Letter to stakeholders about possible changes to primary legislation

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From Rupert Furness
RTFO Programme Director

March 15, 2007

Dear Stakeholder

Possible changes to Primary legislation

As mentioned in the RTFO consultation on page 62, we are considering making a number of changes to primary legislation if Parliamentary time comes available.  This newsletter gives you some more detail on the areas that we are considering changing.  It also seeks your views on whether these changes are appropriate and informs you that we would also like to use the meetings on the 21st and 22nd March to cover these points further.  Please note that any changes to primary legislation would be entirely separate from the draft RTFO Order which forms part of the RTFO consultation pack issued on 22 February, and would be primarily concerned with tidying up certain elements of the 2004 Energy Act. 

The purpose of any changes to Primary legislation would be to:

  • Allow DfT to incur expenditure on the implementation of the RTFO at the earliest opportunity.  This will ensure that the RTFO is implemented fully and robustly in April 2008.  Without the change, expenditure on implementation may have to wait until the RTF Order is made around November 2007.
  • Amend the 2004 Energy Act so that the Department for Transport, rather than an NDPB, could act as the Administrator of the RTFO. This is in accordance with Government policy to reduce the number of free standing non departmental bodies and would reduce the overall costs of administration.
  • Provide for an information gateway to be set up with HRMC to allow them to disclose fuel duty information to the RTFO Administrator. Many stakeholders have told us this would reduce the administrative burden on them and would make the scheme more robust and less subject to fraud.
  • Give Government the ability to remove the "recycling of the buy out fund" element of the scheme design and instead pay money from buy out into the Treasury Consolidated Fund. This scheme design change would only be made if the recycling mechanism were shown, over time, to have a negative impact on the policy objectives of the RTFO.  It would need a revised RTFO Order to be debated in Parliament, and would not be exercised without further full consultation of stakeholders.
  • Allow the Secretary of State to direct the Administrator to collect certain information (such as carbon and sustainability (C & S) data) or to set the methodology and format for calculating and presenting C & S data to the Administrator. This is to ensure the Secretary of State has enough information to ensure policy objectives of the RTFO are being met.

It is not certain at this stage that we will gain Parliamentary time for this legislation. The introduction of the RTFO does not depend upon it. We believe that if we are successful in our bid for Parliamentary time, the changes would have strong benefits and improve the robustness and implementation of the RTFO.

A full RIA will be published in the Houses of Parliament library if it becomes clear that Parliamentary time is available.

If you have any comments on our intention to legislate in these areas please send them as soon as possible to rtfo.consultation@dft.gsi.gov.uk; this address should also be used for comments on the consultation document which we should receive by 17 May. If you would like to ask any questions about the proposed changes you can also contact Neil Johnson on 020 7944 3043. 

I would also like to confirm that there will be an opportunity to discuss the content of part two of the consultation at a meeting scheduled for the 24th April.  I will send further details of this workshop nearer the time.

Best wishes

Rupert Furness