Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
Main Page: Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan (Labour - Life peer)Energy Bill [HL]
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Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
Thank you. I was expecting some of the Government’s Back-Benchers in their varying forms to jump up and to defend this Bill in its present form. There are always criticisms made of Bills but, apart from Ministers who are paid to defend them, there are always people—
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
That is fine. Every man has his price. Some are well enough off to be able to do that. Many of the people we are concerned about in this Bill and who are looking to this legislation for assistance would be very happy to be in that position. A lot of them work for nothing on the basis that they are unemployed. That is why they live in fuel poverty.
As I say, the purpose of this amendment—coming from people who in the past have sought to pin down Governments to make sure that they will meet their requirements whether by international law or by British legislation—is to improve the Bill. We have had people on the Benches opposite cheering in the wings when the previous Government were taken to court because they had not met, in the eyes of some people, the requirements of the legislation of the 1990s and of 2008 to meet some of the fuel poverty targets. One would have thought that they would have been happy to make more explicit the commitment of the Government to these aims and objectives, because there is nothing which we are advocating here that is at variance with government policy.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I should not interrupt at this stage but perhaps it will help the Committee if I clarify one point. Because different groupings lists are circulating, and I have an older list, I should point out that the Question we are discussing now is whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill, and Amendment 38 is grouped with it.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
I reiterate the point that was made by the noble Baroness just before she sat down. There are references to upcoming statutory instruments. They are mentioned in Clause 1 and two of them are of more than passing significance. It would be helpful if in this stand-part discussion the Minister could give us some indication of what is meant by an eligible property and some guidance relating to energy efficiency improvements. We are not asking him to give us chapter and verse but to give us a rough outline. These two things are obviously at the very heart of the Green Deal. It would be helpful if at this stage we could begin to get some kind of idea of what the Government have in mind in respect of upcoming statutory instruments.
We have had a passage of some three or four weeks. Admittedly there was the Christmas and new year break. Nevertheless, it is not beyond the wit and capability of the department and the officials. The Minister should have been asking for this to get some kind of rough outline of two of the central points of the Green Deal that appeared in Clause 1; that is to say the qualifying energy efficiency improvements and what is meant by eligible properties. If we could get some kind of clear indication on and definition of these points at this stage, it would assist us. It would perhaps diminish the need for us to continue to ask the Government for definitions and statutory instruments—albeit in a consultative form—at every stage and turn. We can make considerably more progress if we receive that than we are likely to make if we do not get it.
Baroness Noakes
My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, pointed out, I raised inter alia whether or not statutory instruments in draft would be available at Second Reading. Answer came there none from my Front Bench. In fact, my noble friend Lord Marland said—as if it was a badge of honour—that this is a framework Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has translated that badge of honour into her Amendment 38 and, apparently, has also made it a good part of the Bill. I had not anticipated that we would be debating this point today. I have today tabled amendments—we will not see them on the list until tomorrow—that will tease out this point.
The Constitution Committee is clear that a framework Bill is on a par with a Henry VIII clause; that is to say, they are fundamentally unconstitutional. In particular—this is the point made by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill—it sucks out the ability of this House, as a revising Chamber, to make any significant impact on the genuine content of what will be the result of the legislation. As a matter of principle—and the committee reiterated this as recently as the Public Bodies Bill—it does not believe that framework Bills are a good thing. I therefore oppose the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, because putting “framework” in makes it sound as if it is okay. I believe that this House ought to hold out against excessive use of Henry VIII powers and the excessive use of framework legislation where there is no good reason for it and where the amount of information that will be made available to noble Lords during the passage of a Bill will not enable them to exercise their crucial function as a revising Chamber.
I will make these points again when I come to my amendments which are on the way to being tabled in respect of Chapter 4 of Part 1, which is the point that I specifically raised on Second Reading in regard to this very inchoate legislation. I had not intended to raise this point on the Green Deal, but I fully support what the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, has said.
Lord Marland
My noble friend is learned, but not in the way that I meant. He does not want to be called learned today.
I cannot imagine a department that consults more than ours. We are locked in consultation on virtually every move we make and will continue to do so. We have had a lot of contributions from outside which we have taken on board in getting to this point.
The Green Deal is designed to address the longstanding problem of how to improve energy efficiency of existing building stock. While on paper improving efficiency of buildings makes sense to save money, protect our climate and improve the comfort of our homes, in practice too little has been done too slowly. There are some good reasons for this: people find it hard, or are reluctant, to take out large loans for property they might leave soon; they often do not trust salesmen and installers; and they are busy and simply do not know what to do.
