Energy Efficiency and the Clean Growth Strategy

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Luke Graham]

I thank the Minister for her intervention. Fortuitously, Clackmannanshire is up for a city deal, so there would never be a better time for her to come and get involved in these energy projects. I will definitely be following up with her on that as soon as we leave Westminster Hall.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

As we are all getting on this afternoon, I should like to invite the hon. Gentleman to come and see me in Southampton, to look at its geothermal energy scheme, which has been going since 1984. Unfortunately, it is still the only one in the country, but I trust that, with the Minister’s good offices, the geothermal schemes that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned could shortly get under way to join Southampton in its geothermal pioneering position. I really do commend what he is thinking about for geothermal. I think a lot of development is possible in terms of both mines and aquifers. I hope he will continue on his path of supporting that.

[Luke Graham]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and will gladly take up his invitation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

We have had an excellent debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) on securing it and on her excellent contribution, which was a superb setting-out of the imperatives of securing energy efficiency in homes and what flows from that.

What happens to fuel poverty, if we systematically insulate our homes to an acceptable standard? What happens to bills in the future, and what happens, as the hon. Member for Eddisbury pointed out, to the amount of fuel that we are consuming in our homes? She estimated that a 25% or so reduction in gas as a result of insulating our homes to an acceptable standard has all sorts of knock-on effects for the wider climate change debate. As she also said, that is reflected in the clean growth strategy ambition and targets that ideally we should be aiming for as far as insulation in all homes is concerned, and in the earlier target of insulation up to band C for homes in fuel poverty.

I very much commend the target in the clean growth plan, but how do we get to that target? That was also a part of the hon. Lady’s and other hon. Members’ contributions this afternoon. We ought to dwell on that as something that we can all sign up to and aspire to. There is a long gap between that aspiration, where we are now and what has happened in recent times with energy efficiency and what we now have to do to close that gap. Among other things, we must make sure that we fulfil our climate budget obligations and make sure that what comes into those climate budgets from the energy efficiency contribution is as good as it can be.

Having congratulated the hon. Member for Eddisbury on her contribution, I want to add a slight note of sadness. Perhaps we should have all sat on one side of the Chamber this afternoon and addressed our comments to all the rest out there who did not turn up to the debate and who quite often do not engage with this issue. We might have collectively addressed the importance of energy efficiency not only in domestic buildings but in commercial and industrial buildings. It is important to work together to address climate change, fuel poverty and all those other targets to make sure we sort them out. Today’s debate has reflected the collective and consensual activity that we ought to organise among all of us, provided all those other people along the road support the Minister in what she is doing for energy efficiency. The Opposition party must have the very best policies so that when our turn comes to govern, we have a clear understanding of where we need to get to, what we have to do and how we support and fund it. That is a job of work for all of us in this Chamber to get ourselves involved in.

The elision of energy efficiency and the clean growth plan in this debate highlights one of the central issues that will make or break our approach to making sure that our obligations under the fourth and fifth carbon budget can be met. I have said on various occasions that the really good news about the clean growth strategy is that it encompasses all of those things. The bad news is that the clean growth plan itself does not get us to where we need to go in terms of our obligations under the fifth carbon budget. I think the Minister accepts and understands that and has, I hope, substantial plans to add to the measures in the clean growth plan to get us to the fifth carbon budget target. However, I do not think we need to come up with a lot of brand new ideas to do that. We need to make sure that what is in the clean growth plan is funded and sorted out at the earliest possible stage and on the widest possible canvas so that when we come to put the sums together we will see that they add up as we go down the line.

