Energy: Annual Statement
Debate between Lord Sentamu and Lord Marland
Lord Marland
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, as always, has raised some fundamental questions. I hope very much that we will have a debate on the broader aspects of this subject. We will have assimilated and responded formally to the report of the Committee on Climate Change by 15 October, and that will give us an opportunity to have a major debate, as we did last year. On the low-carbon technologies, one of the important things we have announced in the Statement is that we are addressing the carbon price, which is one of the areas that needs to be fixed. I agree with my noble friend that to have one structure is obviously beneficial to the customer, so we will continue to review this. Lastly, we will have a review of spending, but as I said earlier, that will come after the spending review in the autumn.
The Archbishop of York
My Lords, I apologise for rising, but I thought that the Minister had already answered the question because the Statement included the statements made by the noble Lord. I, too, welcome the commitment to nuclear power, but I wonder whether we will do more than simply build new nuclear plants. Will the science improve sufficiently to lead us to nuclear fusion, because in the long run that is probably the area we need to go into. Are the Government looking at the possibility of researching it?
The Statement says:
“The cheapest way of narrowing the gap between energy demand and supply is to cut energy use. We need to address the state of our buildings. We have some of the oldest housing stock in Europe”.
I am confused. For example, the school rebuilding programme was aimed at addressing some of the worst school buildings, which can waste a lot of energy, but most of the projects that have been cut are those that were most needed. Is there still a commitment to this kind of rebuilding because the condition of some schools is really not good enough? Does the Minister see that the aim of using less energy requires a lot of improvements to be made to our school and other buildings? If so, why have these cuts been made?
Finally, the previous Government were at least committed to ensuring that listed buildings undergoing repairs and being made more energy efficient were able to claim relief on VAT. Some churches and other buildings consume too much energy, so part of helping to address this was to ensure that VAT relief was available. I have not seen anything about that relief in the Statement. Will it continue?
Lord Marland
The comments of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York are most welcome. The point about our building stock is that it is very old, and indeed one of the oldest in Europe because we are a mature country. The policy we have announced is the green deal, which will accelerate the use of cavity wall insulation, loft lagging and so on, which reduces carbon emissions and the use of electricity. Obviously this will naturally flow through to many schools and government-owned buildings because we are committed to a 10 per cent reduction in carbon emissions in such premises within 12 months. The issue of listed buildings is a significant problem which is outside my scope. However, it is without doubt a problem if you want to put a cavity wall in a listed building.