Our solution, the Green Deal, is threefold. First, the Green Deal plan is a contract under which private companies provide finance up front for energy efficiency improvements and individuals then repay through their energy bills. Liability to repay attaches to the energy bill payer for the time being, so that only the person benefiting makes the repayments. The contract transfers to subsequent bill payers.
Secondly, there is the golden rule: the protecting principles which require that repayment costs should not exceed expected energy bill savings. Thirdly, there is the accreditation and redress system, which is the guarantee of quality which consumers need. It is a simple concept, but to make it both simple and secure for consumers, we need to put a robust framework in place. To ensure attractive external simplicity for the customer, we need to ensure that the internal mechanism comprehensively covers all those involved in the scheme—the assessors, installers, Green Deal providers and energy suppliers. This is a market mechanism funded by private capital.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, our responsibility is to create a robust framework backed up by redress and quality control. The Bill focuses on this enabling framework; we will certainly be consulting on the detail for secondary legislation, and I look forward to the input.
I will now speak to the detail of Clause 1. It provides for the Green Deal plans an arrangement made by an owner or occupier whereby a Green Deal provider makes energy efficiency improvements to that property. As the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, said, it is important that we define what is an eligible property, but it is also important that we do not define it in a way that restricts properties. Therefore, the broad definition is as far and wide upon domestic and commercial properties as is possible. Of course there will be exceptions which we are starting to develop, such as something that may have been purchased under a compulsory purchase order. As the noble Lord rightly says, we need to define this over the next few weeks.
The clause defines the conditions that must be met in order for an arrangement to make energy efficiency improvements qualify as a Green Deal plan. By setting out these conditions as requirements of the plan, the clause defines the basis of the Green Deal. Subsection (3) sets out the two conditions that must be met. The first is that,
“the energy efficiency improvements are to be paid for wholly or partly in instalments”.
The second condition is that the requirements of subsection (4) are satisfied. These are that there must be “a relevant energy supplier” supplying or about to supply energy to the property. The energy efficiency improvements to be made must fall,
“within a description specified in an order made by the Secretary of State”.
By setting out qualifying improvements, we can ensure that the customer benefits only from recognised and proven technologies.
Subsection (4) also states that the important conditions mentioned in subsections (4) and (5) must be met. These relate to the assessment of the property and the financial terms on which the Green Deal is offered, and a number of other terms that must be included or must not be included in the plan. This is to ensure that only measures that are appropriate for a property are recommended.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I do not wish to delay the proceedings, but I think he has come upon a point that illustrates the difficulty that some of us have. Consider people who have a solid wall property which is not within the gas network—that is, dependent upon probably oil-fired central heating—and requires, because it is solid wall, very expensive insulation, that will probably never be achieved because of the cost of the job to be done, the nature of the property and the length of time of the repayment. There are quite clearly certain properties which could almost deem themselves to be ineligible to participate in this scheme. Therefore, for us to talk of this great, exciting Green Deal, which is going, among other things, to transform the carbon excess in this country, is at this stage to build up the hopes of a number of people in rural communities outwith the gas grid who live in houses constructed in such a way that to insulate them effectively is going to be so expensive as to make them ineligible to be part of the scheme.
It is that kind of thing that, at the outset of our discussions, we should be clear about because there are some hopeless cases, for want of a better expression, which might never fall into this category. It is for that kind of thing that we want a clearer definition early on. So far, the Minister has not addressed that aspect, which is not beyond the wit and intelligence of the department to make clear at an early stage in our proceedings.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
My Lords, I wonder if I could support this amendment but also refer back to the Minister’s remarks about the Bill. I have just begun to realise that the Bill is about the Green Deal for certain properties. You have to have an eligible property, and the noble Lord explained very clearly that this is a commercial operation that will not apply to quite a number of properties. That is a very important point. The preamble states that the Bill will:
“Make provision for the arrangement and financing of energy efficiency improvements to be made to properties”.
In fact, the improvements will be made only to certain properties.
You may have a house which, as I mentioned on Second Reading, is subject to flooding. As the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, said, there are going to be houses and properties that are not very appropriate. I think it is very important to say that this is a selective Bill; indeed it is an experimental Bill. Of course, “experiment” is not a word used very often in legislation. We used to use it on Cambridge City Council—because that was Cambridge—and it worked quite well.
