Domestic Energy Efficiency: Retrofitting

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We remain committed to getting as many homes as possible to EPC band C by 2035 where it is practical, effective and affordable.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government heralded the green homes grant scheme as a key programme for retrofitting and net zero, but the scheme has descended into a fiasco, as we have heard, with small businesses not being paid, cuts to funding for the next year and the slow installation of measures. According to the Government’s own statistics, nearly 61,000 voucher applications were from low-income households, but only 799 measures have been installed for those families—just 1.3%. Can the Minister explain why the scheme is failing low-income families so badly?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am not sure that the noble Baroness’s figures are correct, but I will write to her with the correct information. The scheme is not failing low-income families. We have maximum grants of £10,000 available, many of which are being taken up by low-income families. We have issued thousands of vouchers to installers to retrofit works in low-income families’ homes.

Covid-19: Vaccine Trials

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord makes some very good points. Vaccine misinformation is harmful, and the Government are working with developers, manufacturers, industry and communities to present a clear picture of the rollout process. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, we are also sponsoring content on social media channels and a range of news media outlets to provide information and advice to communities in numerous different languages.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab) [V]]

Ensuring that participants in Covid-19 research proportionately represent the ethnicity of the wider population is vital to ensure that the new treatments and vaccines being investigated are effective for everybody, including people from different ethnicities. What steps are researchers taking to recruit more clinical trial volunteers from ethnic minority communities to take part in urgent public health studies to help tackle these disparities in health outcomes?

Home Care Workers

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we are dealing with the pay of individuals and the travel costs between the two visits. I have tried to set out what the law is, and I think that it is perfectly clear. On funding for local authorities, it is for them to decide how to deal with it. The Government have given councils access to £3.6 billion extra funding for adult social care in 2018-19 and £3.9 billion in 2019-20.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, this is predominantly a female workforce, often employed under precarious employment conditions—on zero-hours contracts without any guarantee of the number of hours worked or available each week. The Resolution Foundation estimates that care workers are collectively cheated out of £130 million each year. Age UK says that we will need 650,000 extra care workers for the future. We know that we need 130,000 care workers just to meet today’s demand. Does the Minister agree that giving care workers a decent living wage for all the time spent on the job is not only fair but vital to recruiting new staff and addressing current and future chronic staff shortages? If he does, what is he going to do about it?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we believe it is vital that they are paid properly and that is why we gave advice to local authorities on how they should perform their duties. I repeated that advice on what local authorities should do to the noble Lord, Lord Wills. We have also made funding available to local authorities, so it should be for them to ensure that they have the right people to do the job.