Oral Answers to Questions

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Thank you everybody.

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

May I say that Opposition Members wish to be strongly associated with your words this morning, Mr Speaker, and that I am sure that goes for everybody else in the Chamber today?

The Government’s flagship programme to improve energy efficiency in homes, the green homes grant scheme, has produced figures for the latest month: vouchers applied for—18,526: vouchers issued—1,186; measures installed—99; and, I am not making this up, measures paid for—20. Does the Minister take responsibility for this catastrophic failure of a scheme? Will she say now whether she intends to extend the programme and roll the funding over so that it has a chance to succeed in the end? If she does, will she be sacking the US-based private consultancy firm she hired to run this awful mess?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

May I, too, associate myself with your words earlier, Mr Speaker? I think we have all, sadly, been touched by the loss of someone, or more than one person, whom we have known to this dreadful disease in the past year. Thank you for your words, because it is so important that we are able to hold this moment together.

The green homes grant voucher scheme has made significant strides since its launch in September 2020. We have received more than 90,000 applications and issued 33,000 vouchers, worth £142 million, and an additional £500 million has been given to local authorities to improve the energy efficiency of low-income households, helping to reduce fuel poverty for about 50,000 households by the end of this year. This is such an important part of the just transition that we want to ensure that we achieve with net zero. We recognise that the scheme has faced a number of delivery challenges, as many new mechanisms do, which has meant it has not delivered at the rate or the scale that we had originally hoped it would. However, we are working with the scheme administrator to process the backlog of voucher applications, streamlining the voucher issuance and redemption process as a top priority. Some delays in voucher processing are due to our robust fraud and gaming checks, which we have implemented by learning from previous schemes.