We are approaching a new and complex situation and we are going to define this for certain properties with certain types of energy. It is clearly not going to be a Magna Carta, a democratic right, where everybody in the UK can have a Green Deal. I think that that should be made very clear, or clearer. For example, when we come to renewables and low-carbon technologies, as I think the Minister said, certain ones will be approved and certain ones will not be approved, and that is also part of the spirit of the Bill.
As I understand it, the point about this experiment is that some of these investments will not be undertaken by people unless there is a long term. As I understand it, the philosophy of the Bill is that you will approve certain kinds of insulation and energy systems, but you must obviously improve them in such a way that an investment can be made with the energy companies; and there will be cases where this is not true. However, you cannot have is an experiment to approve something for a certain period and then say, “I am going to disapprove that”, because obviously investments must be made. Therefore the timeframe in which you make your approval should be reflected in the Bill, otherwise people will not know what they are doing. That is my view on how we are proceeding, and I think it might be helpful if we made it clear that that is the nature of this Bill.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
I support this amendment. It is important that the possibility of renewable energy making a contribution is recognised. It is essential that we try as best we can to make this legislation as explicit as possible. Certainly, when one talks of renewables, one is talking not just of combustion but of other methods such as ground source and air source heat pumps which, I have to say, can only make a bit of a difference. Although they take the chill out of the house, they do not really warm it in the way that we would want, because there has to be other insulation and it tends to be background heating. Nevertheless, they are important, and if we could reduce dependence on oil-fired heating, it would be very useful.
My sister-in-law lives in an oil-fired house in a village just outside Edinburgh, and the oil delivery vehicle had considerable difficulty getting to her house this winter. Indeed, the amount of diesel or petroleum that was used by the company to deliver the oil must have added quite considerably to the CO2 emissions of that type of heating. We tend to forget the bigger picture. When we have a debate at this early stage in the Bill considering the Green Deal, there may well be other forms of reducing CO2 emissions which do not spring immediately to mind and may not be included in what will probably be a too neat and tidy box-ticking form of assessment of carbon reduction techniques.
It is important that we make it explicit that renewable technologies across the board should be open to consideration and that the specific circumstances of the properties as yet to be defined are taken into account as well. It certainly might be important, if you have hard-to-insulate houses, that you could get additional forms of heating that might enable what is traditionally a rather expensive form of heating, namely electric central heating, to kick in at some of these rural properties.
Equally, at this stage, in the absence of a definition of eligible properties, we ought to take account of the fact that a number of renewable technologies work when you have not one house but half a dozen of them working together and sharing. These are commonplace in Scandinavia where the climate is more extreme than ours, but the houses tend to be better built and to have more efficient heating systems.
We have to look at this in the absence of a proper definition of “eligible property”. We might need to look at what could be a co-operative venture; that would lend itself to social housing projects but it may well also lend itself to certain village contexts as well. It would therefore be useful to underline the prospects and the possibilities for renewables.
I do not imagine that we can accurately factor in the feed-in tariff at this stage because it is an inexact science. There is every likelihood that feed-in tariffs will go down in value as time moves on. They are a selling point for renewable technologies and we might not want to be too dependent on their contribution to at least an element in the Green Deal. Maybe I am running away with myself here; maybe renewable technologies could have a contribution to make through the feed-in tariff and making the whole package that much more cost effective.
Again, in the absence of adequate definitions, the more explicit we can be in the initial stages of this legislation, the better it will be for our understanding of the potential that we could achieve through the Green Deal, either for individual properties or for a group of them. This group in particular is often the forgotten minority when we are dealing with not just fuel poverty but expensive-to-heat houses; because of their employment circumstances, people have to live outwith the gas grid and are condemned to paying outrageously high fuel bills, which takes up a disproportionate amount of their income. The amendment would help us to concentrate our minds on some of the opportunities, as well as the challenges, that properties of this nature would provide.
Baroness Northover
This is not the first Bill that I have worked on, but my previous role in international development was not exactly legislation-heavy, so I can also claim inexperience. It is also outside the remit of all the other areas that I am working on. Therefore we will have to look to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, to guide us.
