17:44 Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)

The Energy and Climate Change Committee is undertaking a mini-inquiry into fuel poverty and off-grid gas, and we heard evidence today from the Office of Fair Trading. Unlike the Secretary of State, I was not surprised that the OFT came to the conclusions that it did, because it has a very narrow remit. The people who undertook the inquiry did not look at the matter in enough detail to conclude what we all know—that people off the grid have been ripped off in many ways.

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18:30 David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)

In the minute remaining, I want to suggest to the Minister one area that I believe we have got wrong in policy terms. The Climate Change Act 2008 sets a very ambitious target of 80% decarbonisation, and I accept that, but I believe we have confused the need to decarbonise with the need to go for renewables. The 20-20-20 directive from 2009, which imposes a renewables target over and above what we could have done to reduce carbon, has confused the issue. As a result, we have gone into nuclear more slowly than we should have done and, frankly, we have gone more slowly into carbon capture and storage, which is an alternative. Will the Minister assure us that the Green investment bank will be concerned with decarbonisation, not just renewables, and that the money available from it will therefore be available to the nuclear industry, which is in as much need of it as other parts of the decarbonisation chain, and the CCS industry?

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18:35 Barry Gardiner (Labour)

The point that I most wish to make is that the costs of environmental and social measures, such as CERT and the renewables obligation, now account for about 4% and 10% of gas and electricity bills respectively. This is an unpopular thing to say—and certainly unfashionable, coming from me—but it is the truth and we have to face up to it: developing a low-carbon energy infrastructure will require long-term planning and significant investment. Whereas 84% of recent energy price rises were unrelated to low-carbon measures, the remaining 16% were and the Committee on Climate Change estimates that policies to achieve a low-carbon economy will add about £110 to bills over the next decade. That is because it expects electricity consumption to drop by 50%, meaning that per unit costs of electricity will skyrocket. The most important thing we can do, therefore, is achieve energy efficiency.

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18:50 The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)

We have heard discussions about the green deal, which the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) raised. I well remember a discussion with the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) in 2010, when she was Energy Minister, after we had put forward an amendment to the Energy Bill. She said that the green deal was not possible and the Labour Government voted it down. We could have had the green deal in place 18 months ahead of where we are now and delivering the sort of help we want to see. It is the most ambitious programme this country has ever seen for insulating our homes, with the ambition of 14 million homes having good energy insulation over the course of the next decade, which knocks into oblivion any other scheme that has been tried by previous Governments. I well remember the current leader of the Labour party, when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, telling the House in December 2009 that their ambition was to have five pilots in different parts of the country. We have taken it from five pilots to a nationwide scheme delivering on a level that has never before been possible.

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