Electricity and Gas (Carbon Emissions Reduction) Order 2008

My Lords, I quite agree that it is not good enough. Perhaps if it would satisfy everybody I should stand here and read the letter out, but I do not know whether that would be a good use of the House’s time. The noble Lord makes two central points, both of which have a degree of justification. He asked, first, how you identify the people concerned and, secondly, about the force of the penalties on the companies. Those are the two points dealt with in the amendment to the Motion. On the first point of identifying people, in the fourth Question today we have just heard about a situation in which people are identified and still do not make the claim for the bursaries. It is bewildering when the money is available that people do not make a claim. In this case, it is somewhat more difficult. Last year 1,000 households were targeted by post—so obviously it was done on a fairly small scale—to test the system whereby the Government get the addresses and take the material from the companies. This year, the mail shot targeted 250,000 households specifically in receipt of pension credit. It is not just any 250,000 households, but single-person households in urban areas and two-person households in rural areas. Again, the Government got the information for the addresses and the industry supplied the necessary leaflets. That was organised in partnership with the DWP, the department that I still call Trade and Industry and eaga, the Warm Front campaign manager. We will work closely with the energy suppliers over the next few months on the feedback from that targeted mail shot because that may be a way for the future. There is an issue of data sharing here. I would not come to this Chamber asking for permission to disclose the names and addresses of individual beneficiaries to any company, whatever good it was going to do. It has to be done a different way and we have to be serious about this. We want to target the people who we know are out there and are fuel poor, but we have to do that in a way consistent with protecting their privacy. Nobody likes having their door knocked on by an official from the council and being told, ““You live in a slum, we’ve come to help you””. They do not like it. My constituents who lived in prefabs did not like it; people on benefit do not like being told, ““You’re poor, we’re from the Government and we’ve come to help””. We have to do it another way, so that there is a partnership and some ownership over the decision—in other words, so that it is the applicant that makes the claim. We have to get the information to the applicant in the best possible way. That is what we are trying to do with the mail shot of 250,000 people on one particular benefit—pension credit. It is highly targeted. We also have 50 other projects that have been offered funding through the community energy efficiency fund, which was launched in June last year. Those projects demonstrate cost-effective ways in which to deliver the carbon emission reduction targets and Warm Front on a local basis. Of course, there are partnership arrangements with social housing providers and charities, which can be done by the companies because they are going to the landlord, not to the individual. So the information transmits through another route. It is second-hand, I fully agree, but I am happy to defend the system because I am not prepared to come to the House to ask for 11 million names and addresses to be given to private companies. I fully accept that the penalty could look onerous, but as part of its enforcement powers, Ofgem—which is responsible for regulating this scheme—has the power to impose a financial penalty, as I said in Committee. That penalty has to be reasonable in the circumstances and must not exceed 10 per cent. That does not mean that any company that does not meet its target gets fined 10 per cent of its turnover, or even gets fined, because Ofgem would be duty-bound to compare the performance of that company with others in the sector—otherwise that would be completely unfair and unreasonable. We would know whether companies are in breach of the requirement, so it is not inevitable that a financial penalty would be involved. Ofgem first has to decide whether it would be appropriate to do so. I do not see what the problem is. I did not have every answer for the noble Lord, who had given notice of his questions to the department. I have since answered them in a letter, and I hope that I have answered them now. If he does not like it, I invite him to test the opinion of the House. The reality is that he is asking for the order to be rejected. I do not think that that is a very good idea. I hope that I have given him the answers he requires; if I have not, it is up to him what he does in the next stage.