Home Energy Efficiency Scheme (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2010

My Lords, the thing that interested me most when I read this rather obscure amending regulation was that it insisted that the Government pay the agency that had to do the work. I could not understand how it had worked in the past if there was no obligation on the Government to pay the agency that delivered this programme. However, the Minister may wish to come back on that. Last week I had to leave the House to go to a conference before the comprehensive spending review was completed. I watched part of it at Heathrow as I waited to go to a conference in Japan where we discussed matters such as energy and climate change. I was struck by how good DECC—the Minister and his colleagues—had been in its tussle with the Treasury and my honourable friend Danny Alexander to achieve a good settlement for the environment and for energy in the review. Carbon capture and storage, the renewable heat initiative and feed-in tariffs, which many of us had feared would be significantly cut back, are still going ahead. It is good to see that the emphasis given to climate change and energy within the coalition agreement is being delivered in that way. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, stated, the situation could change and the Warm Front scheme might have to come to an end during a budgetary year because of the funds running out. I regret that, theoretically, that could happen and that it is slightly more likely now. I realise that it will be the case in some areas because of the problems that we have with the national budget at the moment and the changes that we will have to bring forward in order to make the accounts balance sufficiently in the future. If that situation ever comes into being, cutting off a fund at a particular point would be an unfair way of rationing allocations. What plans do the Government have to ensure that any rationing will produce best value in terms of energy saved for those households that need the investment most?