Clause 2 defines an energy efficiency improvement. This is one of the important criteria for determining the eligibility of works to be financed by a Green Deal plan. The clause is deliberately broad; it allows for a range of measures to be covered by the new framework, including certain energy generation measures as well as measures concerned with reducing energy consumption. It enables the Secretary of State to specify within this broad definition which types of measure will be eligible for Green Deal finance. This will provide the clarity and certainty that industry and consumers need. Green Deal installers will also be required under Clause 7 to adhere to any requirements in the installers’ code of practice regarding the standards of products installed.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty—who is not in his place, but who has vast experience in this area—for tabling Amendment 2, which seeks to ensure that measures which reduce energy consumption are installed before those which generate energy.
Amendments 1D and 2A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lords, Lord Grantchester and Lord Davies, seek to ensure that renewable and low-carbon energy sources and energy generation are covered by the Green Deal.
Amendment 2AA is a technical drafting amendment tabled by the noble Lord with the sharp eyes, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, which is designed to correct a citation made to the wrong subsection.
On Amendments 1D and 2A, it is clearly important to get the right measures in the right buildings in the right order. For example, making improvements to the fabric of buildings to improve air tightness means that if renewable heat and energy technologies are installed at the same time, or further down the line, the energy is not wasted. We would therefore like to consult colleagues on the detail of the proposed amendments and report back at the next stage of the Bill. We need to be clear on what the implications are of these amendments for, among other things, the possible impact on consumer demand.
I should point out to noble Lords who referred to the renewable heating incentives that, in addition to this Bill, they are designed to incentivise people to generate energy. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, may be encouraged by that—it sounds as though he is. As he was speaking, the noble Lord, Lord Marland, was making welcoming noises about what he was saying. The schemes are designed to be complementary and I hope that in discussions we can take the ideas further forward.
We will also want to satisfy ourselves that Amendments 1D and 2A do not duplicate existing provisions, as I believe they may. I thank my noble friend Lord Jenkin for his incredibly sharp eyes and for correcting the reference in subsection (5) to subsection (7). His sharp eyes may note a spelling error in his second amendment on the manuscript list, but I am incredibly impressed by his thoroughness.
I invite noble Lords to meet my colleague the noble Lord, Lord Marland, and officials to discuss the proposed amendments in more detail. I hope that noble Lords will be satisfied with this approach and, on that basis, I move that this clause stand part of the Bill.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
I support the previous two contributions. We have seen a diminution in deaths due to smoke inhalation as a result of smoke detectors. Part of the reason for the decrease is that the fire services have been proactive and going round homes handing them out. Frankly, £15 to £30 is not a lot, but it is quite a lot for the kind of households that might have defective boilers and the like. I know from my own experience that when people from British Gas, which we use for boiler maintenance, come to our home they always ask about this. We can afford to pay the £15 to £30, but it still seems to be excessively priced.
If this legislation were to bring in a recognition of the importance of the issue then it would mean a massive increase in sales and therefore a reduction in price. We are told a lot about smart meters and about these gadgets which tell you how much you are spending when you use certain electrical appliances. People often use these not because they want to reduce their consumption but because they are interested in finding out how much they are spending. The electricity companies give them away for nothing. The gas companies should be a little more generous and more proactive. As I say, they are proactive when it comes to maintenance, but this usually involves condemning a boiler and saying that they would like to install another one. In the interim they will offer the person an alarm so that they do not poison themselves, or wrap the boiler in a yellow and black band and say that it should not be used. Invariably they do that on Christmas Eve when they know you are not going to be able to get another one until probably the summer.
This is an opportunity. It is not about the Green Deal as such but it is about energy safety and domestic safety and it could be that this is an opportunity that the Government would be well advised to look at.
In terms of people’s confessions about whether they have been in opposition when serving on Bill Committees, these amendments are an example of How to Oppose Bills in Committee 101: where you see a “may”, you make it into a “shall”. That is the first rule of opposing in any Committee. You go through the Bill and you strike them out. If it is “14 days”, you make it “28”, and if it is “28”, you make it “14”. A lot of people need to learn this. This mob here need to learn how to oppose legislation as much as anyone else does. They did not do much opposing when Labour was in power. They certainly did not do much of it in the past five years.
The Government spend nearly two pages on the framework, telling us that they are going to establish a scheme making provision for the Secretary of State to authorise all these good works. At the end of it they say that even if you do all that, you do not have to tell anybody, and you do not really have to do it—it is really just permissive. If this is worth doing, it is worth doing well. It is worth making it clear and explicit. It makes sure that Governments of all stripes at the appropriate time will have to measure their performance against their ambition. Until such time as we have a clearer definition of what the Government intend to do, when we get the vague and sometimes not too specific provisions in the framework regulations, we want to make sure that the Government are called to account and know that they must do this. Therefore it would be a sign of the Minister’s good intent if he were to accept this amendment or take it away and think about it.
