Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Gregory Barker]

We have not dropped a commitment from the coalition agreement, but we will be looking very carefully at the new measures to see whether they can do the job. I remain as committed to ensuring that we are at the forefront of the battle against illegal logging as we were on the day we were elected.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

9. What recent steps he has taken to improve the insulation of private rented accommodation.

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Chris Huhne)]

The recently announced green deal should go a long way toward solving the problem of split incentives that has hampered progress in the private rented sector. It will remove the need for landlords to pay up-front costs for measures that they do not directly benefit from and will therefore make some real progress in this area.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I thank the Secretary of State for his response, but old, cold and poorly insulated is the state of many private rented properties in Nottingham South, which are home to 16,000 households, including some of the most vulnerable families in the country. Will he match Labour’s commitment to regulate landlords and so tackle these issues, or will his Government once again put the interests of private landlords above those of tenants and communities?

[Chris Huhne]

The hon. Lady takes her seat in the House following the distinguished contributions of her predecessor on all these issues, and I am delighted that she retains his interest in these matters. I assure her that the Government are absolutely determined to try to make progress on fuel poverty and to deal with the scandal that when we have a cold winter a large number of old and vulnerable people are pushed into an early death through lack of heat. We need to try to deal with that as fast as we can. I merely remind her that, although she is new in the House, she succeeds an MP who was here for 13 years supporting a Government who made precious little progress in this area.