I would like to speak Amendment 51AA*, which I tabled with the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth.
I was not at Second Reading but I have been listening to some of the Committee’s sittings. I went to a meeting last week at University College Energy Institute which discussed the difficulties people will have—up and down the country—with the new Energy Bill, which has many laudable objectives. I recalled at this meeting the case of one noble Earl finding that his electricity statement was five pages long. My son-in-law, who works in a green energy company, comments on the great difficulties people have when installing new green systems: heating, insulation, flood-prevention, and so on.
So how are people going to understand it? There seems to be a feeling we are not yet, and perhaps never will be, a society that gets it all on the internet or from a phone call. Perhaps we need to go back to what used to be quite a familiar sight on the high street: the energy showroom. Not only could you see a range of electrical apparatus, you could show your bill to someone. These showrooms were the front office for the energy company.
Our suggestion in this amendment is that the Secretary of State makes adequate provision for the universal availability of information, in order to enable domestic energy consumers to make effective decisions about their energy usage, including information relating to installation, running costs and monitoring equipment—
that last point refers to smart meters. People studying smart meters realise they are going to be a source of great difficulty to many people.
My suggestion, therefore, is that we should have energy showrooms up and down the UK’s high streets, where empty shops give organisations such as councils, the Government and energy companies the opportunity to provide places offering this sort of information. As I have explained, it is important that in these places there are people who can provide information.
Like all good ideas this idea builds on the wide variety of existing initiatives run by councils and voluntary bodies. However, the Government should take it as a general responsibility to encourage, where possible, and to provide funding, where necessary, to ensure that these energy showrooms, or information centres, become available. The idea is that in such a place you could not only see technology but make a decision about spending more money on insulation or on heating.
It is true that, under the Green Deal, there are approved operatives who can come and visit you, but that is a second stage. You would really like to see a rather broad overview of all the possibilities as well as having somewhere where you could find out about the bills coming through to you. We have been talking about fuel poverty, which is a complex issue and will be dealt with in many different ways. Again, you need a real person to do it. I know people who work in the CAB, and I fear that the CAB will be overloaded with people trying to ask questions about their energy bills. The effect will be such a big ramp, it will be necessary to have additional or separate places for energy.
One of the other points is who would do this. Well, there are lots of people out there seeking jobs. This would be a rather interesting, useful and perhaps economical, way for people who have technical skills, abilities and inclinations to provide this kind of information. Anybody working in such an energy showroom would of course develop skills that they could quite quickly apply elsewhere, so it might be a practical way of upgrading the skills of many people with a direct objective.
Of course, the information services are available on the internet and via helplines but, speaking for myself, I always much prefer to go and buy something from a shop and talk to a person. Although I am a computer person and use a Japanese supercomputer, when it comes to my bill I like to go and talk to somebody down the street. I am not sure if the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, is in his place, but people like him who go down to their electricity showroom might also like to get some government information about climate change from approved sources. When you go to a doctor’s surgery you learn about your health and how to change your lifestyle, and you learn about science and medicine. Maybe we should be hearing a variety of views, but it seems to me that these would be climate change centres as well as energy showrooms.