Climate Change: Health

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, climate change models have been shown to be amazingly accurate. Although one should not look at individual instances, I should mention that a couple of years ago I was privileged to chair the House’s ad hoc Select Committee on the Arctic. When faced with a temperature rise of 4 degrees and a spectacular diminishing ice sheet, one might find it difficult to dismiss climate change.

With regard to energy bills, I think that the noble Lord should remember that most heating is by gas or—if you are off the gas grid, as I am—oil, and there are no green charges on either of those fuels. There is a charge purely on electricity, which is generally not used for heating, so in general that does not affect heating bills. However, I agree with him that man-made climate change is not certain. In fact, it is only about 95% probable, but with a 95% probability, if anybody is looking to the future then action is exactly the right thing to take, and I look forward to the next speech, which will be made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. He has probably already changed what he was going to say in response to some of the previous speeches. I note that he is listed as the early Lord Krebs on the speakers list. I am glad that he is not the late Lords Krebs—that would be a great loss to the House and to the environmental community generally.

Two weeks ago I attended a meeting on climate change held at the other end of this building. It involved a group of people who were really concerned about the environment and about climate change and its implications. Funnily enough, they were not a band of eco-warriors; they were not even 1970s liberals in sandals. The meeting consisted, at its core, of two admirals and a general, who were very concerned about climate change from a national security point of view. In fact, they were not even from a minor European nation; they were from the United States. They were very concerned about climate change, and I am sure they are even more concerned now, given the Trump presidency’s removal of climate change from the strategic concerns of American foreign and defence policy. That showed me that this is not in any way a minority issue; it is something that affects not just business people generally but also what we think of as those hard-nosed people in the military and defence areas who are not in any way sentimental in their beliefs.

What also came over was that climate change has moved well beyond environmentalists, not just to defence but to issues such as biodiversity, migration, invasive species, world development goals and, not least—this is why I was so delighted that my noble friend Lady Walmsley brought this subject forward today—health.

The area on which I want to concentrate—we have already heard speeches on a fantastic range of subjects—is housing. In just a moment, I will be agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, because housing is a key area in terms of health. I am not a health expert but I know that people’s living conditions in this country and elsewhere are fundamental to their health and personal development.

We know that 2.5 million households in this country live in fuel poverty because they cannot afford their energy bills. As a result, we have something like 34,000 premature deaths each year due to temperature. That is one issue that climate change might start to solve in the short term, but the other side of the balance sheet is that in this country we already have around 2,000 premature deaths because of heat. Paradoxically, in looking forward at that we should look backwards to 2003, when a heatwave in Europe saw some 70,000 excess deaths due to heat, 17,000 of which were in France alone. Such exceptional climate events will increase significantly and statistically have already increased, having doubled, I think, over the last one or two decades. This is a real issue.

As my noble friend Lady Featherstone has mentioned many times, it was a tragedy when, in 2015, when the Cameron Government took power, they took away the regulations for zero-carbon homes by 2016. Quite frankly, this was an act of vandalism in setting aside the right standards for new builds, especially as the industry was ready for it. In effect, what that means is that the 200,000 or so houses that have been built since the regulations were supposed to come into force will, over the next three or four decades, have to be retrofitted at extraordinary and avoidable expense. Getting efficiency right in housing is key, not just for health but for climate change, as one-third of our carbon emissions are presently linked to space heating. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, that we have all sorts of ways of solving climate change if we concentrate our minds, including the one I have just mentioned, which would deal with health and climate change at the same time.

I looked at the Government’s recent clean energy strategy, and although it was late, I look forward to reading all of it and in many ways support it. Page 13 of the strategy gives us an idea of what they are looking at for homes. On the positive side, there is support of,

“£3.6 billion of investment to upgrade around a million homes through the Energy Company Obligation (ECO).

It is good news that that is being extended, although of course that £3.6 billion is not government money but comes from the electricity bills that we consumers pay. However, I suggest that ECO is a scheme that has run out of steam in many ways and requires a severe redesign.

Otherwise, I feel that the aspiration is not good. The Government wish all fuel-poor homes to be,

“upgraded to Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Band C by 2030”,

which is 12 years ahead. They go on to say that, “our aspiration”—and it is only an aspiration—is for,

“as many homes as possible to be EPC Band C by 2035”,

which is almost 20 years ahead. On rented homes, they again want to see energy performance standards going up to band C by 2030, but only where “practical, cost-effective and affordable”. When it comes to social housing, the Government are seeking only a consultation on meeting similar standards over this period. On new and existing homes, we are back to only consultation. But we had consultation and strong work with the industry before 2016. We know what we need to do—surely we need to get on with it.

I wanted to stress in this debate the link between housing, health and climate change. It is potentially, just as clean air is with motor transport, a win, win, win in terms of health and climate change policy. What I see at the moment is not much better than aspiration from the Government. They have set out a strategy in terms of clean growth and part of that is improving homes. I welcome that, but for goodness’ sake let us have some real action. Let us stop the consultation and the half measures. Let us get on with it and solve this, and save not just energy poverty in this country but prepare ourselves for the heat that is to come.