I also reiterate the Government’s support in principle for community energy; we recognise the role that community groups play in our efforts to eliminate our contribution to climate change. I participated in a great visit to North
Kensington Community Energy two weeks ago where I was able to see first-hand some of the important work that the sector does and to meet the contact group.
More widely, government support for the sector is demonstrated through existing support that we have already put in place, such as the £10 million community energy fund. I am pleased to tell the House that we aim to open applications to that fund as soon as we possibly can.