Appendix 7
Draft S.I.: text of letter from Gregory Barker
MP, Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change,
annexing memorandum
Disclosure of State Pension Credit Information
(Warm Home Discount) Regulations 2011 (Draft S.I.)
27 June 2011
Further to my letter to you on 13 May 2011 on the
draft Disclosure of State Pension Credit Information (Warm Home
Discount) Regulations, I am afraid that I need to request your
support again.
As you know, your Committee considered these draft
Regulations at their meeting on 22 June 2011. They found, rightly,
that a word was missing in Regulation 6 (1).
My officials have looked into this and found that
there was a technical glitch in the printing of the document.
This meant that the electronic version of the draft Regulations
to be printed, laid and sent for publication contained the missing
word but when printed prior to being laid the word 'supplied'
in Regulation 6(1) did not print. This printing error occurs only
on some of our printers, not others and this is why it was missed.
This meant that the version published by the Stationary Office
did not contain this error, but the version considered by your
Committee did.
Since your Clerk pointed out this error, my officials
have had the previous version withdrawn and laid the revised version
on 23 June 2011. They have also written to your Committee, as
requested, explaining the reasons for this error. This memorandum
is attached below.
As we laid the corrected draft on 23 June 2011, I
understand that in the ordinary way, your Committee would re consider
the draft at your meeting on 6 July 2011. I am very concerned
that if we wait until then, we would not be able to get debates
before Recess and the Regulations would not come into force on
20 July 2011. This would seriously affect our ability to help
the fuel poor.
The Regulations are required to allow for legal data
sharing between the energy suppliers and Government. Without the
Regulations in force we will not be able to start the detailed
process of testing data sharing and transfer arrangements needed
to make sure that we meet strict Government standards for
the security of personal data. If we waited until after Recess
and started testing in mid-September, we would not have enough
time to complete this to be able to data share and require the
energy suppliers to provide the £120 rebate off the Winter
electricity bills of over 800,000 of the poorest most vulnerable
pensioners. There is also a risk that we might not be able to
provide the rebate in 2011/12 all.
Given this, I would like to ask you to consider expediting
these draft Regulations for final review at your next meeting
on 29 June 2011. This would mean that it would still be possible
to get debate slots before Recess and would enable this important
mechanism to help vulnerable pensioners this year.
I understand that your Committee will want reassurance
that an error like this is unlikely to happen again. Although
we already have robust processes for checking Statutory Instruments
including Ministerial, legal, Parliamentary Unit and TSO validation,
now we are aware of this potential defect in the printing
of SIs, the Department is looking at whether the final hard copy
which will be physically laid should be double checked by the
drafting lawyer (not just the final electronic copy as is current
practice). The Department will also be investigating the source
of the printing error.
GREGORY BARKER
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