This is fundamental to how you oppose legislation in Committee, but on the other hand it also makes a lot of sense to do this at this time because it would give a clear indication that they want it to be above board and intelligible to the parties that will be interested in those individuals. The great British public are not going to applaud you for doing this but I think that the people involved in this would take some comfort from the fact that the Government want to make their intentions clear and specific and that they are required to do so by the Bill.
Baroness Noakes
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, prompts me to rise in respect of some of the amendments tabled in the names of his colleagues on the opposition Front Bench—namely the may/shall amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, and I have done many may/shall amendments over the years together and I remember enjoying every single one of them.
The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, says that the 101 rule of amendments is to table the may/shall amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, and I have done many may/shall amendments over the years together and I remember enjoying every single one of them. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, says that the 101 rule of amendments is to table a may/shall amendment. I am afraid the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, are going to have to go back to school and retake 101, because the modern formulation is “must”. Noble Lords will find that that is what parliamentary draftsmen now use, and it is used in this Bill. I am afraid that noble Lords opposite have been producing amendments from another era, and I think that they can try a little harder. However, I would like to raise a more substantive point, if I may come to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, which is clearly extremely well intentioned. I have a slight concern about requiring Green Deal installers to fit any particular kind of alarm. I have every sympathy with requiring them to make that available if the person entering the Green Deal wants it, and indeed possibly other things like smoke detector alarms to the extent that they are not already fitted in the property. However, I do have a concern about absolutely requiring the installation as part of a Green Deal package. I think that it would fit better if it was an optional extra, which gives an opportunity for that to be plugged.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
My Lords, when one wishes to be pejorative about processes, the words “tick box” slip easily off the lips. We ought to have a sense of proportion, however. We are talking about treating 14 million houses. We are talking about probably not installing boilers. We are talking already about probably not having internal wall insulation in solid-walled houses on the grounds that each of these is too expensive. So we are talking about having various kinds of insulation, whether it be cavity-wall or roof-attic insulation. This is not the most complex of operations. Sometimes they can be time-consuming, but not that often. We are not going to be installing nuclear power stations in each household. We are talking about a relatively simple set of measures that will be within a budget that we have already heard will not be unduly ambitious given the need to pay back over the period.
We are, however, also talking about a massive job in which there has to be consistency and in which there has to be a squad of people who can go around and speedily assess what is required to be done. They are not going to be quantity surveyors. They are probably going to be people who might have worked in the building trade, but maybe not. They may well be trained to NVQ 2 and, if we are lucky, 3. There are a number of people who are trained by Energy Action Scotland and National Energy Action—two organisations involved in fuel poverty which I have dealings with, and I have an interest that has been declared. They may well be skilled people. I have another interest as a consultant to the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group, which does a lot of work in insulation and heating and electrical work. I would be hard pushed, however, to think that if you wanted to make money out of the Green Deal you would go for being a cavity-wall insulator or an attic insulator when you may well make more money out of installing new boilers and the like.
These people are perhaps not the most highly skilled, but I am sure they will be highly committed. They will certainly not be the most highly paid, and therefore the performance standards that we can expect of them have to be straightforward and easily understood. The complexity of the work they will be required to do will not in itself be that great if we are to achieve over time and speedily the kind of things that the Minister has already spoken about in relation to the Green Deal. So we have to have a sense of perspective about this. If we do have forms and a standardised approach and basic training then it is probably inevitable that people will go round with a clipboard and a biro and tick boxes. It will not be because they are necessarily superficial or necessarily barely competent; it will be that the requirements of the job will be probably little more than that. Therefore we need a sense of proportion.
If we are going to pluck the low-hanging fruit, which is at the heart of this process—Green Deal is about quickly insulating a lot of homes which have not been dealt with already—we will be dealing with the simpler and less expensive projects first. That is not to say that they should be cheap and cheerful or unsafe or that people are going to be taken to the cleaners. I am merely saying that we should have a sense of proportion and that within that we have got to avoid over-prescription. We do not want to have the health and safety approach—the jobsworth of exactly the wrong kind. We need to get this job done quickly and efficiently and therefore we need good training, clear processes and forms that people are not intimidated by.