I cannot emphasise strongly enough, along with other hon. Members this afternoon, what we need to do to meet the target for energy efficiency in homes. The hon. Members for Eddisbury and for Wells (James Heappey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) all emphasised the components of the action that we need to undertake with regard to energy efficiency. The hon. Member for Eddisbury emphasised how clear-eyed we need to be about what it will cost us and how it will be financed, but, once that cost has been met, there will be benefits in the end. We need to understand that that is a pretty good cost-benefit analysis over the long term.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak reminded us not only about how the cost will be borne, but by what parts of Government it will be borne. He drew attention to how matters stand under the clean growth plan of action. I believe that there is shortly to be a Government publication on the plan for the next phase of ECO and how that will have its impact on energy efficiency. We have to be clear that even if ECO is extended out to 2028, at its present level of funding that will get us nowhere near to the numbers that we need to be energy efficient. There are still 7 million homes out there—the non-cavity wall and hard-to-treat homes—that have a far higher unit cost of treatment than what we might call the lower-hanging fruit of loft and wall insulations, a lot of which have already been done around the country.

Since some of the measures taken by the previous Labour Government on area-based schemes, including the enveloping of some hard-to-treat homes, there has been a 58% drop in treatments related to energy efficiency. I do not blame the present Minister for that drop. I know that she is committed to turning that around and getting a far greater number of treatments undertaken, but we have to face the fact that that is what has happened in recent years. We are starting our road back towards energy efficiency from a fairly low and, in some senses, rather dispiriting base.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak reminded us that when it comes to funding the changes it is extremely unlikely that we will be able to do it by heaping obligation on obligation in customers’ energy bills. I want to go further and remind hon. Members that we are assuming at the moment that action will be taken in a range of areas by means of obligations on companies, which will be passed on to customers in their bills. As my hon. Friend mentioned, we assume that the cost of the smart meter roll-out will go on customers’ bills, because the obligation on energy companies to fund them will be passed on. The capacity market for procuring standby energy supply and new forms of conventional energy supply is, effectively, an obligation that is passed on to customers in their bills. The contracts for difference that we have already are also based on such an obligation—the renewables obligation—and the additional £557 million that is in the budget for further offshore wind. The warm home discount is in the same boat. If, as I understand the present plan to be, the energy company obligation is extended to 2028, that will also be based on a continuing obligation—it is in the name—that will go on to customers’ bills. Recently what was effectively a grant from Government to energy-intensive industries was converted to an exemption, which is to be funded by a levy on customer bills. There is a raft of such levies, and the number is increasing.

The hon. Member for Eddisbury set out some recent figures from, I think, Frontier Economics, and said that they were the likely real annual cost of getting us to an acceptable level, close to the target in the clean growth strategy. Her figure was £1.1 billion. From recollection, although I do not have the Frontier Economics report before me, that figure is a net one, arrived at after taking into account other contributions, including local authority and, as other hon. Members have mentioned, landlord contributions. The hon. Member for Wells—perhaps in future we can refer to him as the hon. Member for HEEPS—mentioned, and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak emphasised, the fact that landlords may make a contribution, but if they say they cannot afford it or get into ECO, they will effectively be given a free pass.

There should be a minimum merchantable standard for property for rent. Although it is true in theory that at the moment the landlord should not be able to let property below that standard, which would be band E in this instance, the remedy is enforcement at local authority level. We know what the situation is as to enforcement at the moment, given local authority resources.

Landlords do not necessarily have to stick at band E if they have spent, I think, £2,500. If they cannot get on ECO, they get a free pass. I do not think that that should be regarded as acceptable in the next 10 to 20 years. The landlord contribution should be doubled—and, indeed, the Frontier Economics report suggests a landlord contribution of £5,000 being factored in to the figures mentioned by the hon. Member for Eddisbury.

However, the issue is not only about that. If someone said, “I am letting out this hotel room, which has no glass in the windows, has cockroaches all over the place and has no sheets on the bed, but is quite cheap,” trading standards and various other people would be all over it. We need to get into the idea that a house being let in the rented sector with poor energy efficiency is a non-merchantable product and should be seen as such. A key part of a drive to make firm progress on energy efficiency is making sure that rentals in that sector are made on the basis of merchantable properties with good energy efficiency.

The figure that the hon. Member for Eddisbury mentioned can be upped a little in view of all the contributions. It comes to a round total of, I think, £1.8 billion. That is certainly what our party would commit to as the sort of expenditure needed to get to the level in question. I cannot see that that can be found by increasing obligations on bill payers over the next period. It must come from central taxation.

