My Lords, I will be brief. I welcome the proposed new clause. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to attend the briefing yesterday evening but wish to make a couple of points. I have had a lifetime’s involvement in fuel poverty, having come from an area where the fuel poor are always with us. Sometimes one of the key things you
need when dealing with fuel poverty is not fancy targets or models but a soupçon of common sense. This is one of the areas that troubles me about the Green Deal. If you are expecting the fuel poor to front-end facilitations to their house, for example, they are not going to be able to do it because they cannot afford to do so. It is great having a wonderful model that says, “If you up-front the amendments to your accommodation, you will benefit in the longer-term”. However, if you cannot afford to turn your heating on, you are hardly going to be able to afford cavity wall insulation.
I make a plea for some basic common sense when dealing with this matter. I heard the praise of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for the fact that the amendment repeatedly says:
“The Secretary of State must”.
Frankly, the Secretary of State needs some enforcement powers to encourage the industry to get involved actively in the campaign to move people out of fuel poverty, unless he is going to go down to B&Q and get a hammer, nails and some insulating material. We need to have enforcement. With this Bill, as always, a lot of the detail will be in secondary legislation. Until we see the nuts and bolts of the secondary legislation, we will not see whether my common-sense points will be met. I welcome the proposed new clause and will read the secondary legislation with interest when it comes along. However, I repeat that common sense matters even more than targets in relation to this. I urge officials to bear that common sense in mind when they craft the secondary legislation.