If you do not have simple forms, you have complicated ones because, as sure as eggs is eggs, there will be forms involved. There will be some kind of hand-held computer which the operators will understand but the person whose house is being affected will probably not necessarily understand it, whether it is in the estimation or the implementation.
We ought to be a wee bit careful when we use disparagingly the tick-box dismissal, because I think that, in some respects, it will be almost inevitable that that will be what is required. If it is required, and if that is the consequence of the nature of our approach to the task, it is essential that these people are trained to the level that the job requires and that they are able to carry it out in a way which is consistent across the country as a whole. I think, therefore, that what we are saying in these amendments measures up to that and, once again, makes it more explicit than the proposed legislation already does.
For these reasons, I would support this amendment; not because, as I say, I want it to be unduly simple—not because I want it to be open to bureaucratic or jobsworth approaches—but rather, recognising the scale of most of the tasks, so that an approach of this nature will be commensurate with the national challenge that we have, which we have to meet quickly. These people will be going into households and probably doing 20 a day, if they are doing their job properly. We will have to get these people in the field doing that pretty quickly, so the training will have to be effective very quickly. I am talking here about something which is a national priority if we are to meet the 2020 and ultimately the 2050 targets. We do not have to exaggerate the significance of the Green Deal commitment. Suffice it to say that, if we do not achieve the Green Deal ambition, then the further targets of 2020 and 2050 will be that much more difficult to realise. I certainly think that the approach that we are taking is inclined to reduce bureaucracy, to keep it simple and straightforward and to give proper recognition to the scale of the individual task that will be required in each household.
The Earl of Lindsay
My Lords, the amendments moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, raise a number of important themes. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister would agree with that, given the importance that he places on accreditation in order to guarantee consumer protection and user protection. I just want to comment on some of those themes. I should declare an interest as chairman of the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, which is the government-recognised national accreditation body.
The first point that I want to make is to clear up the common misunderstanding about the two terms “accreditation” and “certification”. I can do no better than refer to the impact assessment that the department produced for this Bill. In paragraph 115, on page 40, it makes the following short point:
“Accreditation and certification are two related but distinct activities. ‘Certification’ is the process that leads to ascertaining someone has a particular qualification, and ‘accreditation’ is the process by which certification is awarded responsibly”.
I suggest, first of all, that we are using the word “accreditation” where perhaps we should be using the word “certification” in some of the debates that we have been having. Accreditation underpins the scheme by which operators and participants will receive certificates. Accreditation therefore determines the robustness of the scheme by which compliance with the required standards will be judged.
My second point is that the word “accreditation” can mean different things to different people. Given the importance of accreditation to consumer protection, it has been recognised at an intergovernmental level that, when the word “accreditation” is used, it should mean the same thing to all parties. In fact, the European Union passed a regulation two or three years ago that requires every member state to have a national accreditation body, and for the use of the word “accreditation” by that Government to refer to a consistent set of disciplines and rigour. Thus the previous Government passed a regulation in December 2008 which recognised UKAS’s role as the de facto national accreditation body and formalised our role in that purpose. Therefore I can speak with some authority on what, at an intergovernmental level, accreditation should mean, by way of reassurance to those who are users and consumers of goods and services.
First of all, the assessment and verification when accrediting a regime looks at technical competence, and this of course is a point that Amendment 2D focuses on. It measures the capability of a participant, be it a company or an individual, to deliver that competence and to deliver the services underpinned by that competence. It looks at the ability of individuals and companies who might be certified by accredited certification to maintain that competence and that capability over a period of time; in other words, it is not a one-off assessment but an ongoing assessment of that company’s or that individual’s capabilities. It therefore looks at reliability, integrity and governance. Very importantly, it looks at outcomes and performance, making sure that outcomes and performance deliver against the standards that have been preset; in this instance, they would be preset by the Minister and by the Government. In other words, accreditation should mean a wholly comprehensive judgment about the ability of the certification system to properly certify either individuals or companies in terms of their performance, their goods and their services. It really should be a badge of confidence to anyone who has any doubts about the goods and services they might be acquiring.
The Minister over and over again has made the point—as indeed have other Members of your Lordships’ House, in Committee and on the Floor of the House—that the accreditation and the certification which this Bill requires as underpinning the Green Deal must deliver that high level of consumer protection and public confidence. It must deliver the guarantee of quality that I know the Minster wants to see. It must deliver the trust. I understand exactly why the noble Baroness has raised this Amendment in order to explore this area. I think that it is a very important attribute which is going to underpin the Minister’s ambitions in terms of how the Green Deal delivers the outcomes that the wider public, homeowners and others can have confidence in.