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Gentleman is a sensible, intelligent man, but what he is saying presupposes that the prices never change. However, the reason we no longer have to invest so much of the £557 million in offshore wind is that prices tumbled precipitously, giving us more bang for our buck and enabling us perhaps to buy technologies that are further in the market.

Part of the clean growth strategy is trying to take that investment spend—the innovation spend that the Government are setting out—so that we can drop the prices of technologies significantly, and so that they no longer require a burden on the bill payer or the taxpayer, because they are sufficiently cheap. The benefits in reduced energy costs that my hon. Friends described mean they pay for themselves. Please would the hon. Gentleman get out of the world of equating the amount of money that the Government spend with the result that we need? It is actually a matter of how we deliver the most homes, well insulated and cheap to run, most affordably.

[Dr Whitehead]

The Minister is right, in that, obviously, area-based efficiency measures that uprate an entire area lead to economies of scale. Far more houses can be treated in that way than by cherry-picking individual houses in different places and dealing with them one by one.

[Claire Perry]

That is true, but surely the hon. Gentleman agrees that other people’s money will be better used if the underlying price per installation has fallen because of a completely different approach to cavity wall insulation or investment in solar-reflective paint, which is a technology being rolled out in other parts of the world—in other words, if we are looking at more cost-effective and innovative ways of doing things, so that the same amount of money buys far more installations on a per-unit basis.

[Dr Whitehead]

I surely do. On the basis of what the Committee on Climate Change says, the current ECO commitment falls way short of the levels of treatment we need if we are to get anywhere near our 2035 targets. Even the £1.8 billion figure that has been cited will not cover a complete series of treatments for houses in the UK. I suggest that making our treatments much more efficient—by doing them on an area basis, for example—would allow us to get much closer to our target for the same money. We can probably agree that £1.8 billion will be the sort of money that will get us there, but an efficient approach could get us so much further, which I would completely support.

As the hon. Members for Eddisbury and for Wells and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak emphasised, enveloping energy-efficient homes area by area needs to be funded from the infrastructure budget. It may not look like big boys’ toys, but it is absolutely an infrastructure project and ought to be treated as such by the Government. That would have a number of advantages for costs of capital, borrowing and all the rest of it; as the Minister says, we could make even more houses efficient for the same investment.

I appreciate that I have gone on rather longer than I intended, but let me briefly say a few words about the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) and the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham). They both drew attention to the role that CCS can play, as did the hon. Member for Wells—or rather for HEEPS. I thoroughly endorse that line of thinking on CCS, but I must point out that as far as the clean growth strategy is concerned, £100 million will not get us anywhere near our CCS target, just as our ECO commitment will not get us anywhere near our energy efficiency target.

I congratulate Teesside on its comprehensive approach, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar has been centrally involved. Teesside could be an absolute exemplar for the rest of the country in its combination of intensive industry with CCS and its by-products. That is very important for realisation of the clean growth strategy and we need to incorporate it in all our future clean growth plans.

I congratulate all hon. Members on their contributions to the debate. They all faced in exactly the same direction, acknowledging the importance of energy efficiency in homes, for a variety of reasons including climate change and fuel poverty, and the prominence that we need to give it in our policy debates. If this afternoon’s debate has hastened that process, we will have done a very good job between us.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I have let speeches go on longer than is conventional because we have had plenty of time. We have had two mammoth speeches from the SNP and Labour Front Benches. I know the Minister could speak for 55 minutes if she wanted to, but if she felt that she could just match them at 25 minutes, I am sure we would all appreciate it.

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. You tempt me, but I will say what I had planned to about this excellent debate.

May I wish everyone a happy International Women’s Day? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I am so proud to represent my constituents on this marvellous day—a great day for discussing boys’ and girls’ infrastructure investment preferences. It is a bit like blue and pink jobs, but we all need better roads, railways and power generation as well as warm and well-insulated homes. That is certainly my focus.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) on securing this fantastically important debate and on her characteristically thoughtful, knowledgeable, well-balanced and well-researched speech. She is an extremely important member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, which has done such good work on the matter. It is striking that this is our second debate this week—after the Second Reading of the Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill on Monday—in which there has been an outbreak of consensus. Long may it last.

