Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ed Davey and Douglas Carswell

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am grateful for his comments. One of the reasons I set up the green growth group in Europe was to push the argument that a country can grow and go green, and that argument has been won in the debate in the European Union. He may be interested to know that in Lima we worked with Latin American countries—particularly Peru, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico—because our Latin American friends now want their own green growth group.

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

The Secretary of State reels off statistics about home insulation, rather like a Soviet-era apparatchik talking about tractor production. Thousands of homes in Jaywick were promised home insulation at the beginning of this year. Why, at the end of the year, have only a handful of homes had that insulation, and why has the promise that more homes would get it evaporated?

[Mr Davey]

I have to say that we have a very good record on energy-efficiency, as today’s announcement of 1 million energy-efficiency measures from the green deal and the ECO demonstrates. I do not know about the particular example in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I can tell him that because of some of the changes we made to the ECO this time last year, some energy- efficiency schemes have not gone ahead, but what has gone ahead is a £50 cut, on average, in people’s energy bills.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ed Davey and Douglas Carswell

Thursday 16th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

We take the issue of winter deaths very seriously. If the hon. Lady looks at the numbers, she will see that, over a decade and a half or more, they have fluctuated. In fact, the largest amount of winter deaths we have known in the past decade and a half was under the previous Government. We need to have a sober, mature debate on how we tackle winter death, which is a very serious problem that needs to be dealt with through the health service, housing, and so on. The changes we made to ECO before Christmas are very good news for people in fuel poverty, because we have not only kept the amount of ECO that goes towards dealing with fuel poverty but extended it for two more years.

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

A number of homes in Clacton and Jaywick have been insulated under the “Insulating Jaywick” scheme using ECO funding, but I am told that the funding is no longer available, work has stopped and many local people who thought they had signed up to the scheme have been left rather disappointed. Will the Minister please meet me to discuss whether any funding may be available and from what source?