I am not sure about Amendment 2G and agree with my noble friends Lord Teverson and Lord Jenkin about the standard assessment measurement. I understand the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, when he says that there needs to be some methodology that enables a large number of participants to operate across a large number of diverse circumstances and deliver some sort of consistent output. The point about consistency of outcomes is where I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, but to require a standard assessment measurement could lead to some unintended consequences. I speak with my full experience of other schemes that we accredit on behalf of the Government.
I will give you an example. The gas safety scheme that was called CORGI benefits from the fact that we accredit five or six different routes to certification. If you are a gas installer and you want to be certified, those five or six different options for certification offer different types of assessment measurement. They do not offer a standard approach, the value of which is that it encourages innovation, competition and flexibility in order to provide the certification process best suited to different types of gas installer. I would strongly suggest to my noble friend the Minister that we want the same arrangement with the Green Deal. We want to avoid an absolutely rigid, standard assessment process.
The important point is that, however one achieves accredited certification as being compliant with the requirements of the Green Deal, you meet the standards that have been set down. As long as you meet the standards that are set down, how exactly the measurement has been made is less important. UKAS, though, guarantees on behalf of the Government that, if the certification process or body is accredited as being capable of delivering that standard, it is consistent with what the standard requires. That we avoid a too rigid approach to the exact process is very important.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. It was not my intention to say that there should be some kind of Napoleonic order whereby a single method should be approached. We have to recognise that there may well be differing situations or challenges. However, the point that I was trying to get across is that a consistency within that is still needed—a consistency that sometimes sacrifices and reduces complexity to make it a little more simple and straightforward. It should not be a rigid one-size-fits-all approach. I am sorry if I gave that impression because I do not think that we are more than a few millimetres apart on this issue.
The Earl of Lindsay
I do not believe that we are. I am grateful to the noble Lord for that clarification. We are in the same space. We both agree that flexibility can be a strength of the scheme by which certification to the required standard is sought. The important thing for the Government and for those who seek, as it were, to use the Green Deal, is that there is consistency with which all those who participate comply with the standard.
On the amendment of my noble friend Lord Teverson regarding suspension and expulsion, I make a brief comment about the broader point that an accreditation scheme run by UKAS should make sure that, long before the Minister has to step in in order to suspend or exclude, the system itself should make all those judgments within its own processes. The point of certification should be able to judge non-compliance. If it is major non-compliance, one needs to make a judgment between suspension and permanent withdrawal. The accreditation body should be capable of suspending or withdrawing a certification system if they are similarly not meeting the required standards that the scheme expects.
This group of amendments raises some very important issues. I am not persuaded that the way that the Bill is currently written needs to be changed in order to deliver the strengths that I believe that the Government are looking for. However, I am grateful. We have had an opportunity to debate some of the key attributes that the Green Deal will be underpinned by.
Baroness Parminter
In moving Amendment 3 I shall also speak to Amendment 6, with which it is grouped. The amendments deal with consumer protection and redress, issues which I raised at Second Reading. The Minister was kind enough to say then that the points I raised about an ombudsman were well made, so I hope some of the points that I and other noble Lords will make under these amendments will be accepted.
On Amendment 3, consumers will not have the experience to be able to undertake assessments. They will not have the knowledge, and there will need to be independent assessments by a single body such as an ombudsman to give people the confidence they need. Indeed, as the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, have mentioned, if we do not give people confidence at the time of purchasing, this scheme will fall flat on its face and all the Government’s good aims will not be delivered.
Some noble Lords may not be familiar with the myriad television programmes that set out to pick up the cowboys where people are being mis-sold products. If the Government do not do something along these lines to weed out the cowboys, then be assured the television companies will, and that will have exactly the opposite effect to that which we intend. I ask the Minister to consider ensuring that an ombudsman undertakes random inspections and mystery shopping assessments.
Moving on to Amendment 6—
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
Before the noble Baroness leaves this point, it is all very well asking the Government to do something, but they do not do it themselves. Surely we have to be more explicit. Is that not a matter for the consumer protection department of local authorities? And if it is, at a time of cuts, it is a bit unrealistic to assume that they will be able to assume responsibility to do that kind of work, given that there are 14 million homes that could be the subject of these cowboys’ attentions.
