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Mr. Forth: I remind my right hon. Friend that the Minister said on Second Reading:
- We have to consider provisions for bringing the measure into force and, bearing in mind the Government's current spending commitments and reviews, we want to consider carefully the references to time scales and targets.--[Official Report, 10 March 2000; Vol. 345, c. 1353-54.]
Mr. Maclean: My right hon. Friend is right to remind me of the Minister's implied threat. It was a serious threat. He said in the nicest possible way with his usual ministerial smile that he would have to consider carefully the time scales and targets. We all know that that is ministerial speak for "we cannot have those time scales and targets, so we will have to remove them or delete them from the Bill."
The Government may remove my hon. Friend's modest proposal that the appropriate authorities should include a final target date. My hon. Friend does not even require that it should be the 15-year time scale that we used to hear about in other Bills. To ensure that he had the Government on board, he was so reasonable that he did not pin them down even to a 15-year time scale, yet they find even that unacceptable. If they find the rather loose phrase "a final target date" unacceptable, it must be because they are concerned about the overall cost in the time frame that they have in mind.
The Government are under a clear obligation to spell out what the costs would be if the Bill were to be implemented over five, 10 or 15 years. The total implementation costs may have been grossly exaggerated--that is possible, even with the excellent advice that my hon. Friend was given. Since the Bill received its Second Reading, I have had letters from insulation companies. They do not call themselves that--they are new millennium sophisticated heating companies. They say that they have the perfect solution to the problems addressed by my hon. Friend's Bill. They urge me to support it because they hope to sell 50 million highly efficient fuel condensing boilers and a lot of loft insulation.
I do not impugn the integrity of those companies, but many of them believe that they will make a lot of money from the Bill, if it is enacted, in a reasonably short time scale. The taxpayer will have to pick up that tab, and the Government may be exaggerating the overall costs.
If the cost of this measure turns out to be £2 billion over 20 years, it is reasonable, but if it is £15 billion over five years, that is an enormous cost. Given that the taxpayer is being fleeced by the Government, those costs would be unacceptable. The Government must give the House an idea of the overall cost of the four different, crucial provisions in clause 2(2)(a), (b), (c) and (d). When we have that figure, we will be in a position to make a judgment on whether the cost would be acceptable to the taxpayer and the Chancellor of the Exchequer if it were incurred over three, five, 10 or 25 years or a century.
I know that the Government have made those calculations. The Government could not have reached a view on the Bill in the Cabinet Sub-Committee, and the Treasury would not have consented to its getting as far as this, unless the Government had had fairly clear figures relating to the anticipated costs. The Minister would not be receiving his instructions from Cabinet Committee A or from the Treasury to pull the teeth of the Bill--to extract references to, for instance, a comprehensive plan, and to make the other amendments that we shall see--unless the Treasury had a fair idea of what the costs would be.
Given that both the Treasury and the Minister's Department have a fairly accurate idea of the costs, and that the Minister is therefore under instructions to remove the parts of the Bill that will require money, I believe that the Minister has an obligation to share the information that he has with the House. Otherwise, by the time we return to the Bill on Report, I shall probably have drafted amendments to specify costs in the Bill, to try to help my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West to ensure that the 4 million people out there experiencing fuel poverty are not misled.
I shall also draft amendments putting in a sensible time scale. I may be opposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, and I suspect that we may have some fairly vociferous arguments on that Friday; but I want to ensure that, if the Government are going to kill the Bill by stealth, we have a fair idea of exactly what costs they find acceptable.
I may table amendments suggesting that the costs should range from perhaps £5 million per annum to £500 million per annum, and I shall want to hear from the Minister the level at which the Government find the costs acceptable. Then we may have an indication of whether they are taking the Bill seriously, or whether they are involved in an elaborate charade involving their officially supporting in the House a Bill that could have serious financial implications for them and pretending to the public and all the lobby organisations out there that they are supporting a Bill that will one day eradicate fuel poverty, while making dashed sure that they table amendments in Committee and on Report to remove the vital parts of the Bill that deliver the solutions.
If the Government are going to remove parts of the Bill that relate to financial targets and costs, they have involved us in a big charade tonight by tabling a money motion that is absolutely meaningless. Money motions are important: they represent the one control that the House
has, theoretically, over the Executive. But the Executive, of course, is backed by a large Labour majority, and can drive through money motions if it wishes to do so.
The Minister has written books about honesty and justice in our legal system. The Minister has a reputation for seeking out the truth. The Minister has a reputation for supporting freedom of information. Given all that, I should have thought that the Minister would wish to put his folder on the Dispatch Box and read out the figures that he has relating to the costs of the Bill.
The Minister will, of course, want to share those figures with the House. If he does so and they are reasonable, Conservative Members such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst--who may wish to oppose the Bill one day because he considers the costs excessive--may be highly embarrassed.
Mr. David Amess (Southend, West):
The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake) probably thought that he was helping me, but I think that he rather fed my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) with some fuel.
I apologise to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) for missing his opening speech, but I think that he may have been slightly disingenuous in not mentioning that I had invited both him and my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border to serve in Committee, which will begin considering the Bill tomorrow.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Chris Mullin):
I thought that I had drawn the short straw when I heard that I had to be in the Chamber at this late hour, but the right hon. Members for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) are a class act, and it was well worth waiting for.
The Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Bill, promoted by the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), enshrines commitments and mirrors
measures that we already have in hand. For that reason, we do not believe that anything in the Bill would increase public expenditure above and beyond current commitments. The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst was quoting from my Second Reading speech, but he seemed to overlook the sentence that said that the Bill was unlikely to have any financial implications.
As hon. Members have suggested, the Bill may not require a money resolution. However, it is important to note that amendments may be tabled at some stage that would require a money resolution. It is of course difficult to be certain, but if an amendment were tabled or circumstances arose in which consideration of financial issues was necessary, we would not want to restrict debate on the Bill simply because the resolution had not been agreed to beforehand.
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