Home Insulation

Debate between Martin McCluskey and Gareth Snell

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Martin McCluskey]

The letters will be sent, I think, from today. Many of those households will already have received knocks on the door or possibly direct contact from scheme providers. We are clear that the system needs to remediate this in the first instance. The issue was caused by the system, and there are guarantees available through the schemes to ensure that they are remediated. If any Member is dealing with constituents whose audits are not getting done properly or who are having difficulty with the guarantee providers, I ask them please to come directly to me, because we need to know exactly what is happening as this action takes place.

Despite all the actions we are taking on ECO4, we still need to think about the future system. That is why we have committed to reforming the system and to accelerating that process. I can confirm that we are looking at the entire landscape of consumer protection, from how installers work in homes to where people turn for rapid action and enforcement if things go wrong. The Government are planning to consult on the specific proposals early in the new year, and are already working with industry and consumer protection experts to develop and stress-test plans, including through the retrofit system reform advisory panel, which was set up under my predecessor and began work in July.

As this is one of the most urgent challenges that the Government face in our mission to improve the lives of working people, my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister gave me the clearest of instructions on my first day in the job: to reduce bills by making millions more homes warm, safe and fit for the 21st century. We face a number of challenges, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley alluded to. More than 80% of UK homes rely on gas for heating—among the highest percentages in the world, meaning that we are particularly exposed to crises or energy shocks, as we saw after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, we have some of the oldest housing stock in Europe; more than a third of houses were built before the second world war, most with uninsulated walls, meaning that yet more money and fossil fuels are needed to heat them.

My hon. Friend mentioned a project in Saltaire, and I will be more than happy to visit. I have had good and constructive conversations with Members across the House regarding heritage retrofit. That is something we have to address in the new plan.

[Gareth Snell]

Stoke-on-Trent has some of the oldest housing stock in the country: brick-built terraces, single skinned and in some places still single glazed. A programme by the last Labour Government that made a real difference was the housing market renewal programme, which ran up until 2010 and then was unceremoniously guillotined by the incoming Tory Government. It was able to retrofit housing in a style that matched the local communities, but it was done with communities as part of a more progressive regeneration programme. It meant that houses were better looking and warmer, they lasted longer and residents wanted to live there. Why the Tory Government got rid of it I do not know, but it is something the Minister might want to look at for future ideas.

[Martin McCluskey]

I would be more than happy to look at that. I have been working to help develop the warm homes plan and am looking particularly at area-based approaches; one of the most effective is when entire communities and neighbourhoods are upgraded at once. The effect is much larger, and neighbours can see the impact on their bills, which helps to spread the benefit.

The warm homes plan will set out in more detail how we are going to meet the challenge addressed in this debate. We have been working hard behind the scenes to get it right and will publish it in full soon. We have been clear from the moment we came into government about the scale of the ambition. My hon. Friend mentioned £13.5 billion; after the Budget today that number is actually £15 billion, and we have extended our ambition to upgrade 5 million homes.

As a student of history, I think of the first Labour Government in the 1920s with their housing Act—the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1924—which upgraded and subsidised half a million homes. What we are trying to do with the warm homes plan is 10 times that. That is the level of ambition we have. It means entire streets and whole neighbourhoods benefiting from solar panels, heat pumps, home batteries and better insulation. We have already kick-started that. We are not waiting for the plan to get on with delivery. We have allocated £1.8 billion through the warm homes local grant and warm homes social housing fund. We have set out proposals to increase minimum energy efficiency standards in the private rented sector in England and Wales to EPC C or equivalent by 2030 and introduced a minimum standard in the social rented sector, which is incredibly important for many of our constituents. Those measures, combined, will lift hundreds of thousands of households out of poverty.

For homeowners, we are making it cheaper and easier to install a heat pump. To the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), we announced the extension of the boiler upgrade scheme to new technologies last week, and we have an ongoing consultation on alternative technologies. We have doubled the funding for the boiler upgrade scheme to £295 million this year and, because of decisions made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in the Budget, we will be increasing it year on year up to 2030. Just this month, as I said, the expansion has meant that we are able to extend the scheme to air-to-air heat pumps, a technology that I know many of our constituents were calling on the Government to make a change on last summer.

