Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, 27 Jun 2007
Meeting date: Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Official Report
196KB pdf
Proposed Energy Efficiency and Microgeneration Bill
We said that we would resume at 12 minutes past 10 and it is now 13 minutes past, so we will carry on with item 3, which concerns the proposed energy efficiency and microgeneration bill.
I welcome Sarah Boyack—it is funny to see these role reversals—to the committee to speak to her statement of reasons for not consulting on her proposed bill.
Thank you, convener. I am grateful to you for placing the bill proposal on your agenda before the summer recess.
I will recap for colleagues. Consultation on my proposal took place between December 2005 and March 2006. In putting the consultation together, I took advice from the Parliament's non-Executive bills unit—I have Rodger Evans from the unit with me this morning. Those of you who are long in the tooth as members or who lobbied the Parliament before you arrived here know that NEBU dealt with scores of consultations over the past two parliamentary sessions. We analysed the consultation, which some of you will recognise. We summarised it last year and published the paper on the Parliament's website. All the individual consultation responses are held in SPICe, so they are available for members to look at if they want to.
My view is that to consult again at this stage would not add to our knowledge and would only serve to duplicate the work that I and others who have been interested in the subject have undertaken. In line with the requirements of the standing orders, I have lodged a draft proposal for this session and have prepared a statement of reasons, which has been circulated. I hope that members have had a chance to study the statement, which is a technical statement of why I consider further consultation to be unnecessary at this stage.
The original consultation was presented clearly and undertaken thoroughly in accordance with advice on best practice. Ample materials have been published on the issues by me and others. Responses to the consultation widely support the use and promotion of microenergy and energy efficiency initiatives, as suggested in the bill proposal. Strong parliamentary support was offered, too. My final proposal had support from 43 members from the Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green, SNP, Conservative and independent groups. That is a strong indication of cross-party support.
The proposal is essentially the same as it was before. We have adjusted it in a minor way to reflect Executive policy initiatives that have taken place in the meantime. To consult again would duplicate the work that has been done. Since we did the consultation, an awful lot of work has been done to move the policy proposals forward; ideas have been suggested to the Executive and work has been done on the proposals with all the groups that responded. Therefore, we are in a good position to make proposals to the Parliament should the committee allow us to continue with the proposed bill.
Little would be gained from further consultation. We should be satisfied with the statement of reasons that has been provided and the proposed bill should be allowed to proceed to a final proposal.
I do not wish to prevent anyone from asking questions, but is anyone against the proposition that Brian Adam put?
No.
That is fine. Members have no more questions.
That is super. I talked to colleagues before the meeting started and I can say that I would be more than happy to have a relatively informal briefing after the recess to bring people up to speed with where we got to and the key issues, before we have the final proposals. That would allow new members in particular to feed in any ideas. I thank the committee for considering the proposal.
Not at all—thank you.