Martin Wrigley

That had not occurred to me, but it is an amazing idea; people taking their mobile power source with them—fantastic. That brings me on to other solutions that we should be looking at, particularly community energy generation, community networks and community power consortia, as well as business inclusion—businesses that can generate more electricity during the day than they are using. We should be encouraging those things to happen, moving away from the centralised model of the past and towards the distributed and inclusive model of the future. While flexibility is an excellent step, it will obviously not solve all the issues. We still need to fundamentally change energy generation contracts to de-link the cost of electricity from the price of gas. That will need to be done as well, but all these things are largely contractual issues, not technical ones. We do not need to reinvent something humongously different; we simply need to get the contracts right and change the energy market. I say “simply”—I understand that these changes have their complexities, but they are achievable. We know what we need to do. The other massive energy issue is home insulation, which must not be forgotten. It is the single most important thing we need to do to reduce our fuel usage. The district council that I led demonstrated that very well—I draw hon. Members attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which notes that I am still a councillor on Teignbridge district council—when it started building council houses for the first time in 30 years. The first pair of semi-detached houses that we built are well insulated, with solar panels on the roof and air source heat pumps. At the height of the gas price crisis, the power bill for that home was just £500. We can do that with modern insulation and modern efficiencies. Flexibility is one extra piece that we need to further reduce the cost. It is all part of a journey, and we are going in the right direction. I urge the Government to take faster action and to do everything they can to make it happen. As we have heard, industry is already looking for it. Let us make it happen.