15:56 Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)

Three months before my constituent’s installation, the Department of Energy and Climate Change published its “Microgeneration Strategy”, in which it was asserted:

To back that up, I asked the Library for some figures on complaints dealt with by the Renewable Energy Consumer Code. It appears that the number went from 607 in 2011 to 1,892 in 2014. That is a very substantial number, even allowing for the fact that there are liable to be more installations now than in 2011.

Mrs Hosie then contacted the Renewable Energy Consumer Code and, after a conciliation stage, applied to go to arbitration in February 2014, during which it became apparent that when the installer applied on 25 January 2012 to change the name of the registered code member from E. Scallan Ltd, it had failed to disclose that Scallan Renewables, as a partnership, was a separate and distinct legal entity from E. Scallan Ltd. In its submission, Scallan Renewables argued that Mrs Hosie’s contract was with E. Scallan Ltd, not Scallan Renewables, which had no liability. Mrs Hosie, not unreasonably, argued that Scallan Renewables was registered under RECC with the same membership number as E. Scallan Ltd and that the businesses were significantly intertwined. The arbitrator, however, dismissed Mrs Hosie’s claim, on the basis that transfer of the membership number from ESL to Scallan Renewables did not constitute a transfer of legal liabilities, while acknowledging that the contractor had not made the position clear.

My constituents feel that the Government need to be much more hands-on in securing proper regulation of the sector, particularly when substantial sums of public money in loans and grants are at stake. Of course, under the Government’s green deal schemes, many people have been persuaded to look at renewable energy schemes as a way of reducing their own energy consumption and helping to meet our green energy targets and climate change targets. Considerable amounts of money have gone into those schemes, but unless robust regulation is in place to protect the consumer and give them confidence that, should anything go wrong, there is a way of making a complaint and getting restitution, the schemes will be seriously imperilled. I urge the Minister to consider whether the schemes need to be looked at and stronger regulation implemented to ensure that consumers who are trying to do the right thing are properly protected.

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16:12 The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate with the hon. Gentleman. He has raised some interesting points about domestic renewable energy in the UK, particularly about the importance of ensuring that the right measures are in place to strengthen consumer protection. I hope that as I set out the steps that industry and other key stakeholders are taking to strengthen consumer protection, I will be able to reassure him, Mrs Leslie and Mrs Hosie.

We have demonstrated our commitment to small-scale renewable energy through the feed-in tariff and the renewable heat incentive scheme. The feed-in tariff has been a success since its introduction in April 2010. Some 700,000 installations, totalling 3.5 GW, registered for the scheme during its first five years up to April 2015. The domestic renewable heat incentive has had 37,000 installations register since April 2014.

MCS installers must also be members of a consumer code that is approved under the Chartered Trading Standards Institute consumer codes approval scheme. The only such approved code at present for the small-scale renewable energy sector is the Renewable Energy Consumer Code, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. I am told that RECC carries out strenuous due diligence on all businesses that apply to join the code. In particular, it is designed to ensure that bogus companies and other businesses with directors or senior staff who have a questionable trading history are not admitted to the sector. An independent applications panel reviews the evidence and takes those important decisions.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change takes any mis-selling, fraud or poor-performing systems in our support schemes extremely seriously. For example, last year, we introduced a service to enable consumers to obtain reliable estimates of potential renewable heat incentive payments to help them to verify quotes from installers.

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