Hon. Members across parties understand the vital need for action and the potential difficulties. A lot of sensible suggestions have been made about prioritisation, but ultimately we all share the ambition to secure clean growth for the UK at the right level and the right cost; maximise productivity under our clean growth strategy and our industrial strategy; and create a secure, diverse energy supply at low cost for our consumers. This has been a really thoughtful debate and many good ideas have been suggested.

Let me recap where we are. Based on 2017 data, the last time emissions in the UK were this low was in the year the Forth bridge was opened and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” was published, which was the year before penalties were introduced in football. I hope hon. Members from north of the border will already have got it, but in case not, it was the year 1890. When we consider the scale of the challenge, we should take a moment to think about just how far we have come: in a couple of decades, we have dropped our emissions to a level last seen in Victorian times. That has been achieved through cross-Government support for the Climate Change Act 2008, impressive work done by successive Governments on decarbonising parts of the economy, sustained investment and getting the costs of intervention to a market level, as we have seen so recently in offshore wind.

To be slightly partisan for a moment, I am very struck that it was Margaret Thatcher who made the first speech to the United Nations on the impact of human activity on the climate. She referred to sulphur emissions and acid rain, but since then we have realised the impact of chlorofluorocarbons, started talking about carbon and methane, and become far more informed. Only two countries in the world are considered to be doing enough to meet a 2° target: China and the United Kingdom. I would be the first to acknowledge the scale of the challenge ahead, but we should feel reasonably good about getting there and about speaking to colleagues and constituents about what we have done.

Before I plunge into my attempt to answer the many questions asked in the debate, let me refer to a couple of speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury opened the debate and the next speech was made by the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley). It has always been a pleasure to work with her and it is so wonderful to see her back in her place, standing up very ably for the concerns of her constituents. The opportunity to create a new industrial cluster on the SSI site that sequesters rather than emits carbon is incredibly exciting. Unfortunately, the hon. Lady was not there when I visited, but I was pleased to go up to see the site, work with some of her colleagues and celebrate a really good interaction between national Government and local government—having a Mayor for the combined authority is making a huge difference—and some incredibly effective cross-party working. That is a really important model for how we should be going forward.

Let me briefly address carbon capture, utilisation and storage, which is not the topic of this debate but is important none the less. We have a triple test for spending taxpayers’ money on technology. First, can we get the carbon down? Secondly, can we get the cost down? Thirdly, can we create a competitive innovation that we can then export around the world to improve productivity? I was not in my current post when the decision was taken on the council. I can say that the money that was not spent was recycled into the research and development budget, which has allowed us to have £2.6 billion to spend on energy innovation that is bearing fruit all over the place.

By the way, there are only 21 at-scale CCS plants working in the world today, 16 of which rely on capturing the carbon and using it for enhanced oil recovery. This is not a cost-effective technology that other countries are embracing with gusto. Even our friends in Norway, who are a little further along than us in building up the infrastructure, are struggling with precisely this point, which is, how much do we burden taxpayers or consumers to fund these projects? That is a real challenge. However, we are not going to bow down before it; we are going to embrace it.

That is why I have set up the carbon capture, usage and storage council—literally the best minds on this problem in the UK, and indeed around the world—to consider how we build strategically the case to carry out CCS in a more cost-effective way. We have also set up the CCUS cost reduction taskforce, emulating what was done in offshore wind, to drive prices down, not only in terms of the technology, but in terms of the financing, risk analysis and risk-sharing, which was one of the problems we had in the last project structure.

As the hon. Member for Redcar mentioned, I have set aside £100 million for CCUS innovation. That is not a subsidy and it is not putting money into a contract for difference; it is trying to create the innovation that we need. There are enormous opportunities to work with the hydrogen economy and with heating systems, to try to bring this work together. I accept that that news was a disappointment, but I would like colleagues to be reassured that we understand completely the need to decarbonise these industrial pools and to decarbonise further our heating system. Without CCS and CCUS, I do not believe that we can do that, which is why they are such vital technologies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) displayed his characteristic vision and knowledge of this sector. He said that we have been too focused on inputs, not outputs, when we talk about energy and efficiency. He also talked about the distributed energy future, which is absolutely what is happening both in our minds and the minds of the commercial world.