While we deliver the plan, we know there has to be short-term as well as longer-term action. That is why we have expanded the warm homes discount this year to every household where the billpayer is on a means-tested benefit. That is £150-worth of support directly to billpayers this winter. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) mentioned Beat the Cold; I met Fiona Miller yesterday and had a very good conversation with her about the work she is doing on data sharing between the NHS and her organisation. That is something I want to look at, and I am keen to visit Stoke-on-Trent Central to see in person the work that Beat the Cold is doing.

All those action that are taking place are good in the short term, but how do we tackle the cost of living and bring energy bills down for good? In the long term, we do that by pushing for our target of clean power by 2030: clean power generated in Britain, which we control and which will end the rollercoaster of energy bills that, bluntly, are at the moment decided by dictators and upheavals beyond our borders. We do that by upgrading homes with electrified, energy-efficient technologies, putting people in a position to benefit directly from clean, secure, affordable energy.

My immediate focus remains on some of the issues that we have heard about today, and on the people across the country living in homes that they can barely afford to heat. As we enter another winter, people should not have to choose between heating and eating. A large part of the reason the Chancellor took the action that she took in today’s Budget is that she wants to stop people having to make those incredibly difficult choices. When we publish it, the warm homes plan will set out our path to a future that we all want to see. We want warmer homes, no matter where we live or whether we rent or own—homes that are smarter, cheaper to run and greener, and are protected by a system that keeps them free of damp, mould and other issues. I welcome this debate, and I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley.

Question put and agreed to.

Energy

Debate between Martin McCluskey and Gareth Snell

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Martin McCluskey]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. With that in mind, I might not take further interventions from hon. Members.

In Carrington in Greater Manchester, there will be 200 jobs in the region—I could go on. All those jobs are what the Conservatives are turning their backs on—the new clean jobs of the future.

While we sprint towards our clean energy goals, we are also doing everything we can to protect those who have borne the brunt of this crisis. As I said, the warm home discount is providing support to an extra 3 million households this winter. We are working with Ofgem to relieve the burden of energy debt that many consumers face. To support British industry, from next year 500 of our most energy-intensive businesses will get a cut to their bills, with thousands more firms getting discounts in 2027.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister will know that one of the most energy-intensive industries in the country is the ceramics sector, which cannot go off gas because the technology simply does not exist to change the kilns from gas to electric—that process cannot happen. Under the Conservatives, the sector was excluded from the current supercharger scheme. Will the Government please consider—we beg again—extending the current supercharger scheme to include the ceramics sector, so that we can bring down the electrical costs that it incurs while not being able to look at the gas prices? Thousands of jobs are on the line and places like Stoke-on-Trent need this help. They need it now, and we would be most grateful for anything the Government can do.

[Martin McCluskey]

I know my hon. Friend is a champion for that industry and for his constituents. I will pass that on to colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade, who will look at it.

The previous Government stood idly by as jobs went overseas, but we will not. Through our industrial strategy, we are taking action to reduce industrial electricity prices. We are introducing the British industrial competitiveness scheme from 2027, which will reduce electricity bills by up to 25% for over 7,000 eligible British businesses.

If we want to create new good jobs and revitalise our industrial regions, we must seize the opportunity to make Britain a world leader in clean energy. This is the economic opportunity of the century. The Conservatives seem to want to double down on their record of failure. Do they not want to remember that their failed energy policy caused the worst cost of living crisis in memory for British families? Do they not want to recognise that their plans would mean jobs, investment and growth going to other countries, rather than into our communities? Do they not realise that their plans undermine the very confidence that British businesses now have in the energy transition? Now is not the time to turn to old solutions that have utterly failed, but to seize the incredible opportunities ahead of us. Now is the time to build our clean energy future.