Lords warn government in ‘la la land’ over smart meter target

The government has been warned that it is in ‘la la land’ if it believes the 2020 smart meter roll-out target date can be achieved.

The government has said that every customer must be offered a smart meter by 2020.

But during the second reading in the House of Lords on the Smart Meters Bill on Tuesday (13 March), the chairman of the Lords EU energy and environment committee, said the official deadline would “clearly not” be met.

Lord Teverson said: “For goodness’ sake let us admit it, get back from la-la land into the real world and allow the industry, consumers and everybody else including the government to plan this sensibly.”

He was backed up by Lord Grantchester, Labour spokesman in the Lords on energy.

Pointing to Which? figures estimating that 250,000 meters will need to fitted every week to meet the government’s official cut-off date, he said: “The government must state whether the 2020 target is still realistic and whether offers being accepted will lead to fulfilment within the timeframe.”

Lord Teverson also accused the government of failing to keep control of costs at the Data Communications Company (DCC), the Capita-run body that has been tasked with setting up the smart meter infrastructure.

He said the DCC’s project management costs have gone up from £107 million to £374 million, while subcontractors’ set-up costs have ballooned from £131 million to £948 million.

“DCC may be out of control but government management of the process has clearly also been quite ineffective.”

Labour peer Lord Whitty said the bill should be amended to spell out the process for retrofitting and replacing the first generation of smart meters with the more advanced SMETS2 devices.

Lord Henley, junior minister at the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy department (BEIS), said he expected installation rates to increase in the run up to the 2020 deadline.

“Most suppliers will be installing smart meters with greater numbers of installers and more types of customers across Britain.”

He also assured peers that the national smart meter infrastructure, which he said had been developed with inputs from experts at GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, was secure against hacking.

“The smart meter security model establishes physical, regulatory and operational security controls backed by independent security assurance arrangements. For instance, critical commands will only be accepted by the smart meter if they are issued by the responsible energy supplier and authenticated through strong encryption. Moreover, they have to be countersigned independently by the DCC.”