Of course, we already have solar. We do not often see a lot of solar generation on the very helpful national grid app, because it tends to sit behind the distributors and make its contribution there. However, we also know that we need to keep investing in this industry, which is why the smart systems plan has tried to set out the framework for doing that.

My hon. Friend also alluded to Birmingham combined heat and power, demonstrating that there are some fantastic examples out there, whereby not-for-profit or community-owned entities have already been set up. Robin Hood Energy in Nottingham also comes to mind, as does the White Rose Energy project. In those projects, there is real innovation and local leadership, which we welcome. We have been supporting those things. I have just put another £7 million into working with UK100 to try to build capacity at a local level.

For me, most of this activity works when it is delivered in a particular place. It is very easy to sit in Whitehall and push out suggestions, but if they can be pulled through by a local authority, a local council or a local company, we can start to think about transport. How does transport plug in? And how do we deal with heat? That was an excellent set of suggestions.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) also spoke. I will try to reassure him that these things are not just warm words; they are actions. I think we are all apprised of the need to deliver and to continue to maintain the UK’s leadership position in this area, which is genuine. Now, when we go around the world and talk to other countries about what we are doing, people listen. There were 70 people at the event on this issue in Germany yesterday, according to my officials, who said people are really hungry to learn. That is because the strategy is not just a piece of lovely paper; it is trying to set out a cross-Government set of actions that we have to take. They are not optional, if we want to meet our targets, which we must do by 2032 and beyond to decarbonise.

The hon. Gentleman and I share the aspiration around energy company obligation and fuel poverty. As the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) mentioned, shortly I will publish some of the ECO consultation and consider how we pivot ECO to focus on fuel poverty, while also making it a conduit for more innovation, so that we can reduce the costs and target it better. That is because I get invitations to join ECO through my front door. Why? Because I live off the gas grid, so I clearly fall into some category that says there will be some fruitful mining out there. I do not want to respond to those invitations; I want ECO to be targeted at the people who need it most. They may not be the ones who are currently in the frame; they may not be known. We know that local authorities know where they are, so we want to target the ECO system much more at those who need it. I will return to mortgages when I wind up.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) again made a powerful case for CCS and its importance. I think he also referred to the “win-win” of clean growth. We are not looking forward, as some campaigners might want to look forward, to a kind of deep green “lights off” future, because we all know that recessions are the greatest thing for cutting carbon emissions. We want the economy to grow. As he said, we already have 400,000 people working in this sector, which is delivering jobs from Aberdeen to Aberystwyth to Cornwall, and to many places in between. People have only to go to the Humber area to see what is happening with the support and the manufacturing of the offshore wind turbines for the wind industry, which is hugely transformational.

Of course, I also enjoyed receiving my hon. Friend’s invitation to all; we have had many invitations. Perhaps a Select Committee would like to produce a report on this subject, because its members could then travel around and take advantage of all these great opportunities.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry)—I normally never get a chance to say the full name of his constituency—gave a typically well-informed speech. We exchanged views on off-gas grid. I think that in both his constituency and mine, 15% of households live off the centralised grid, and we have to find cost-effective ways to provide them with more heating solutions in particular. Of course, all those people will benefit from the Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill. Again, we exchanged views on CCS.

The hon. Gentleman also made a strong point about the Scottish Government’s plan. We should all be willing to learn from each other. There are so many good people out there who are coming up with good ideas, whether that is at a local level or a national level, and we will be stronger if we pool all those ideas. Then we would not replicate what we are trying to do and spend.

The hon. Member for Southampton, Test again talked about clean growth being a strategy, which is important. It is not a plan; it is a longer-term strategy, deliberately for that reason. He also emphasised that there is strong cross-party support for these measures and, frankly, we will need that support. If we are asking for this issue to be a spending priority or a national priority, we will need as many voices as possible from all parties to make these points on behalf of our constituents.

