My Lords, I thank the Minister for going through this piece of secondary legislation, which concerns what is clearly an important subject: making sure that the money that is in effect discounted from bills gets through to the final consumer.
It is probably unfair to say this but, having read through this instrument, I would be amazed if the dispute process is ever used or anybody ever gets round to being able to take advantage of it. To be honest, a maximum fine of £5,000 hardly seems a great deterrent to anybody, but there we are; I suspect it will be not a great deal of money in terms of the P&L account of any of these providers, so I am rather surprised that it has been pegged at that amount.
The thing I am really interested in is that, as I read it, a core part of this piece of legislation is finding out the contact details of heat suppliers. If we do not know that information, how do we get in touch with the suppliers to find it out? I do not understand that. Given the fact that this measure was supposed to have happened by 6 January, as this is all in retrospect, clearly this has happened; I am just interested to understand from the Minister whether the Government have had good responses and replies from everybody. How do they know that everybody has replied? I would be interested to understand that.
The only other area I want to probe—the Minister will forgive me, as I should clearly know this—is the Office for Product Safety & Standards, because I had never heard of it before. I am sure it is a well-known organisation in certain parts of the sector, but I am interested in briefly understanding to whom it reports, its status and whether it is tooled up to do this work effectively. However, I thank the Minister, as this is clearly important secondary legislation and I support making the scheme effective.
5.45 pm