My Lords, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, I am a strong supporter of the green agenda. This is an amendment about transparency, and I like it. I like it a lot and I strongly support it. It appeals to a belief that stands at the heart of my politics: transparency shapes conduct, knowledge and understanding. However, the current arrangements for utility billing make understanding impossible in precisely the way the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has set out in his speech—much of which I support but, of course, much of which I do not.
In the last Parliament I moved a whole series of amendments on a number of Bills. I call them the transparency amendments as they were all based on a simple principle: shine a light, expose the truth and trust the people to make the right judgment. I believe that the issue of transparency will dominate the politics of this century. It will transcend partisan, party political debate. It is the principal driver behind justice, fairness, honesty in administration and personal conduct, integrity in politics, restraint in exploitation—which is what we are considering here—and general enlightenment. It will help restore public confidence in our public institutions and ultimately the private sector.
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This amendment is adventurous because it is about the private sector. The response of my party should be a knee-jerk “yes” to this amendment. We have everything to gain from it. It would be a worthy component in the series of Miliband initiatives which are now regularly being announced. The reality is that there has been a undignified assault on the whole spectrum of environmental taxation, much of it based on untruths. Those attacks need a response. We are not winning the argument. The tabloids are slaughtering our case in the absence of readily available information which the public understand. The amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, seeks to make information available which the public can readily understand.
If we want to win this argument, let the people decide for themselves on the basis of the facts, not partisan political tabloid fiction. The provision of this kind of information will lead to a far more sensible, informed debate. It will reveal the truth behind green taxation. The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, is to be congratulated. I am sorry that he is not here today to hear this debate which he will no doubt read. I strongly support this amendment and I hope many of my colleagues do as well.