James Gray
Main Page: James Gray (Conservative - North Wiltshire)Department Debates - View all James Gray's debates with the HM Treasury
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Yeo
I thank my hon. Friend for his reply and for his close study of the two reports that my Committee produced on this subject in the past couple of years. He is absolutely right that the Committee continues strongly to support, without reservation, the concept of the green deal. I assure him that our concerns about its progress are motivated by our wish to see it succeed.
We share the aim of eliminating energy waste. It is a scandal that millions of buildings in this country are still so energy inefficient that a large amount of energy is wasted. A consistent thread running through all our reports is our concern to ensure that the UK achieves the challenging targets we have set for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Energy efficiency has an enormous part to play in achieving those targets. Our criticisms derive from our disappointment and frustration about the relatively slow progress of the green deal so far. Even the most ardent defender of the coalition’s policy—as my hon. Friend the Minister knows, there are few more ardent defenders of the coalition than me—would not claim that the high hopes about the green deal have yet been fulfilled.
As my hon. Friend the Minister said, progress is much better than it was this time last year. There has been an encouraging acceleration, from a relatively low base, of the take-up of green deal plans and enquiries. I cannot predict what my Committee will do in the next Parliament, because I will not be a member of it, but I would be very surprised indeed if it did not want to continue the watching brief that it adopted towards the green deal in this Parliament. In conclusion, I hope that this time next year another debate will take place on this subject, and that the Minister will be able to report on further substantial progress.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
We come to the next debate. I ask those who took part in the previous debate, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo)—I was his special adviser many years ago when he was a Minister in the Department for the Environment; he has served with distinction for many years—to leave the Chamber quickly and quietly.