My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and other speakers have made a very good case for looking at what the noble Lord says is an apparent contradiction, but I think is a clear contradiction, between the approach of the Valuation Office Agency and DECC to these things. We are talking about schemes that are very different from Pitlochry or whatever. We talking below 1.2 megawatts, but even at that level, I have some hesitation. If you were doing it for domestic purposes only, it is unlikely that you would get huge benefit in terms of your energy bill or your carbon footprint or that climate change would benefit any more than from putting a windmill on the side of your house in Notting Hill. It is not for domestic purposes. The way in which it is financed feeds into the grid and it therefore becomes a business. It is not entirely illogical for the business rates people in the Valuation Office Agency to take that into account,
although the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Roper, about this being treated differently from other forms of renewable energy is an issue. I wish this amendment godspeed in terms of looking at the contradiction.
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I shall make one other point. It appears to be an attractive and environmentally sensitive technology that makes use of the flow and drop of the river, but you have to bypass the river and therefore take some water out of it. By definition, you will probably take some fish out of the river and alter its ecosystem. I am reflecting, I suppose, on my experiences as a member of the board of the Environment Agency, where this became a hugely controversial issue because of the views of the nature conservancy people and the angling community in particular, who it is unwise entirely to ignore.
It is therefore important for anyone thinking of investing in and installing one of these mini or microhydro systems to not only rationalise it in order to benefit from the FITs that attach to it but to not thereby bypass the other planning and environmental restrictions. It affects the water as well as other people’s interests. I know that the whole permitting process in this area is quite complex and I would not want the deletion of a requirement to regard it as a non-business premises to bring with it exclusion from those other environmental regulations and planning considerations. Apart from that, the Government have a case to answer in terms of the contradiction between the two different approaches here, as the noble Lord, Lord Roper, indicated.