Homes: Environmental Standards

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

There are a number of financial packages that private landlords letting to low-income tenants can take advantage of; I referred to some of the schemes earlier. Private sector landlords are entitled to take advantage of them, but the noble Lord is right and points to one of the dilemmas in the private rented sector, which is that the investment is made by landlords but the benefit is gained by tenants through lower fuel bills.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I hear the optimism and the claims, but, sadly, these are not carried through into government action and the Government know that full well. The Public Accounts Committee reported yesterday that the Government’s

“Green Homes Grant … Scheme … underperformed badly … and risks damaging … future efforts”

to deliver net zero. It also said that it is “not convinced” that BEIS has

“fully acknowledged the scale of its failures with this scheme.”

If you do not understand how or how badly you have failed, how will you ever deliver this green stuff that you clearly do not understand?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am sorry the noble Baroness thinks we do not understand this “green stuff”—we have her advice to rely on, constantly, and she tells us all about it. To be serious, she is of course right that the National Audit Office acknowledged that the Green Homes Grant scheme did not deliver at the pace we would have expected. Nevertheless, we did deliver some 80,000 vouchers and spent some £300 million on precisely the kind of measures that I know the noble Baroness would support. We have certainly learned lessons from the Green Homes Grant and are taking those forward in future grant schemes, such as the boiler upgrade scheme to install more heat pumps, which I am sure the noble Baroness will also welcome.