Luciana Berger
Main Page: Luciana Berger (Liberal Democrat - Liverpool, Wavertree)
Barry Gardiner
The virtue that the hon. Lady’s party usually claims for itself is that it adopts a hard-nosed business approach to things, so I offer her a hard-nosed business approach. If a householder were offered a deal at 9% over a period of 25 years, why would they take that up if they could take out exactly the same capital amount needed to fit the elements required to achieve the savings that the policy is designed to achieve but at the rate they are getting on their mortgage, which might be 4%, 5% or 6%? The simple point is that householders can already make the changes we are discussing at a lower cost than is offered in the green deal that her Government propose.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Has my hon. Friend seen the YouGov poll that was released today in which only 7% of the people polled said they would take up the green deal if the interest rate was set at 6% or more?
Barry Gardiner
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I want to assure the Minister and all hon. Members present that I have no intention of talking the measures down. What I want is realism about their likelihood of success. Polls are polls—they are what people say about their future action, but I am not trying to present such evidence. I am simply asking hon. Members to look at what people are doing at the moment. They have the opportunity now to take out money on their mortgages and do exactly what the green deal is offering but at a lower rate of interest, and very few people are doing that. I do not want to talk this down, but I do want realism.
One has to look at this issue in the context of the Government’s overall policies. Of course, it is right that we should look at efficiency savings and energy reduction, but look at the cuts to the Carbon Trust: they do not sit easily with a Government policy of rigid focus on energy reduction. One of the premier schemes, which has been in place for a long time, is being cut. Look at the carbon reduction commitment—a very good scheme that was initiated a couple of years ago to incentivise businesses to lower their carbon emissions, which was welcomed by the CBI and the Institute of Directors. A billion-pound saving was going to be made and then recycled into those businesses. It was revenue neutral.
What did the Government do? They came in and said, “Thanks very much. We’ll have that billion pounds. We won’t recycle it into business.” They did two things: they destroyed the incentives that the businesses had in the first place to reduce their carbon footprint, and they also destroyed the trust that business had in the Government not changing the goalposts. One of fundamentals that we have heard throughout our debate today is the importance of maintaining a stable investment framework going forward. I appeal to the Government to think about everything they said in opposition about stable fiscal regimes and the need for certainty for business. Their actions in government have gone against that.
The hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), the Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, made the point forcefully when he talked about the changes to the solar PV scheme. The important thing is not the changes themselves. It is understandable why those changes were made. The Government did not wish to see businesses profiting from the scheme that was intended primarily to be a domestic or small-scale scheme. That is not the issue. The issue is that they changed the goalposts and destroyed the confidence that business investors had in that area. That is what the Government are doing.
The Bill calls itself an Energy Bill. I am afraid that does not sit well with a coherent energy policy. If this were an Energy Bill, it would address energy much more in terms of electricity market reforms—again, those were referred to by the Chairman of the Select Committee. We should be looking at what sort of structure there is to the energy market in this country. We have a vertical integration of generator and supplier that is destroying the attempts to bring renewables into the mix, yet the four pillars of the Government’s proposals leave that market intact. It is not a reform of the electricity market; it is tinkering around the edges.
What is needed is a genuine reform of that market. That is what the Government are not doing. What is needed is a move to a pooled supply where it can be seen that companies are selling in a transparent and liquid market. At present it is an illiquid market which lacks transparency. That is why the big six are able to rip people off. The Government must do much more to claim that the Bill is an Energy Bill. They must have an energy policy, and the Bill shows that they do not. They are tinkering. Nero fiddled while Rome burned. The Government are fiddling while the planet does.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
One thing has been proved in the course of this excellent debate—that the Government’s green ambitions are lofty, but that the green reality is far less certain. Just today, we read that the Energy Secretary cannot convince his right hon. Friend the Business Secretary to support the fourth carbon budget and Ministers cannot explain why the Climate Change Act 2008 is included in the list of burdens on businesses that are currently being considered for the bonfire. Ministers are in danger of presiding over a great green betrayal. We on the Opposition Benches want to help them to meet their green ambitions.
The message we hear consistently and very loudly from consumers, industry, green groups and trade unions is that there is no clarity or consistency of policy. Green jobs are being lost; green business is moving overseas; green non-governmental organisations are becoming increasingly alarmed and frustrated. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) eloquently said, Ministers are failing to provide investor certainty from one week to the next, let alone over the next couple of years.
The threat of climate change and fuel poverty grows greater. When we look back in a decade or more at the actions of the Energy Secretary and his Ministers, we do not want to see guilty men who had a golden opportunity to secure our green future. It is not us alone that are saying this. The CBI, for example, has said that the green deal
“has clear potential to help unlock…emissions reductions…But without significant action from government to develop an attractive proposition for businesses and households, this potential is unlikely to be realised.”
As it stands, this has all the dangers of being a deeply disappointing Bill. It could be so much more effective, but warm words will not deliver warm homes.
Let me deal with some of the important contributions made by Members of all parties. I hope that they will forgive me if I fail to do their arguments justice in the short time available. The theme most constantly revisited throughout the debate was the distinct lack of detail in the Bill. As the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo) mentioned, it is a great concept, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) said, the Secretary of State did not provide a satisfactory increment of information in his responses to the many interventions he took.
The Bill is a stab in the dark. Although the Government first published it no fewer than five months ago, none of the secondary legislation has been outlined, which leaves so many questions unanswered.
Many Members asked about the incentives to be made available to home owners and tenants to encourage take-up. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) referred to a possible stamp duty rebate, which was raised in the press as something that might crop up in the Budget, while the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) referred to a possible council tax rebate.
