Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme

Duncan Baker Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. It is also an honour to speak in the debate called by the excellent Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), and I am delighted to support him here today.

With every good intention, the Government launched this scheme to a fanfare, as we have heard, in September 2020. Of course, one has to applaud the efforts to help households improve their energy efficiency, placing them at the centre to decarbonise our homes. However, there is no doubt that the scheme has been beset with problems. The take-up has been well short of any expectations, but then, as they say, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Launching a scheme without having anywhere near enough approved installers—as we heard, just 1,021 active companies—meant that the issues under the green homes grant quickly became apparent. My constituency office has tried to help many people who struggled to access the grants. It did not help, obviously, that we had further lockdowns and an apparent reluctance of home- owners to see installers come into their homes. However, that finding was not included in our Environmental Audit Committee report. We will give the benefit to the Government on that, and I know that they cannot be blamed for those further issues, but we did not see evidence of that.

I welcomed the drive to create jobs with the scheme, especially in the construction and property renovation sector that drives a lot of our economy. The drive to improve the energy efficiency of low-income households, reduce fuel poverty and work to phase out high-carbon fossil fuel heating is all laudable. Decarbonising our homes is a key priority in the race to net zero, and through the 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution and the energy White Paper, the Government have set out how they plan to decarbonise our buildings. However, I want to make a point here about a preoccupation with retrofitting, which has led to my Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into the sustainability of the build environment. The green homes grant is focused on reducing carbon emissions in the operating efficiency of an existing home, but we have hardly touched on the build environment. The materials that we use in the construction sector account for 11% of emissions that contribute to climate change. Concrete and steel production is dreadful for the environment. We need to look at more sustainable materials such as engineered wood and other more organic materials, which are far more prevalent in Europe. It is my hope that my inquiry will shine a light on that.

I wish that in the green homes grant scheme conception the use of natural materials such as lambs’ wool insulation had been given far greater weight. Natural materials are growing in prominence, but the Government must further incentivise consumers to drive their take-up. The green homes grant could have been the perfect launchpad to do this, which is why I welcome one of our findings—that consumers should be incentivised with a VAT cut.

I applaud every intention of the scheme. I recognise, with fairness, its shortcomings. Some of them could have been foreseen; some should have been foreseen; and some were exacerbated by extraordinary circumstances. Nevertheless the intentions and the lessons are valuable. The idea behind the scheme was not a bad one, but schemes involving vouchers—I should know this from being an ex-retailer—sometimes take a long time to bed in. We must have people ready to go.

So, having learned those lessons, I hope that instead of scrapping the scheme entirely, there is the appetite for another attempt, learning from where we went wrong. If we are to get anywhere near the targets that we need to reach with our homes, the incentives in the scheme must be kept going. The findings of the EAC need heeding, because the demand was there; that was proved. Reducing VAT is a very strong idea and I again echo the thoughts of the Chairman of the EAC in saying to the Minister, “Let’s try to extend the scheme, rather than have a full-scale scrapping of it”.