Lord Oates
Main Page: Lord Oates (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Oates's debates with the Cabinet Office
(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Cruddas and Lord Khan, on their maiden speeches.
The Budget provided the Chancellor with the opportunity to set out a clear vision for building back better. It was a chance to take the bold steps necessary to unleash the much talked of “green industrial revolution”. Instead, it took comfort in timidity and greenwash. As a result it was a Budget of squandered opportunities in the face of unprecedented challenges.
One area entirely absent from the Budget was the long-term programme needed to upgrade the energy efficiency of 28 million homes in the UK, which account for 35% of UK energy use and 20% of carbon emissions. I acknowledge that designing such programmes is not easy. The coalition had the Green Deal, which failed for largely the same reasons that the Green Homes Grant scheme is failing—namely, the absence of any long-term vision at the Treasury.
The Federation of Master Builders has estimated that a long-term national retrofit strategy could create 100,000 new jobs over four years and half a million over 20 years—skilled jobs offering new opportunities in every part of the United Kingdom. But to be successful the Government must do two things. First, they must provide the long-term certainty to allow industry to invest in the skills required to deliver this massive programme and for private capital to have the confidence to come in behind government initiatives. Secondly, they must provide consumers with incentives to upgrade the energy efficiency of their homes, such as stamp duty reductions or council tax discounts. We are asking consumers to do a challenging thing and we need to make it worth while if we are to get the take-up needed.
A national refit programme may not have the glamour of moonshots to new technologies, but there is no path to net zero without one. The absence of any reference to it in the Chancellor’s Statement left a gaping hole in his Budget and threatens any hope of meeting our obligations under the Climate Change Act.