Have I covered everyone? I think I have.

I now turn briefly, Mr Walker, to some of the plans that we have to implement this agenda. I was very interested—indeed, excited—to hear the conversation about whether this issue should be a national infrastructure priority. I know that the National Infrastructure Commission will report shortly. I will follow that closely and I undertake to meet the commission, because the case that was made for demand-side as well as supply-side infrastructure investments is powerful. However, I caution colleagues that that does not automatically turn on a new funding tap. There is no packet of money under the Chancellor’s desk marked “Infrastructure”, so this all has to be put through a similar hopper.

Nevertheless, the point about energy efficiency is excellent; energy efficiency is not only a strategic imperative, but an economic imperative. If we improve energy efficiency, we reduce people’s bills, create value, and create opportunities and investment for new forms of technology. We lead the world in many of these spaces, but we have never provided a really good route to market. I am interested, for example, in the Government’s commitment to new home building, which is absolutely vital. We should try to make those homes as affordable to run as they are to buy, using that as a route to market for so much of this technology.

I have talked a bit about what we have done, and of course we have seen household energy consumption fall by 17% since 1990 and the energy efficiency of non-domestic buildings has also improved substantially. Actually, the Government’s minimum energy standards, which we have put in place for appliances and for boilers, have had a measurable effect.

I would like to reassure right hon. and hon. Members in the Chamber on one point. People have asked, “Does coming out of the EU mean any weakening of these efficiency targets?” Absolutely not. Of course these targets have a meaningful impact on energy efficiency and they reduce bills. As a result of more energy-efficient products being used, the average annual bill for dual fuel households in 2020 will be £100 lower than it might otherwise have been, and the Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill, which we introduced this week—I was pleased that it received cross-party support—will also help to cut bills, as will the record low capacity cost of the energy that we are now buying in the market, as indeed will Ofgem’s announcement yesterday of further investigations into network company returns. We have to find a way to reduce the cost of energy right across the board.

This work does not just stop in the home or in the business environment. In the public sector, enormous efforts have been made, using the Salix programme, which has been highly successful in lending money for these energy efficiency measures. We anticipate a saving of about £1.5 billion for us all—for taxpayers—between 2018 and 2020.

So, we are moving in the right direction, but we have to go a lot further and faster. I completely accept that, which is why I set out the band C objective for 2035. That is the first time we have done that, saying, “That’s what we think ‘good’ looks like in housing stock.”

There will always be homes that are cost-inefficient to treat. There will also be homeowners who do not want that and will deny access. We cannot forcibly upgrade someone’s home if they do not want it.

[Dr Whitehead]

Can I tempt the Minister to have a look at a particular private Member’s Bill that is going through the House at the moment promoted by one of her colleagues, the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron)? The Bill suggests that the 2025 aspiration should be made a statutory target. Does she have any thoughts on that?

[Claire Perry]

Indeed. I have met my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and some of those who support the Bill. I think it is an extremely interesting suggestion. I was able to reassure my hon. Friend that, given the work we are doing on ECO—I will come to that—and other measures, we will get there without legislation. That is always the preferred route, although having the overarching legislation of the Climate Change Act 2008 has meant that we have to deliver on these promises right across the economy.

I started to have the conversation with my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire about it ultimately being a win-win to upgrade people’s homes or buildings because it saves money. Someone upgrades their home and they save money on their bill. There is a commercial proposition there. I served on the Energy Bill Committee—the Bill provided for the green deal—and I had great hopes for it, but it did not deliver. There is an economic value to doing those upgrades, however. Some of it may flow straight to the homeowner. Some may flow to a landlord, in which case there is the opportunity to rent the flat at a higher rate or to have a different sort of tenant who has a bit more money. There are opportunities there.

We talked a little about the co-benefits of better health for the country from warmer homes. We do not cost those things, and we cannot necessarily capture the money in the silo of BEIS, but we all know that they intrinsically make sense. As well as supporting what is already happening through spending, which I will talk about, we are focused on trying to build a better market for long-term delivery of much better solutions. That is absolutely where we want to go.