Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to (a) reduce carbon emissions and (b) improve energy efficiency in new homes.

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

Welcome back, Mr Speaker, and welcome particularly to our new Chaplain.

Homes account for about a fifth of emissions. Driving these down and improving energy efficiency are crucial to fulfilling our commitments to net zero carbon by 2050. We have committed to introducing a future homes standard by 2025, and we will respond shortly to the 3,000 or so responses to our consultation—it closed on 7 February—which proposes carbon emissions at least 75% lower from 2025.

[Andrew Selous]

British architects such as Bill Dunster are building competitively priced, zero energy bill homes today that not only emit no carbon emissions, but are massively helpful to poorer families, so what will the Government do to push our oligopolistic and rather luddite house builders to start building the houses of tomorrow, not of yesterday?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to my hon. Friend for his question, and I appreciate his desire to get the affordable homes of the future built today. Our recent consultation proposes a new householder affordability rating to measure a building’s efficiency and ensure it is affordable to heat. I am conscious that Mr Dunster has an opportunity at the Victoria & Albert Museum at the moment. I am very happy to visit his ZEDfactory in Watford, because I agree with my hon. Friend that we do need new, innovative small and medium-sized enterprises in the marketplace to drive variety in our housing market to improve the absorption rate.