Electricity and Gas (Community Energy Saving Programme) Order 2009

My Lords, I was going to thank the Minister for explaining this so well, but I am not so sure now, having listened to everyone else. Maybe I have missed a few things here. I know for sure that the question of the noble Lord, Lord Reay, about the cost to the consumer, particularly the disadvantaged consumer—a point taken up by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson—is valid. We know that the Government are a little slow on getting round to tackling fuel poverty. They have been very slow, and they are not getting any faster. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked one or two questions that I had written down, which I shall not repeat because he has already asked them. Perhaps I may just whistle through one or two. We support the carbon emissions reduction target and the sentiment behind the community energy saving programme, but we are concerned about the implementation, aware that the Government recently spent, as we heard, £16 million on the Warm Front scheme, distributing energy-saving light bulbs to every household. I am delighted to hear that the Government have realised that that was a complete waste of time and that they will not do it again. The community energy saving programme includes home energy advice as a measure that can be offered where experts will visit householders and audit current energy, allowing households to take simple, easy steps to reduce energy consumption and cut their fuel bills. I, too, find that difficult to visualise happening in some houses. Given that there are already many energy assessors out of work, I ask whether they will be fulfilling the role of the home energy advisers. The Government have estimated that 60 pert cent of the total funding available under the community energy saving programme will go to low-income and elderly householders, who will receive free or substantially discounted energy-saving improvements such as insulation. Will the Minister clarify whether this will be in addition to the support already available to those vulnerable households? I have listened, as we all have, to some of the Government’s good ideas on CESP and CERT, so the Minister might like to listen to a good idea from this side and see whether he agrees with it. One of our policies is to grant an entitlement to householders to approved home energy-efficiency works up to the value of £6,500. The cost would then be recovered automatically through the household energy bill over a period of up to 25 years, but with a payback period, in terms of reduced fuel consumption, that is substantially shorter. This will be in addition to CERT. Does the Minister think that that is a good idea and would he like to add it to the list of measures that he thinks will tackle these two problems?