ECO4 and Insulation Schemes

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. I can only imagine the frustration that consumers feel when they go through the quite often complicated process of trying to upgrade their home to bring down their bills for good, only to be met with substandard work and a subsequent lack of enforcement. Liberal Democrat Members recognise that the Government have inherited a fragmented and confusing system, and that the focus today is on consumers and on remedial work affecting the shoddy work they have had installed. I am glad that the Government are committed to ensuring that the onus of that remedial work does not land in the pockets of consumers.

We agree that the system needs a complete overhaul, especially since the last Conservative Government left the Great British insulation scheme falling woefully short of the targets it set for itself and supporting far too few people far too slowly, while some who did receive installations have found them to be well below the required standard. If faults are found with other energy efficiency measures, will the Minister guarantee that consumers do not have to pay a penny for those, as for the ones she has highlighted? How soon can consumers expect their quality checks to be delivered, and will priority be given to households in fuel poverty as well as to the elderly and the vulnerable?

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

I thank the hon. Member, and I am again glad to hear that she agrees we need a big overhaul of the system, which is absolutely our focus and our commitment. On other measures under ECO and GBIS, audits are not finding the same scale of systemic problems. We think the problem is focused on solid wall insulation in particular. We are doing stress tests and additional audits of other measures to make sure, but we think there is a specific problem with those measures, so we are focusing on them and moving at pace to get them remediated. Where we are finding major issues, we are setting expectations that that work is prioritised, and installers are coming in and remediating it as soon as possible.

Under the existing publicly available specification framework, remediation after installers have not put the work right has to be done within 12 weeks, and we are setting the expectation so the system moves at pace to respond to consumers. We will absolutely be looking to prioritise households in fuel poverty and vulnerable households. We are doing two things: we are contacting them, but we will also create the ability for people to reach out if they are worried or vulnerable, so that we are doing the necessary triaging and, critically, getting into properties to fix work that has not been done right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I know he was at Cali. There was some progress on such issues as digital sequence information, but more needs to be done. We are very seized of the need to join up action on the nature and climate crisis. When I head out to COP29 tomorrow, Members will hopefully hear more from us on our efforts to protect forests and on the support we are giving to countries at risk of deforestation. We are also looking at nature-based solutions to climate change. The nature Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh)—will be out there as well, and we will have more to say, but I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) that we cannot deal with one crisis in isolation from the other.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

For the UK to be an international leader on climate change we need to bring the business community with us. The Summer Berry Company in my constituency recently invested £8 million in ensuring it is carbon neutral, but it was then quoted a further £3 million to be able to feed its excess energy into the grid. What is the Minister doing to make additional grid connections affordable and accessible for green businesses?