My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. There is no doubt that the policy of putting green subsidies on to consumer bills was designed to disguise and hide the costs and hope that we would not notice. We can disagree about whether the results are going to be pleasing or not, but we have noticed that the consumer has rumbled the ruse, so it is time, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said, to be transparent and honest. It would help to resolve some of the disagreements we have heard again this afternoon about how much green levies are adding to bills.
There is an infographic on the Government website that says that £286 will be added in 2020. The Department of Energy and Climate Change says that the figure is £199. The Committee on Climate Change, as we have heard this afternoon, says it is only £100. A lot of these calculations leave out VAT, upgrades to the grid and system integration costs. They often make unreliable assumptions about wholesale gas prices and how they
are going to change but above all these calculations leave out the indirect bill—the cost of green levies that is added to industrial and commercial users of electricity who then pass it on to individual consumers through the cost of goods and services. A pint of milk will be more expensive because of green levies paid by the dairy and the supermarket. If you look at the quantums involved, this roughly trebles the cost of green levies, two-thirds of which fall on commercial customers.
The way we have of doing things at the moment is underhand, regressive—as has been said—and unfair. Those who heat their homes with electricity are hit the hardest by these green levies. Contrary to what has been said today, 2.9 million people in this country heat their homes with electricity and those include many of the poorest people. Ideally we would remove these costs altogether and put them into taxation. Then the rich would pay more of them and the poor would pay less. If we cannot have that, then let us break it out honestly and transparently and see what there is. To those who say that it cannot be done and that it is too difficult, the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, has shown me one of his own bills where it has been done very nicely. I think it is definitely possible and it should be done.