Backbytes: A year too late, MPs realise that the UK's smart meters are a waste of money

MPs finally work out that the UK's Smart Metering Implementation Programme is an expensive waste of time that will be obsolete before its rolled out

Put the word "smart" or the letter "i" in front of anything, and it instantly conveys to the object a veneer of computerisation and intelligence that no one can question - with the possible exception of ITV.

That's about the only possible reason we can think of why the UK's costly and poorly designed smart metering programme was allowed to go ahead in its current form - using proprietary technology obliging households to pay twice, first via their bills for the whole £11.3bn+ programme, and then a second time to buy a device so that they can actually read their meter.

Only now when the contracts have been signed and the programme is just starting to be rolled out have the UK's lackadaisical MPs seen fit to take a proper look at the programme - and found it wanting.

The self-promoter-in-chief of the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Margaret Hodge - the tax dodger who criticises tax dodgers, and the former Minister for Children who led a council accused of suppressing widespread child abuse in the borough it was meant to be running - has only just found out that many elements of the smart metering programme could be out of date by the time they are actually implemented.

"Evolving technology suggests that customers could receive the information on their smartphones, making the in-home display redundant," says Hodge. Energy suppliers will be required to offer in-home displays, even though customers may not want or use them. Consumers will have to pay for them even though they might already be out of date."

Oh really?

She could have found that out by reading Computing or talking to the many independent experts who were saying the same thing well before all the final decisions were made.

For example, telecoms veteran Nick Hunn, the director of WiFore Consulting warned: "Too many cooks have ratcheted up the technical complexity to the point where it is no longer fit for purpose. As a result, it's lining up to be the next major government IT disaster."

She would also have found out that the purported £18bn or so in savings - over the next 20 years - were nonsense and may even have taken the time to look at smart metering schemes elsewhere in the world that cost half or less the UK's system, while delivering all the same benefits.

Seriously, what are we paying our MPs for if they are incapable of critically appraising and stopping such programmes before we get committed to paying out huge sums of money on duff systems?