Unhealthy Housing: Cost to the NHS

Derek Thomas Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I pay credit to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing the debate and for all the work he does with the all-party parliamentary group, from which I have enjoyed gaining expertise and knowledge. The cost of unhealthy housing to the NHS is a fantastic subject to tackle, especially in the middle of winter. We have not had a particularly cold spell yet—that is still around the corner—but nearly a year ago, a few days of significant snow cut off my village, which is extremely rare in the warm south-west.

It is great to speak on this important and urgent issue, but it is not new for me. When I pitched up as a new MP, all sorts of people came to tell me how good or bad my constituency was. I met a representative of the Association for the Conservation of Energy—ACE—who came to see me and said that my constituency had the leakiest homes in England, and potentially in Europe, based on off-grid and poor-quality buildings. We were not good at cavity walls 30 or 40 years ago—perhaps longer. I took that seriously because I was concerned about the issue of fuel poverty—we are a low-wage area—and about people’s health.

Cornwall Council and others, including my colleagues and me, have worked together to find the money to improve our homes. As of January, we have improved 1,085 homes and taken them out of fuel poverty altogether by securing various bits of money from all sorts of funds, including social landlords. As I say, it is an urgent issue. In particular, I credit Anthony Ball and his public health team at Cornwall Council for leading on the issue and for their great expertise on how to resolve the challenge.

From the figures that the council has provided, it is estimated that 210 people in Cornwall die due to the cold every year; that poor health resulting from a lack of warm homes affects 31,000 households—74,000 people—in a population of just under half a million; and that a winter death in Cornwall is preceded by eight emergency admissions to our hospitals, which are already under pressure, and 30 social care visits. As is true elsewhere in the country, delivering social care in Cornwall is a challenge, because it is a large but sparsely populated geographical area with a lack of people working in it and a distance to travel between appointments.

If there are potentially 30 unnecessary visits for each individual because of cold homes, that puts pressure on an already strained system. It is estimated that that costs the health service in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly £13 million each year, which could go to areas of health and social care where we would much rather spend our money, instead of collecting people because they are living in poor homes that can be fixed.

I have long campaigned on unhealthy homes and the need to fix them. As a newly elected MP, one of my early debates was about fuel poverty, in which I made similar points to those that other Members and I hope to make today. The previous Chancellor set aside £100 billion for infrastructure spending. I argued then, and I would still love the Minister to take it forward, that it would cost only £2 billion of that to improve UK homes and raise their energy performance certificate rating to C—if we trust those ratings. That would be £2 billion well spent, because of the saving to the economy, the saving of people’s lives, and the improvement in attainment and economic productivity.

The recently published 10-year plan for the NHS is a welcome vision that sets out how the NHS needs to adapt over 10 years to meet current and changing demands; how we need to change the way we treat people and bring healthcare to people where they need it; and how to help people to manage their conditions. We are waiting for the Green Paper on social care, which we understand will come out in April. If we do not include one of the driving factors for why people end up in health and social care in the first place, however, that 10-year plan will be weakened or compromised.

That is why the debate is important, because now is the time to look across Government. If we want to deliver the NHS that we are all committed to and want to see in 10 years’ time—if not much before—and if we want to make social care work for everyone who needs it, we need to look at how we improve our homes and the health and wellbeing of everybody in the country who lives in a home that is not up to the job. I call on the Minister to look at the issue across Departments to see what we can do to deliver a more sustainable health and social care service partly by improving the homes we live in.

In the 21st century, in the fifth-richest country in the world, we should have healthy homes that we can be proud of. We cannot tolerate the situation for much longer. I will give an example of how that could be achieved, because just to say, “There is £2 billion. Go and sort your homes out,” will be a challenge. Money will be wasted and it will not be delivered in the way we would like or expect.

My suggestion, as it was when I first spoke on the issue, is to use Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly as a pilot. Cornwall Council and the Council of the Isles of Scilly are well placed because they know the problem, the homes that need fixing and the skilled workforce in the area. There is also a challenge in Cornwall to drive up skills, to give people the opportunities they need and to drive up wages, which it could help with.

The pilot would improve all the homes in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which are the leakiest in the country. It would be a good way for the Government to see if such a scheme works and how it works, and how we could improve homes, create skilled jobs and improve attainment in children. It is well proven that children learn better and are healthier in warm homes; it is not just older people who suffer as a result of leaky homes and fuel poverty.

That work could also reduce the carbon footprint, which is important. Cornwall Council recently voted to consider how it could make Cornwall carbon free in the next 30 years and achieve a net zero emissions target. Reducing the leaky nature of our homes and improving the carbon footprint with well-insulated homes is a significant part of that. As I said, improving homes will also reduce the demand on health and social care services.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak. This urgent issue presents a real challenge and I would welcome the opportunity for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to demonstrate to the rest of the country how it can be tackled.