Environment and Climate Change

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely take the hon. Gentleman’s point. We must ensure that new construction meets high standards not just in carbon emissions but in the provision of domestic heat. He is right that we need to look at retrofitting existing housing, particularly in some of the poorer areas of the country and in areas such as the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, where the case is most pressing.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in praising the Woodland Trust for the work that it is doing on the proposed 50 million tree northern forest, and the Forestry Commission, which grows all the trees in my constituency?

[Michael Gove]

I am hugely grateful for the national forest, which has taken former industrial areas in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Leicestershire and rendered them even more beautiful. The Woodland Trust has been inspirational in Cheshire and areas of the northern forest, which we are planning to develop from Liverpool to Hull. Although the Forestry Commission does not always get everything right, I am more than happy to endorse and celebrate its work in Northumberland and Cumbria.

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[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

It will come as no surprise to Ministers sitting on the Treasury Bench that I rise to speak about energy efficiency.

I was fortunate enough to go to two schools on Friday, Shocklach and Willow Wood, and both sets of pupils talked to me about the importance of the climate to them, but they also asked what we are doing about it—and that is what this debate is about. I am very pleased that the Government have brought forward their green growth strategy. There is so much positive action that the Government have taken, but I have to say that I do think we have made one mistake: removing the zero-carbon homes standard. It is wrong that we are now building homes that will need to be retrofitted; we have a lot of homes that need energy efficiency measures installed now, and I want to talk about some of the benefits we could deliver by introducing energy efficiency measures.

If £1 billion was put into bringing the energy performance certificate standard up to C we could save every family £270. We could put £270 back into their pockets and create approximately £51 billion-worth of revenue for the Exchequer as that programme rolled out annually. It would also save 25% of our energy consumption, which would be the equivalent of the output of six nuclear power stations the size of Hinkley Point C. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), who made the case for nuclear, but I would also argue that we absolutely need to ensure that our homes are energy efficient—not only because of the savings in electricity generation, but because the CO₂ and carbon savings are estimated at about £34 billion-worth of cost and the air quality improvements are estimated at about £4.1 billion of cost.

An excellent document has been prepared by the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group and I urge the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to encourage the Chancellor to put that document into his red box to read before the spending review. We have seen how Germany has harnessed low-interest loans to generate £8.4 billion-worth of home improvements by homeowners that were virtually paid for by the VAT receipts on those sales. That was a self-financing project, which is one way to help to tackle this problem.