Housing: Modern Methods of Construction

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, MMC can make a big difference in energy efficiency and embodied carbon in buildings. I will give a quick bit of history for 15 seconds. The previous Labour Government, and indeed the coalition Government, had targets for net-zero buildings for homes for 2016. That legislation was about to be enacted when the Government changed and George Osborne, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, stopped that process. In the meantime, we have had 1.5 million homes built below that standard that need not have been and will have to be retrofitted. That was a national disgrace and probably one of the largest bits of environmental vandalism that we have had in recent years.

The Labour manifesto says two things around this. On page 56, on fuel poverty and net zero, its “Warm homes plan”, which I hugely welcome, says:

“The energy shock of recent years has highlighted the urgent importance of improving energy efficiency in British homes”.


Page 38, on housebuilding, says:

“Labour wants exemplary development to be the norm not the exception. We will take steps to ensure we are building more high-quality, well-designed, and sustainable homes and creating places that increase climate resilience”.


I welcome that and all the aspiration behind it. We have for next year the future homes standard that has been mentioned, but that is not a net-zero commitment in terms of housebuilding. Will that aspiration be improved to return us to what we should have been doing in 2016?