They seem to be forgetting where the real money is
Cisco want this disastrous idea so that they can supply the UK energy companies with an absurdly overpriced network for the stupid meters.
The utility companies want it so they can mine your data and sell it to advertising slime to bombard you with yet more crap you don't want.
DECC want it because they have some halfwit idea that a "smart meter" will allow your rooftop solar PV plant (you know, the one they just halved the feed in tariff on) or your plug in hybrid (you know, the car you don't own and don't want) to "sell" energy back to the grid at times of peak demand.
The claim for the consumer is that the meters will support dynamic switching of tariffs, this would be true if the legislation was set up properly to prevent the utility companies creating lock in, just wait, the second month you have your "smart" meter some sales gimp will be ringing you up telling you that EDF have noticed you have an old, non heat recovering dryer type washing machine and they can sell you a new one at a nice price which they will spread across your bills for 36 months. The hitch is, of course, that you can no longer change supplier, you are as locked in as you are with the mobile phone vermin. This is not a new con, the con is old, look back at the early days of our national grid when the electricity board made a mint out of flogging electric cookers from their shops which customers paid for on their electricity bill.
Don't even mention the word "security", we know that the tosspots in government think security is killing brown people and taking their oil. As for the energy companies? They will make the banks look like they know what they are doing, been a victim of card fraud? You aint seen nothing yet.
The reality then is that;
Taxpayer money is used to prop up Cisco for a few more years
Taxpayer money is used to buy substandard "smart" meters which will be obsolete within 5 years and some russian will have written a worm for them in two, all of you kWh is belong to us
Utility companies get to dodge the whole "smart switching" by selling people shit they don't need on lock in contracts
Utility companies get to pass on short term spikes in price to unlucky customers and DICC will stand behind them because it is "demand management" which is obviously green
Taxpayers and "customers" (not that the energy parasites have to think of their hosts as customers) get to pay several times over whilst being invited to rub on the KY Jelly and grasp their ankles.
Nice one government!