My Lords, I am sorry not to have been able to be here earlier. I declare an interest, given that in the past I have assisted firms of this kind to try to get a wider application of their equipment. There are certain drawbacks with this, but what I find so interesting is that it is a particularly British problem. It is simply because we have gone along with a voltage that is out of line with that of other people. Given that everybody manufactures to a voltage that is common elsewhere, we have something that is less than optimal. That is all. If the system is less than optimal we waste significant amounts of energy and our equipment works less sensibly and wears out more quickly.
I do not to repeat what the Committee is perfectly well aware of but simply to say that this is another example of how much can be done in very simple and small ways, which all add up. One of the things that worries me about governments of all kinds—this is
not a comment about the present or the previous Government—is that small things that add up do not get the same attention as big things that very often do not add up at all. There seems to be a kind of desire to do things people will take note of, rather than understand how much there is which, if we add it up, makes a huge difference.
I do not want to go over it all, but I am sure that there has been a significant saving of energy simply because kettles now show you how much water has been put in, so that you know what you need for a cup of tea and do not put in too much. All those simple mechanisms actually make a difference. The trouble is that people tend to laugh at them, because in themselves each one does not matter. If we had voltage optimisation as a built-in feature of every new home, for example, and if it was automatically offered in every circumstance, we would save a significant amount of energy.
I therefore hope my noble friend will be able to say that her department will concentrate on the small things that add up but which will not get headlines in the Guardian. That is the fact. Let us see if we can do some of that because it would certainly make a big difference to meeting our energy demands.