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Mr. Chope: I shall speak to amendments Nos. 30 and 31, which I tabled, and express my disappointment that the Minister feels it necessary to take the power to review a target and, if he considers it appropriate, to revise it. That is about the Government moving the goalposts—to use a different analogy—and the danger is that once the microgeneration industry begins to grow, the Government will change the targets by revising them downwards, or eliminate them altogether.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) says that such targets are needed nationally to give confidence to the industry. Surely the industry would have more confidence if it knew that a cynical Government, who have already changed any number of targets and definitions in their time in office, could not come along and say, "Well, we had this target but we don't think it's right now, so we're going to revise it."

Of course, as I pointed out in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), the Government could revise the target under clause 3(8), without the need to give any reason why they wanted to review it or to engage in any consultation on their proposals to do so. That would be a matter for the Secretary of State.

I am pretty sceptical about all this, as I think is apparent, but if clause 3 means anything, it is designed to try to promote mirogeneration. However, it is hedged around with caveats and exceptions and gives too much power to the Minister. It will enable him not to announce a target until 1 November 2008, and then perhaps to decide that he does not want to do so after all. If he chooses to announce a target, he can revise it without giving any information on why he wishes to do so.

If, as the Minister says, what he has in mind is that the revision should always be upwards, why did he not say so? Significantly, he omitted to say that. If the Government were saying, "We'd like to revise targets to make them more demanding, but we'll never revise them just because it's apparent that we can't meet our
 
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objectives," I would have a little more confidence. However, the Minister does not want to do that, because the Government have set targets just as the old Soviet empire used to set lots of targets—targets that are abandoned as soon as the date at which the measurement should take place approaches.

I am sure that many people throughout the country realise that targets are just a device used by the Government, and have no point unless sanctions can be imposed for failing to reach them, and no discretion is left to the Government to revise them to suit their own objectives. I will not dwell on what we have referred to briefly, but this week's news that the child poverty reduction target has not been met is a supreme example of how worthless targets are. The Government are not prepared to accept that there are now 300,000 more children living in poverty, and they are not explaining why the target has not been met, or apologising. That just shows the worthlessness of such targets.

If we are going to have targets, they should be robust ones. The Minister, or the Secretary of State, should be forced to stick to them. That would be no big deal, because if they miss them there is no sanction—only the sanction of being held up to ridicule in the court of public opinion. I suppose one could say that has happened with the failure to achieve a reduction in child poverty, which we have heard about this week.

If the Secretary of State is going to revise a target, why should he not give reasons for revising it? I cannot understand why my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle does not think that that is a reasonable safeguard or requirement. I must leave him to make his own points about that. However, I agree with him in his suspicion about the whole regional agenda.

Mr. Forth: Before my hon. Friend embarks on this part of his analysis, may I point out that I am fairly certain that the Conservative party has just been reorganised on a regional basis? I hope that the chairman of the party does not read the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) about that being bureaucratic, costly and useless. If that happens, my hon. Friend will be in a bit of trouble, and I will be marching in lockstep with the chairman of the party.

Mr. Chope: I hope that our party has not been reorganised on a regional basis. My understanding is that although people called regional directors have been appointed, they are not responsible for areas coterminous with—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Fascinating though this subject may be to detached observers, I honestly do not think that it can be brought within the framework of the amendments that we are dealing with.

Mr. Chope: I am sure that is right, Mr. Deputy Speaker. On the Government's regional agenda, my right hon. Friend is suggesting the incorporation of regional targets. Therefore, he is effectively referring to the seven Government regions in England.

Mr. Forth: I carefully avoided referring to the Government regions; I do not think that I made any
 
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reference to them in my amendment or my remarks. I was trying to suggest that in the context of climate, windmills and all the other things, a breakdown by region—using regions that might be completely different from Government regions—would be more sensible. I hope that I avoided any suggestion that I was picking up the Government's regional structure and seeking to use that; I was not.

Mr. Chope: In that case, I shall criticise my right hon. Friend for tabling amendments that might result in unintended consequences. As soon as we refer in legislation to regions—particularly given the Government's attitude to regions and the Deputy Prime Minister's promotion of them even when they have been rejected by regional referendums—that will be used to bolster the regional agenda. The next development will be the idea that in order to police the regional targets, or even determine what they should be, it we need an elected regional assembly of people who are accountable to the region. One can imagine just such an argument developing. That is why I am instinctively against such a provision.

My right hon. Friend and I were members of a Government who naively thought that devolving some Government offices to the regions would bring the administration of government closer to the people, without setting up regions within the context of the European Union regions. I am afraid that however well intentioned that proposal was, it has resulted in a regional culture developing. My constituency is right on the border between one region and another, and is closer to the London region than to the centre of the south-west region, let alone the south-east region, and we feel strongly there that regionalism and all that it involves is bad news rather than good news. That is my concern about the regional targets, although I accept that my right hon. Friend says that regions could be defined in another way. I suppose that he has in mind an area larger than an individual local authority area.

2.15 pm

Mr. Forth: I confirm that I have in mind East Anglia, for example, or the south-west: in other words, large geographic—or, dare I say it, climatic—regions in which the distinctions that I was suggesting would make sense. I am avoiding Government administrative regions, and even worse, European regions, and am trying to avoid the constraints of even local government boundaries. I am thinking more of the sort of regions that would make sense in the context of the Bill and its objectives.

Mr. Chope: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for clarifying that. During his clarification, he referred to the south-west, which is a region. Those of us who live in the south-west and are concerned about regionalism are at pains to point out that the most westerly part of the south-west, far from being the south-west region, is the west country. That is how true people from the west country refer to their area. If he had referred to the west country rather than the south-west, I would have had a little more confidence in his approach to regionalism.
 
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Mr. Forth: In that case, may I recant and move an amendment to what I said, to delete "the south-west" and insert "the west country"?

Mr. Chope: I am sure that my constituents will forgive my right hon. Friend for having referred inadvertently to the south-west in that context. If one is based in central southern England—as you will know from your geography, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that is where Christchurch is located—it is hard to regard it as being the south-west. That is the problem with the regional concept that my right hon. Friend has introduced with his amendments.

The substance of our debate is about microgeneration and the targets for it. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle, I believe that if we are to have targets for microgeneration, it is probably better to do that on a national basis, and ideally on a United Kingdom basis—but I understand that that is not possible. Then we could work back from there.

I do not wish to detain the House much longer. All I really want to do is put on record my high degree of scepticism about clause 3: the Government have any number of let-out provisions. If my amendments Nos. 30 and 31 were agreed and subsections (7) and (8) were deleted, that would add significantly to the ability of the clause to achieve what is meant to be the avowed objective of the Bill—to encourage microgeneration and encourage people to invest in it. People are not going to invest in microgeneration if they can see that the whole concept could be disregarded by the Government should they so wish, although in the present climate of opinion it seems like a good thing.

I have no doubt about the commitment of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition to microgeneration, and in that respect he leads by example. However, he does so without the need for any targets. He is not waiting until 1 November 2008 to act, and there is no reason why anyone else who wants to engage in microgeneration needs to wait until then. I strongly advise people who are thinking of investing in microgeneration equipment to go into the marketplace and seek it, irrespective of any targets—whether national or regional—laid down by the Government. If microgeneration is a good thing and people are prepared to invest in it, we should let that happen, but we should not pretend that clause 3 will make any significant difference.

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