Housing: Accessibility Standards
Debate between Lord Whitty and Baroness Penn(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
As I said, we had the interim uplift to energy efficiency standards in 2021, and we have just started a consultation on the future homes standard. That sets out two models that could achieve the standard, one with solar panels and one without. The reality is that the Government have focused on the outcomes that need to be achieved and can be achieved by a number of technologies. Those outcomes are consistent with our net zero commitments and targets, and we are committed to taking them forward.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, is this not just one aspect of the Government’s failure to enforce the standards to which they are theoretically committed, whether environmental, accessibility or others? Are they trying to trade off the standards against numbers because of their pathetic failure to meet the 300,000 homes a year ambition, which was stated time and again?
Baroness Penn (Con)
It is under this Government that we have seen some of the highest housebuilding rates in 30 years. We are on track to deliver 1 million new homes during the course of this Parliament. We are not trading off different standards, but we do need to consider whether any new standards we bring in are deliverable by builders and allow us to meet the needs of local communities and of our environment, and the need to build more homes.
Dasgupta Review
Debate between Lord Whitty and Baroness Penn
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Baroness is quite right that our peatlands will play a crucial role as part of our nature-based solutions to climate change here in the UK. That is why the Government have put in additional funding to restoring both peatlands and forests to help with carbon capture in a nature-based way.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, one of the causes of the loss of biodiversity in Britain is the overuse of chemical fertilisers and chemical pesticides. What are the Government doing to find alternatives that enable us to produce food in a way which does not destroy our biodiversity?
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Lord is quite right. I believe that Defra made some announcements this week about looking at the inputs to agriculture in the context of rising costs there, and the potential for a mutually beneficial solution in terms of finding more natural solutions to some of those inputs. As part of our environmental land management scheme, we will also promote the maintenance of healthy soils. There are two soil standards within the sustainable farming incentive launching in 2022.