Fossil Fuels and Cost of Living Increases

Debate between Derek Thomas and Philip Dunne

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Robert. I commend the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this worthwhile and vital debate. It comes after a year in which the Government were exercised about how to address the cost of living and reduce the demand for energy in our homes. I think we have the solution here, in this room. I hope the Minister is listening carefully because I know he wants to do some great work while in post.

Everyone here, as well as the Government, knows that an effective way to reduce demand for fossil fuels, reduce both cost of living pressures and the demand for energy more generally is to improve the efficiency of our homes. I represent St Ives and when I was elected as an MP in 2015 I was told I had the leakiest homes in the UK, possibly in Europe. That came at the time of the Paris climate agreement, when we ratified our commitment as a nation to improve all our homes to EPC grade C by 2030.

I had a discussion yesterday with someone who has done research on how much my constituents pay for energy compared with other parts of the country. Part of my constituency is the most expensive place to live in the country because of the energy used and its cost, so this is urgent. I have raised that a number of times during my time as an MP, and I believe the solution is nowhere near as difficult as we make it out to be.

The Prime Minister would be interested in this topic because fuel-poor homes work against the vision that he set out on 4 January. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion referred to the fact that there was no mention in his speech about energy and so on, but he did talk about attainment, and we know that fuel-poor homes hold back attainment. He talked about the pressure on the NHS, and we know that fuel-poor homes contribute to poor health and wellbeing and increased demand on the NHS and social care. He talked about inflation and people’s incomes, and we know that fuel-poor homes absorb disposable income from the families that we have described in the past as just about managing, and we also know that fuel-poor homes reduce the availability of homes to rent. I will talk later about why that is.

Before the UK ratified the bold commitment to get homes up or down to EPC rating C, the need to retrofit homes was well documented and well understood in this country. ECO—the energy company obligation—and green deals have, as we have heard, helped in a significant number of homes, but those are often the low-hanging fruit, the ones that are easiest to do, but there are others, such as homes in my constituency and other rural areas, that need a much more deliberate focus. I ask the Minister to consider how this year can be spent on a more focused and determined way to impact on this huge problem.

The rocketing cost of energy to heat our homes must bring this vital issue to the forefront of the Government’s mind. As we have heard from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, work will be done to help people to reduce the energy demand in their homes. I hope that that includes a determined effort to understand how we can do that effectively, quickly, and without wasting huge sums of money on subcontracts. A company in Scotland, for example—I do not wish to pick on Scotland; this is an example that relates to Cornwall—will secure a huge Government contract and then identify companies further down the food chain to deliver the contracts, but, unfortunately, not very well. We had a huge problem with that, with the £2 billion that the Government announced during the covid time to address problems with our homes. We need, as has been suggested, a grassroots, street-by-street approach, perhaps local authority-led, to identify what can be done to improve the efficiency of the home and then get on and do it while making sure that the money is spent exactly where it is intended to be spent.

I do not intend to speak for long, but I want the Minister to consider the Government’s approach to improving our leaky homes. I am happy to suggest a pilot in Cornwall. The council has already suggested a pilot and has identified how much it would cost. It is quite a lot of money, but it would be good to test the water to see if that can be achieved.

Can the Minister say any more about what the Government plan to do to help us reduce the energy demand in our homes? Will that include support to retrofit and improve the efficiency of our homes? Can he update the House on plans to modify the EPC rating? I led a debate last summer on the problem of affordable housing and why in Cornwall, although this will be true elsewhere, the energy performance certificate drives landlords to flip their homes from long lets to short-term lets—not because the law does not apply to a short-term let, but because it is not properly enforced, whereas it is much better enforced for long lets.

The problem is not that people do not want to improve the efficiency of their homes, but the tool we ask people to measure their homes by is often a case of “computer says no”. It does not truly achieve what we are trying to achieve, which is to improve the efficiency of our homes and reduce costs. The current methodology around EPCs is flawed. BEIS agreed last summer to review the methodology and look at how we can improve that, so what progress has been made? If the Minister cannot tell us today, perhaps he will follow up with a letter.

We know that fuel-poor homes drive out the availability of long lets. That is exactly what is happening across Cornwall. We are still seeing landlords who cannot achieve EPC rating E, let alone C, so they are having to use the house for other purposes. That needs to be addressed, and quickly.

[Philip Dunne]

I thank my hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene during his excellent speech. On the subject of EPCs, in his constituency has he seen what I have discovered in my constituency? When a social landlord is faced with renovation costs to make their property legally lettable at EPC rating E, they discover that the cost is too great and consequently propose to sell the property and evict the social tenants. This is happening in a small village community where there is no alternative provision.

[Derek Thomas]

That is exactly my experience, and it has been my experience for a number of years. It is tragic. Our parish council contacted me in desperation because it fought long and hard many years ago to identify sites to build and set aside such homes, only to find that they are lost, partly for that reason. As a result, villages are being hollowed out, making it difficult to keep open the post office, the GP surgery and the local school. We should not reduce our ambition to improve homes, but there is an urgent need to understand how we can do that and fund it.

That is the experience I have had in parts of my constituency and it concerns me greatly, but I am not critical of social landlords. When I left school I learned to build homes. I built homes with blocks, cement and sand, and today lots of homes are built in exactly the same way. The insulation being put in has improved, but we are making nowhere near enough carbon-neutral homes. We can get there and there are better ways of building, but the building trade has not moved on enough to catch up with what is needed, but perhaps that is a subject for debate another day.

To touch on the problem of listed buildings, in Cornwall—I am not sure if this is true elsewhere—we are working hard to improve the quality of our homes, many of which are listed buildings or are in conservation areas. Property owners often request double glazing. Although it is now possible to get double glazing that is in keeping with such buildings, the flat answer is that it cannot be done, so we are retrofitting homes but not installing double glazing in homes that badly need energy efficiency measures.

Will the Minister provide guidance to local authorities, and perhaps even to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, about things that can be done to improve the quality of those homes? We need a better understanding of modern methods that can be used to achieve homes that people can live in while retaining their beauty, rather than simply saying, “No, that cannot be done. You must spend a huge amount of money replacing your windows with windows that are exactly the same and no more efficient.”

Finally, will the Minister consider setting up a taskforce to look at the barriers to households installing renewable energy and storage infrastructure? Are those barriers the cost to the household, the red tape put in place by the power distributors or the restraints of the national grid? I am constantly meeting people who are frustrated because they want to put infrastructure in their homes, farms or businesses, but reasons are given about why that cannot be achieved or the sheer cost is too great. Will the Minister look urgently at setting up some sort of taskforce to get to the nub of the issue, in order to unlock the potential for renewable energy in individual homes? That will address the cost of heating and energising those homes, as well as reducing the impact and use of fossil fuels.