Smart Meters Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-24
Topic: Energy
Alan Patrick Vincent Whitehead (Labour, Centre-left): I am very sorry—it’s Don Valley now, isn’t it My right hon. Friend talked about the continuing imbalance of benefit in the roll-out of smart meters, with the benefit appearing to be accruing to energy companies, as opposed to customers. For our part, we support the idea of introducing smart meters across the country to replace the dumb meter system that serves the customer very badly and has historically done so, and is certainly not fit for purpose for the requirements of the different ways of supplying, using and measuring power that are coming our way with the energy revolution that is upon us The gain not only to customers but to our energy systems as a whole of having collectively installed, sufficient smart meters across the country to bring in new ways of measuring and predicting use of associating smart meters with smarter grids, thereby saving enormous amounts of further future expenditure in grid strengthening and capacity additions—all to the benefit of a smarter, more resilient, more efficient energy system for the future—suggests that supporting smart meters is right thing to do But then we come to the process by which smart meters are rolled out, and there is much to raise an eyebrow about. First, there is the Government’s original choice of who should undertake the roll-out—the energy companies: a model not adopted by any other country managing a smart meter roll-out programme, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) pointed out. Secondly, there is, as a number of hon. Members have mentioned, the high overall costs built into the roll-out—costs that will eventually land on consumers in the shape of bills on their doormats. Thirdly, there is the truly lamentable performance so far in getting the DCC—the communications company responsible for making smart meters communicate well and on an interoperable basis—up and running so that smart meters, once installed, really can communicate with other and with the system. That communications company has now only just gone live, at the very end of the window for doing so before serious repercussions arise. Fourthly, there was the decision, halfway through the roll-out, to transition from one type of smart meter to another—a process akin to trying to change the wheel of a car while it is driving along the road All these issues raise legitimate and far-reaching questions about whether the goal of having a critical mass of smart meters in place by the end of 2020 is likely to be achieved and whether, in the short time available to us, moves can be made to get us back to that goal. The recent reports in the 2016 impact assessment suggest that we are not doing very well on installation—that we are set for an almighty bunching of installations in late 2018 and 2019 that is very daunting, even if vans of installers are not starved of meters to put up because they have been told not to install the old ones and are awaiting supplies of the new ones to install. I welcome the consultation on methods of resolving the possible hiatus in supply during the changeover from SMETS 1 to SMETS 2 meters. However, I am minded—I think the Government will have some difficult decisions to make in this regard—of what we need to do by 2020 in populating the country with smart meters to the extent that we can really make these changes possible, for our collective good, given the sheer number of smart meters that have been installed across the country We need to judge the very modest changes to the smart meter roll-out regime in this Bill against that wider background of decisions and progress made in the roll-out itself, and of how far away we are from the goal of having a national smart meter presence that makes all the other energy innovations—and cheaper energy and gas—possible, and to decide whether we should take the opportunity to add further elements of "getting on with it" into the Bill as it progresses through Committee We will not oppose this Bill on Second Reading. However, I place the Minister and the Government on notice that in Committee we will closely scrutinise the roll-out provisions currently in place to look at ways in which we can make amends for some of the frankly sloppy decision making that has occurred in the progress of the roll-out, and stiffen the sinews of the programme so that it works as well as it can. It is perhaps no coincidence that the—