COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 11 November 1976)

§ Lord KIRKHILL
My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1. The purpose of this Amendment is mainly to transfer the energy conservation provision from Clause 3 to Clause 1, but it also incorporates into the Bill a provision on which the Government gave an assurance during an earlier debate in your Lordships' House. With regard to the main purpose of the Amendment, noble Lords will recall that in the course of our earlier debates there was criticism that the conservation provision was out of place in Clause 3, which was otherwise concerned only with the procedures for activating the emergency powers in the 763 Bill. Similar criticisms were voiced in another place, and the Government tabled this Amendment in an effort to meet these arguments.
The wording of the energy conservation provision is very similar to the form in which it left this House but, as I have mentioned, there is one important difference. During the Report stage in this House we were, I believe, agreed that consultation on proposed energy conservation orders should include both consumers' representatives and representatives of the energy industries likely to be affected, and my noble friend Lord Shepherd, on behalf of the Government, gave your Lordships an assurance to this effect. Your Lordships will therefore be pleased to see that the Government have now agreed to an Amendment which reflects this intention on the face of the Bill. I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment.

§ Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL
My Lords, this Bill started in this House, so these Amendments come to us for the first time, and in this they are slightly different. There are a number of other Amendments with which we shall be dealing in the next ten days or so. Before I deal specifically with this Amendment, perhaps I may be permitted one or two remarks about the situation in which we find ourselves in general. We had our first debate on this Bill some seven months ago. We feel it is an example of the Government's mismanagement of their business that we find this Bill sandwiched in among all the onerous duties imposed on us in the last days and nights of the Session. It is something of a pity that we are having to rush the Bill through, because we can all feel rather proud of the way we have handled it up to now. When originally dealing with the Bill, we described it as both pretentious and depressing. We said it represented a formidable extension of the powers of the Executive, and nothing that has happened in the debates in either House has changed our opinion. Nevertheless, it would be ungracious if we did not recognise that 764 many improvements have been made in the Bill in its passage through both Houses. The Minister of State himself, Doctor Mabon, said the Bill was not perfect, and I suppose we should regard that as a concession. I am not sure that we do, but the Bill has improved from the one we originally saw, and this House can claim a good deal of the credit for that.
My Lords, during Committee stage we sought to establish three lines of argument. We sought to distinguish between those provisions which were designed to meet emergency conditions, and those which would be permanently in use. Then we attempted to ensure that powers required under international agreements would not be abused or exceeded for domestic political reasons. I daresay cynics would accuse us of having nasty suspicious minds. Similarly, we were anxious that energy conservation should not be used as a pretext for the State to intervene more and more deeply in the affairs of the energy industries, although I must say once again, in passing, that I still regret that we have got into the colloquial use of the word "conservation", when we should be using the phrase, "energy saving", because it leads to misunderstandings.
We incorporated a number of safeguards into the legislation by Amendments. We succeeded in clarifying the domestic circumstances in which emergency powers can be activated, and the temporary nature of these powers was incorporated in the Bill. Then we qualified the permanent controls over end use, which is bringing us back to these particular Amendments. We qualified these powers so that they could be used only for the purposes of conserving energy. At the time of passing the Bill through this House we removed entirely the permanent controls on petroleum prices. We shall be coming to that in the next Amendment, as we also will be dealing in a minute with the gas clauses which were completely rewritten. We can take some encouragement from the fact that another place accepted, at least as a basis for argument, a number of the changes we made, except for the price control issue.
When we come to this particular Amendment we find that the Government have moved some distance towards us in their attitude towards conservation. As 765 the noble Lord has said, there was some argument as to where in the Bill this would be most logically slotted. I have to say that we still think that the way the whole Bill is laid out is thoroughly confusing, because one has to keep dodging backwards and forwards from one clause to another. Nevertheless, this provision should not have been included in a clause which was mostly to do with emergency powers. However, the Government have now specifically made mention of conservation as a purpose in the Bill. Clearly it is a considerable step forward that appropriate people and industries should be consulted before these powers are used. We still feel that the new separate clause on conservation which we put forward would have been a better way of dealing with the situation.
My Lords, the two major issues on which there is a difference between us are that on the one hand conservation should be used as an excuse for intervention, and secondly, the issue of price control, to which we shall be coming in a moment. Nevertheless, the Government have done their best, I think, within the limitations of the way in which they see this Bill, to meet some of the objections we have raised. We are less than satisfied that the word, "conservation" is not very clearly spelled out in this Bill. We had the same kind of arguments about industrial democracy. So far, conservation appears to have meant three rather minor things: we have speed limits, we have lighting for advertisements, and office heating, and these appear to be rather trivial and niggling little issues. One would have hoped that conservation might have been treated in a rather more grandiose fashion if the Government mean what one would hope they mean by the word "conservation".
This is why we feel that the word does not fit very well into the Bill as it is now before us. What we felt was that if the Government were really determined to introduce these powers into a Bill which is primarily designed to provide emergency powers and honour international commitments, then the job should have been done properly. I must apologise for repeating myself. The noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, will find some of this familiar ground, but it is a very long time ago, and we have even had a change of faces. This, of course, creates a problem for all 766 of us, in so far as we no longer have a Minister in this House who has actually got a foot in the Department; so we have to deal more gently with the Minister who can only speak to his brief.
However, we felt that end use control could be used only for the purpose of conservation of energy when to the overall economic advantage of the United Kingdom. We also felt that consultations would have to take place between consumers and suppliers of energy and other appropriate organisations, and we have gone a long way down that road. We have also said that we would have hoped that the Secretary of State would make public the likely effect of his controls, and we believe that the Secretary of State should be asked to make an annual report justifying the continuance of any orders which he chooses to make under these additional powers which he is taking. At this hour, I do not propose to labour the point that was made so very well by the noble Lord, Lord Robbins. This will come up again on our second Amendment, and it is my excuse for making a rather long dissertation at this juncture; a number of these considerations apply to several of these Amendments.
We have to recognise that, particularly as regards price control, if by "price control we mean controlling maximum prices, then this is directly contrary to the interests of energy conservation. I think everybody would agree, whether or not one likes it, that the most effective form of energy conservation is to have high prices, and people are currently complaining about the effects it is having on them. It may be unsatisfactory, but if you are talking about energy conservation this is the one that really works. We are afraid that the use of the word smacks of platitudinous posturing, and we cannot be blamed, I think, in view of some of the things which have been said during the course of the debate on this Bill, if we are suspicious. We give the Government warning that we shall be on the look-out for abuses of the powers the Secretary of State is taking, in spite of the attempts that have been made to meet some of the complaints in Amendment No. 1.

