Barry Gardiner
Main Page: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent West)
Gregory Barker
I am pleased to say that since I became Minister in the right hon. Lady’s place, the number of complaints about Warm Front has reduced substantially. She will know that there was a massive complaint bag about Warm Front while she was in office. We have not seen that since I entered office. Of course we will continue to run Warm Front though next year. It remains part of a suite of measures to tackle fuel poverty, and we remain committed to doing much more.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
In the interests of transparency, will the Minister share with the House the benchmarks he has set for the uptake of the green deal scheme in the first to third years and what emissions reductions he has set as the benchmarks for the success of the scheme?
Gregory Barker
We have to get away from this target mania that existed under Labour and understand that this is not some sort of Stalinist five-year plan. We are unleashing the power of the private sector, and as a result we will be far, far more successful than any of these top-down Whitehall programmes initiated under the previous Government.
Mr Davey
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. He will know that when I was at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, I stimulated a huge amount of research and work on collective purchase and co-operative principles so that together we can purchase not just energy but other things more cheaply. I asked if the Department had any detailed research, because I thought the previous Government, who were supposed to be in favour of collective and co-operative principles, might have done some—they had not.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
In his preparation for COP 18, what analysis has the Secretary of State made of Professor Sir David King’s proposals for common but differentiated cap and trade schemes, using the human development index as an appropriate measure?
Mr Davey
We are taking forward a lot of analysis, not just on that scheme, but on a number of other things. COP 18 in Doha at the end of the year will be really important; I met the Deputy Prime Minister of Qatar recently, to discuss how we can make sure that it is a successful set of discussions.