UK Parliament / Open data

Energy Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply and thank all noble Lords who joined in this short debate. I tried to keep my remarks fairly brief to begin with because I was conscious of the time but was very grateful that noble Lords who joined in all brought in really important points to make the case that I was trying to make. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness for indicating that, as we go through the Bill, we may be able to have something a little more definite.

What really concerned me was that we have all sorts of legislation around the area of energy and energy efficiency and I wanted to make sure that we are joining things up. That is why I mentioned the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act. The Government have obligations under that to do certain things, and those obligations will be affected by what is in this Bill. We need to be quite clear on how we are going to deal with it. As I and other noble Lords have indicated, some of the schemes that brought quite a bit of help to those with homes that were not energy efficient have changed.

In the light of where we are going in the future and in the light of this Bill, we need to be conscious of joined-up government, with particular regard to vulnerable people. In this case, of course, I am concerned with those who are vulnerable—one Member said they were not comfortable with the expression “fuel poverty”—in the sense that they cannot afford to keep their homes warm. As I said at Second Reading, it is something I have campaigned on for 40 years, and I am always disappointed. The NEA, the charity that champions the cause of the fuel poor, hoped when it was set up that it would not still be going 25 years later

and that we could have done something about it. I hope that, at least in this legislation, we can recognise that we have not done too well and that we have to have regard to it. I look forward to what the Minister may come forward with at a later stage but, in the mean time, beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

746 cc407-8GC 

Session

2013-14

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords Grand Committee
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