§ Lord LOVELL-DAVIS
My Lords, I have spoken so often in this House on the subject of energy conservation that I shall relieve your minds right away by 767 saying that I do not intend to take up more than three or four minutes of your time this evening. However, this seems an appropriate point at which to stress once again the vital importance of conserving energy, which is not an optional extra to but an essential part of our overall energy policy.
This Bill can play some part in safeguarding our energy resources, and in the shorter term help to reduce our balance of payments, for we are still, in spite of the steadily increasing flow from the North Sea, importing oil at a cost of £10 million a day, if not more. But the Bill will have any significant effect only if it is properly implemented in its relevant sections, and if, in addition, it is the Government's real purpose to maintain an effective programme of energy conservation, if in fact the Government mean business.
In this respect, I commend to your Lordships an excellent report published yesterday by The Industry Group of the Advisory Council on Energy Conservation. It points out: The principal Department of Energy activity considered to date is the 'Save it' campaign, and in particular the proposed future programme of this campaign in so far as this relates to industry. The Industry Group feels strongly that it is important to maintain the momentum of the publicity if the impact is not to be lost. The advertisements, film and booklets represent a very useful start, but much remains to be done in this direction.". My Lords, there is a growing feeling in industry that energy conservation may no longer be an important commitment within the Government's energy policy. The same undoubtedly applies too the domestic sector, too. The "Save it" campaign did an excellent job. It was, of course, costly, and although it resulted in very substantial reductions in energy use—particularly in cutting out the wasteful use of energy—one could not expect the Treasury to accept continued expenditure at that level at this time. But the essence of a successful publicity campaign is that it be sustained. The "Save it" campaign made a tremendous impact, but there must be a follow through at many different promotional levels—some of them of comparatively low cost—if its effect is not to be slowly eroded.
The Energy Bill, I assume, however, will not be considered the end of the 768 story so far as energy conservation is concerned, but that the Government through the Department of Energy and other relevant Departments of State, all of whom can make a contribution, will take note of the report of the Industry Group of the Advisory Council on Energy Conservation and give a high priority to constructing an effective and sustained energy conservation programme.

§ Lord KIRKHILL
My Lords, I fully accept Lord Strathcona's rather wide-ranging consideration in depth of a number of the earlier provisions in this Bill, and I think it appropriate that he should have linked his remarks, through the pious platitude of energy conservation, as he thought of it as being, to some mention of the provision to control the price of oil products. I think, however, the noble Lord might agree with me when I suggest to him that my noble friend Lord Lovell-Davis has helped to dispel any illusion that the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, might have about the Government's seriousness of intent on the question of energy conservation. Speaking for the Government, I can assure the noble Lord that the phrase has been injected in clauses in the Bill in the very real hope that some purposeful steps will ensue in that very desirable area.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, was fair enough to say in his opening remarks that the Bill has been improved here and in the other place. I think there is evidence to show that the Government have not been inflexible. We have met a number of points fairly and very clearly.
I do not think I can usefully add to my earlier remarks, except to say that if one were here briefly—and the noble Lord touched on this point—to mention the control of price of oil products at all times, I can say that the Commons inserted this provision in Clause 1(2) and it would have the same effect as the powers sought in the Bill as originally introduced to your Lordships. It re-enacts the oil product price control powers available in the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973, which are subject to annual renewal by Order in Council. The Government regard this as a reserve provision. The Government do not have any immediate plans to use this power to control oil product prices, apart from continuing the control of paraffin prices. The Government accept the real 769 difficulties of operating a price control system, yet on policy grounds are determined to have such a power available. I commend this Amendment to your Lordships' House.