Energy Efficiency and Microgeneration Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the Bill. I will speak relatively briefly because, despite his vocal incapacity, the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, has managed to convince me that the Bill is well worth being taken forward by the House. It is one of a series of Private Members’ Bills—perhaps a good indication of the importance of the mechanism—that have, either by being directly adopted by Parliament or by influencing government behaviour, made a perhaps small but significant, positive step towards tackling such issues as fuel poverty, energy efficiency and climate change. This Bill is very much in that tradition, and the noble Lord has played a major part in those earlier Bills. I hope that the Government will take most of the points on board in so far as they have not already done so. I will declare several interests, just in case they come up. I am a member of the Environment Agency and the London Climate Change Agency, and president of the Combined Heat and Power Association. I also chair the National Consumer Council. As the noble Lord said, if you are looking for sustainable consumer choice, cost at the margins makes a lot of difference. In this area, and in sustainable choices in general, anything that can reduce the cost will guide consumers to make more sensible sustainable choices. This Bill deals mainly with facilitating action and changing the behaviour of householders, farms and small businesses, particularly in improving the energy efficiency of buildings. It also helps to ensure that the property market, both its regulatory framework and its taxation, encourages energy efficiency improvements rather than, as occasionally happens at present, discouraging them. The first two clauses are tied up with the argument about home improvement packs. I think I am correct in saying that, seven years ago, I was the first Minister to introduce a Bill—which failed with the recall of the 2001 election—to put home improvement packs in place. It has taken seven years to get there, and there has been considerable turbulence for Ministers in trying to pursue this. I put on record my commendation of the Housing Minister, Yvette Cooper. Whatever else she has encountered in this area, she has maintained a commitment to energy efficiency, which looks as though it will survive and will be a major contribution. The Minister also deserves commendation on social housing, where, as the noble Baroness knows, I do not always agree with government policy. Any money that you might squeeze out of the Chancellor in the next spending round—for new-build social housing and replacement of the decent homes initiative—will help to improve the energy efficiency of our building stock. It is important we say that because in the past there has been a trade-off between the ability of units to be produced and the standard of energy efficiency. That is a false economy on behalf of government and future household occupiers. Most property is not new; in some cases it has existed for several hundred years. We have the least energy-efficient property stock in northern Europe. The property market is almost entirely about exchanges on existing property. As the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, said, over 25 per cent of carbon emissions emanate from the building stock. It is important that we require in the buying and selling process that greater attention is paid to energy efficiency provisions. Under the HIP provisions we will set different prices for equivalent buildings on the grounds of relative energy efficiency. It may be relatively marginal to start with, but it will become a significant part of how people negotiate the price of a building, in terms of premium, on the one hand, and discount, on the other—and in last-minute deals on a house. I regret that, when I took part recently in debates on the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill, I failed to notice the need for a requirement, in quasi-regulation under that Bill, that estate agents ensure that all their advertising meets the kind of provisions that the noble Lord has put into this Bill. That may have been another way in, but it is here in this Bill and we should endorse it. As the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, indicated, since the Bill was first presented, the Government have moved some way towards stating that they will regulate in the context of HIP roughly what is contained in the first two clauses. I would very much welcome confirmation of that from the Minister. I hope that that would ensure that the provisions of Clause 2 would be dealt with in legislation passing through another place, or in other ways. If we were to remove our attention from those two clauses, and if the Government were unable to use other provisions, we would be missing an opportunity. Another issue is how we fund the market. Mortgage providers fund the bulk of the property market, both domestic and commercial. It is important that, given the many options available to mortgage seekers of all kinds and the creativity of the financial sector in this area, which has been positively remarked upon, we should consider requiring that energy efficiency improvement be offered on mortgage-like terms, with long pay-back periods and mortgage-related interest rates. Whether they should be called ““green mortgages””, with all the complications to which the noble Lord has referred, is immaterial; but there is scope for placing a mandatory requirement on mortgage providers to offer some kind of option. After all, the contribution of the financial sector to sustainable objectives has not been remarkable. It is an area where mortgage providers and banks could make a significant contribution. The other aspect of any market is taxation, and the provisions on council tax are important here. There are some very good but localised examples of individual councils making positive provision through a council tax discount against improvements for energy efficiency or fuel poverty elimination. I would prefer to see a big push on that front, but it is also true that a number of provisions, which both domestic and commercial operations have adopted, have led to an enhanced council tax band or enhanced business rates. That is perverse; the Bill has a fairly minimalist objective: to avoid the discouragement of desirable energy efficiency measures by the council tax system. I hope that the Government, including the DCLG in its arguments with the Treasury in this area—it is responsible for local taxation—will ensure that we avoid this perverse effect. In addition to householders and small businesses, the Bill would benefit farmers. Most people tend to think that farmers’ contributions on energy supply are largely through growing biofuels, of which I am an important advocate. They can also make a major contribution by having small-scale generation on their land. I am very much in favour of the commitment in the recent energy White Paper to use decentralised energy; I refer to their, and their near neighbours’ use on-farm and to selling that energy back to the grid. We are talking not about huge turbines here, which involve landscape objections, but small-scale wind turbines, solar power, CHP on-site and so on, all of which could make a significant contribution. That provision is an important part of this Bill; it could save farmers money and give them some much-needed income. All aspects of this Bill should be acceptable to the Government; they are much in line with aspects of the energy White Paper and the Government’s desire to encourage more sustainable behaviour among consumers. Taken with the measures that the Government have already embarked on, they could make a major contribution to the efforts of householders and owners and occupiers of buildings to tackle climate change. I therefore commend the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, on bringing this Bill forward and I hope that the House can accept it.