A number of Members raised serious concerns about the maximum interest rates on the green deal. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) said, this will be absolutely critical. I referred in an intervention to research and polling done by YouGov, showing that more than 40% of households do not believe that the green deal is an attractive proposition for them, and if the interest rate is above 6%, only 7% of people polled said that they would take up the green deal. We need to reflect carefully on that as we go into Committee.
Another big question is who is going to come into the home to assess the situation and to what level those people will be trained. The Secretary of State said that we can get lots of quotes for the green deal. That sounds fantastic, but who is going to pay for the different assessments of the home?
A number of Members, including the hon. Members for Bracknell (Dr Lee) and for Angus (Mr Weir), referred to the opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises to take part in the green deal. This is crucial because SMEs, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises must have equal opportunities to participate in the scheme, but the Bill does not provide the detail on that. I am also keen to know what guarantees exist that millions will not be saddled with debts that they cannot afford.
Many Members asked a crucial question: after all the work is done, by how much will our national emissions be reduced? We tabled an amendment on that very issue in the House of Lords, which was rejected. I sincerely hope that the Government will revisit it in Committee.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North asked what might happen if a new householder or tenant arrived and the energy savings arrangement changed as a result. The Secretary of State made a joke about a Brazilian wife, but my hon. Friend had asked a serious question that needs to be considered. [Interruption.] It was a Brazilian husband or wife.
Ministers should already have the answers to the many questions that have been asked, rather than deferring them to more than 50 pieces of delegated secondary legislation. The Secretary of State referred to a watertight legal framework. We want and need that framework, but it does not yet exist.
Another key theme that emerged was the poor deal for the consumer represented by the Bill in its current form. Several Members, including the hon. Member for Northampton South, expressed concerns about consumer rights, and my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) spoke eloquently about the confusion felt by his constituents about their energy bills and the implications of the forthcoming abolition of consumer support. If the Bill is not strengthened in that regard, the green deal has the potential to be a poor deal for the consumer. Consumer Focus has warned that it could erode consumer protections rather than enhancing them, and the consumer watchdog Which? has said that Ministers have yet to provide assurances that consumers will be protected from mis-selling and dodgy cross-selling, that they will have access to redress should something go wrong, and that they will not be expected to pay hidden charges. A lack of clarity on those issues will reduce take-up of the green deal.
Many Members also raised the issue of fairness in tackling fuel poverty. I do not have time to go into as much detail as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North and my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton, who made an innovative suggestion about how green deal payments might be met for the 5.5 million households in the UK in fuel poverty, but this is an important issue that urgently needs to be addressed.
According to Ministers and others on the Government Benches, the green deal will be a game-changer for fuel poverty—we heard that phrase a number of times—but that too is not yet evident in the Bill. The new energy company obligation, which underpins the green deal, will be targeted at hard-to-treat homes, but currently no amount has been ring-fenced for the purpose. It is worrying that there are no guarantees that the ECO will be adequate to deal with the scale of the problem, not least in the light of the concern raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) about the inclusion of the ECO in the Treasury’s cap on levies, which the Minister did nothing to assuage.
The hon. Member for Bracknell rightly drew attention to the need for more investment in renewables, referring specifically to marine energy. We know from the Pew Environment Group’s report, which was released only a few weeks ago and mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), that in the past year the UK has fallen from third in the world to 13th in terms of investment. Just before the last election the Labour Government published a marine energy action plan, which is currently gathering dust on a shelf at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. I urge the current Government to resuscitate it and make the necessary investment in more renewables, so that we can take advantage of the £100 billion that is expected to be invested next year alone in renewables across the globe.
In his eloquent contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool spoke of the experience of businesses in his constituency and their concerns about the Government having to move quickly. I have mentioned the £100 million that will be spent next year, and he referred to the figure of $2.3 trillion, which is the amount that will be spent on renewable energies over the next decade. Businesses in his constituency are asking for a clear vision from Government, but they are not currently getting one, and I urge the Government to respond.
Several Members on both sides of the House talked about the private rented sector, and there are a number of relevant clauses in the Bill. Some 40% of tenants in the private rented sector live in F and G energy rated homes. We welcome the move to bring forward the timeline, but we hope we might revise that even further in Committee.
A report last week by Friends of the Earth gave a damning verdict. It talked about the great green betrayal and conducted an examination in forensic detail. The report makes it clear who it believes is to blame for what is happening. It talks about
“Liberal Democrats, who have clearly failed to use their influence inside the Coalition to ensure a better performance on the environment.”
This is not the greenest Government; it does not yet come close. With 27% of all UK emissions coming from homes, the Bill is not yet adequate for the task.
It is essential that the Secretary of State gets the green deal right. He said it was the first such deal in the world, but a similar scheme was set up in Australia. Unfortunately, it was a complete disaster. After 160,000 homes were fitted with substandard insulation, four people died and the scheme was scrapped. There is also a scheme in Germany where the take-up is 100,000 a year, but it has a Government-supported interest rate, which we are not going to get under the current Bill. Such issues must be revisited in Committee.
In spirit and in principle, we want to support the Bill. The hon. Member for Winchester (Mr Brine) tried to rewrite history earlier; it was, of course, the Labour Government who began to implement a pay-as-you-save scheme. In its current form, the Bill could end up being a wasted opportunity, but we will take the Minister up on his assurances that he will work across the Chamber to make it better. We will not vote against it tonight as we support its aim, and we will work hard and positively to make it better. In Committee, we will strive to convince Ministers to give consumers the protections they deserve, to give British businesses the confidence they require, and to build into the Bill the backbone that it so desperately lacks.