Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 40: Page 4, line 37, leave out from ““must”” to second ““to”” inline 38 and insert ““develop policies and discharge its duties so that it contributes”” The noble Baroness said: I am glad that the Conservative Front-Benchers also regard the clause on sustainability as a complete fudge. They have reworded it concisely. My amendment would give it a few more teeth. The clause says: "““The Council must have regard to the desirability of acting in the manner best calculated to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development””" I am sure that the Minister will say that it is designed to achieve, in the phrase of the afternoon, the greatest flexibility. However, if energy comes within the purview of the council, as the Bill proposes, this phrase will be much more important than the Minister has perhaps thought. The public are, rightly, consistently asked to do more to conserve energy because of climate change considerations. It is one of the biggest issues of the moment, and the public are taking an interest in what they can do beyond buying properly labelled white goods or insulating their loft. Some of the work of Energywatch is relevant here, such as talking to Ofcom about smart metering. The consumer could be put in charge in a very visual way of the amount of energy that they use. Those who decided to go into microgeneration would be able to sell to the grid. The council will need a clear overview of exactly what is stopping or frustrating consumers and making them complain in their efforts to mitigate the effects of their actions on climate change. I accept that my amendment may well be imperfect, and I hope that the Government’s experienced draftsmen will be able to come up with something far more definite, but unless Clause 5(8) is worded more definitely, it will not be sufficient to enable the council to act strongly. One of my questions for the Minister is whether it is as strong as the duty currently laid on the NCC or other bodies. This seems to be a much lesser duty compared to that which we put on Ofwat or that introduced in the Energy Act, because of all the weasel words such as ““must have regard to””, ““desirability”” and ““acting in the manner””. I do not mind whether the Government prefer the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, or my amendment, but either would have more teeth than what is in the Bill. I beg to move.