Baroness Parminter
I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising that point. At Second Reading, I raised the point about the need for a single body, a single entity or ombudsman, to take on these additional responsibilities. The Minister said he would go away and think about the creation of such a single body or ombudsman. I am looking forward to hearing what he might say, particularly on that point.
Moving on to insurance, it is important, given the new nature of this service for many consumers, that at the point of sale there is an insurance product available for people to give them the confidence that, throughout the lifetime of the installation, there is security for them. Clearly consumers can opt out—the amendments states that people can opt in—but I think it is important that when they enter into these contracts there is an insurance product they can have confidence in. This is a new area. There is no insurance product for this at the moment; certainly in the early days they will not be able to go to one of the insurance comparison websites and find products. They will need assurance that there is a product specific to this area to give them the confidence to move forward and take up the Green Deal as we would wish them to do. I beg to move.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
I followed the noble Baroness in the Second Reading debate and was somewhat surprised to agree with her on a number of issues. I have one question for her. As a consequence of this amendment—were it to be accepted—we would have not 52 but 53 statutory instruments flowing from the Bill. Paradoxically, one of the great critics of the ill defined character of this legislation will also add to it. Frankly, on this occasion, it is justified and I am happy to support the noble Baroness. As a general rule, however, I do not think that either of us—or many of us in this Committee—want to see any more orders being left to the rather inadequate, consultative and therefore scrutinising, approach that both Houses have. I hope that it will be a negative resolution in both Houses.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
Is the noble Lord imagining that these will all be separate orders? Is it not open to the Government to link a whole lot of these together in a single set of regulations or a single order?
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
The noble Lord is putting ideas in the Whips’ and party managers’ heads. We would like to see each of these being given proper weight and being discussed and debated as appropriate. If it takes 53 one-and-a-half hour sessions, so be it. That is the price that we have to pay for the proper scrutiny of legislation that could have been better drafted in the first instance.
Lord Marland
My Lords, it is marvellous to see such harmony in the room at the Government’s expense. Given the force of the arguments, particularly those from the Opposition Benches at which one quakes with fear—although one quakes with fear less at the arguments of noble Lords on our Benches, who are so erudite in these matters—we will obviously consider the amendment and reflect on the recommendations already made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on the code of practice.
Lord Marland
My Lords, Amendment 9 would require the Secretary of State to ensure through regulation, audit and the code of practice that improvers are protected from anti-competitive activity by Green Deal providers. Clearly anti-competitive behaviour and collusion among Green Deal providers is undesirable and we want to ensure that the risk of this is minimised through the design of the scheme. However, this requirement on the Secretary of State would mean that the Secretary of State would be obliged to put in place legislation which already exists in other parts of the law. Green Deal providers should be covered by existing competition law, notably the Competition Act 1998, which prevents businesses from entering into anti-competitive agreements and abusing dominant market positions. I do not see any need to effectively replicate those arrangements in the Bill.
Furthermore, for domestic households only licensed creditors will be able to operate as Green Deal providers and the existing credit regulation contained in the Consumer Credit Act would apply. I hope that that is enough to satisfy the noble Lord and that he will withdraw the amendment.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
The Minister has indicated that competition will be properly regulated and that consumers will be protected. However, the Green Deal will be offered by supermarkets and, in some parts of the country, a single supermarket chain can have a virtual monopoly of retail outlets. While it would certainly be capable of offering the Green Deal, we have to be careful because the nature of the relationship may be that a single company will link up with a supermarket, that the supermarket will leave everything to the company and that the company will then make it quite attractive for supplier A or supplier B to come in.
I am not sure whether the public are confident that the free play of market forces in such near monopolistic situations is sufficient protection. I have some sympathy with the proposition, not because I think that all supermarket chains are potential abusers but because we know that in a number of areas of sourcing—we have only to listen to the farming community about the sourcing of fresh food, fruit, vegetables and the like—these supermarkets act quite ruthlessly. We want stronger assurances than the bland approach taken by the Minister in his reply to the debate. I am not confident that something akin to the status quo operating in these circumstances is enough when people will be entering into substantial financial undertakings. Whether or not they do so on the basis that they will never pay because the bills will be reduced does not enter into it. If people did not have confidence in the company to which they are almost forced to go by circumstances beyond their control—they may happen to live in an area which is dominated by a particular supermarket chain which has a dubious record on the way that it sources its goods—we would be concerned about consumer confidence.