Home Energy Efficiency: North of England

Navendu Mishra Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) on bringing this important debate to the House. Some of us were not sure whether the Government would be able to field a Minister for this debate, but most of us are glad to see the Minister in his place. Hopefully, he will be able to address some of our queries and concerns.

The cost of living crisis is hurting every constituency represented in the House of Commons. We have to be up front about the impact of housing on the cost of living, physical health and mental health. We have a housing crisis in this country. Many people cannot afford to rent, let alone pay the large deposit that is needed to purchase a home. We need a wider debate on the housing crisis across Britain, but particularly in the constituencies represented by northern MPs.

I agree almost entirely with what the hon. Member for Darlington had to say about the measures that the Government should take, but I will also highlight the fact that recently the standing charge for gas and electricity has increased. The unit charge has gone up significantly in the past few months, but the standing charge has doubled or increased even more in some cases, so that needs to be highlighted. Energy efficiency for a home or a house has a direct impact on the amount that people pay out for the use of gas and electricity. I appreciate that the standing charge will be the standing charge, but if we made our homes more efficient and cut carbon emissions, that would help people with the cost of living crisis.

The Government always talk about the progress that they have made in improving the efficiency of homes over the last 12 years, but the reality is that schemes are often poorly thought out and badly delivered. On that note, I will highlight a case from my constituency.

A constituent contacted me regarding the cavity wall insulation scheme. In 2013, he had cavity wall insulation fitted in his house for free through a Government initiative. He says that the work should not have been carried out because his house was not suitable, but the Government were funding this scheme so, in his words, many “cowboy firms” signed up to do such work and made an enormous amount of money.

Unfortunately, my constituent has not been able to let out the house where the work was done, or use it himself, because there have been lots of problems as a result of that work. He took the firm to court and was awarded £37,000 to repair his property, but he has never received that money because the firm that did the work has ceased trading.

My constituent works full time as an electrician, working between 46 and 50 hours a week, and he is facing serious financial hardship. That is having an effect on his mental and physical health, and he is in a lot of debt. He contacted my office and he feels that the Government have let him down badly. I have highlighted that case and I will write to the Minister after the debate, and I hope that he will be able to respond with something positive for my constituent.

The second case that I will highlight is that of Ms Phoebe Spence. I visited her a few months ago. She feels that it is very troubling that the Government are not making any effort to insulate homes effectively, are lacking in a strategy and are not addressing fuel poverty. I visited her home, which is a three-bedroom former council house that was built in 1920 on the first council estate in the Borough of Stockport. She had it retrofitted with external wall insulation and she has also had an air source heat pump installed. I was lucky enough to visit her and have a cup of tea with her, and she took the time from her day to show me all the changes that she has had carried out on the property. She said that she was able to fund that work because she had received a redundancy pay-out and also some savings, but unfortunately not everyone can afford such work.

I was elected in 2019, but in the years since I have submitted several written parliamentary questions on this issue. Parliamentary question 87882 was tabled on the health inequalities that exist as a result of inadequate housing in Stockport, Greater Manchester, the north-west and England. The Minister who responded was the now infamous right hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), but his answer did not really address the question. I hope that the Government will listen to Members on both sides of the House and that the Minister will be able to respond with something positive for both the constituents I have mentioned. Thank you for calling me early in the debate, Mr Robertson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Hands]

I will make some progress and respond to the points made in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington and the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) raised the really important point of skills. I chair the newly established green jobs delivery group with Michael Lewis, CEO of E.ON UK. In 2021 the Government invested £6 million in a BEIS skills training competition, resulting in 7,000 more training places for heat pumps and insulation. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale also commended an event about skills attended by Andy Burnham and Andy Street. It is good to see constructive cross-party work. I only wish that the Mayor of London would follow such a constructive approach to cross-party work, as the Mayors for Manchester and Birmingham often do.

The hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) asked about using legitimate builders, not cowboys. All insulations under Government schemes, including ECO, the social housing decarbonisation fund, the home upgrade grant and the local authority delivery scheme, must be completed by TrustMark-registered businesses, adhering to the latest requisite standards. These requirements are based on the recommendation of the “Each House Counts” review, an independent review of consumer protections and standards.

[Navendu Mishra]

rose—

[Greg Hands]

If the hon. Gentleman has a specific case in mind, I would urge him to take that up with the local authority trading standards.

In an excellent contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) mentioned fuel poverty, which is actually falling in this country. Last year, it accounted for 13.2% of English households and this year it accounts for 12.5%. Obviously, that is not satisfactory, and we need to keep bearing down on fuel poverty, but that situation is improving. I am glad that he welcomed my ministerial colleague, Lord Callanan, to the north-east; he leads the ministerial team on energy efficiency.

My hon. Friends the Members for Sedgefield and for Darlington referred to retrofitting, as did other hon. Members. Our £1.8 million green home finance innovation fund, which completed in March 2022, was a key early step in supporting the lending community to design, develop and pilot green finance products for homeowners. The Government will provide up to a further £20 million to support the development of innovative green finance products and services that will diversify the green finance market and enable both owner-occupiers and private landlords to decarbonise their homes and improve thermal comfort.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield asked about VAT. We have introduced a zero-rating VAT for the installation of insulation and low-carbon heating for the next five years, which will give real certainty to the market. That will save between £1,000 and £2,000 on the cost of an air-source heat pump. My hon. Friend also raised the private rented sector, and I can tell him that we consulted on raising the standard to EPC band C for new tenancies from 1 April 2025, and for all tenancies by 1 April 2028. We have analysed the responses and we will be publishing a Government response in due course. In the meantime, we will continue to invest in energy efficiency and support homeowners outside such regulations. We also published the White Paper “A fairer private rented sector” on 16 June 2022, which sets out support for those in the private rented sector, including ending so-called “no fault” section 21 evictions, and giving all tenants a strong right of redress.

The hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) asked whether we will give money to local regions, such as Liverpool City Council, to retrofit. I can tell her that phase 2 of the local authority delivery scheme allocated £300 million to the five local net zero hubs, which will work with their local authorities to continue to deliver energy efficiency upgrades to up to 30,000 homes across England to those most in need. In this Parliament £6.6 million has been spent on energy efficiency, and a great deal of that has been assigned to local authorities via the home upgrade grant, the LAD scheme and the social housing decarbonisation fund. In LAD 2 funding, the regional allocation of £52.8 million is going to the north-west—the hon. Lady’s region.

The hon. Lady also asked about new-build homes being built to passive housing standards to create lower bills. On new build, the Government have announced that the new future homes standard will be introduced from 2025. That work is ongoing, and in the interim an improvement to part of the loft building regulations came into effect on 15 June 2022.

The hon. Member for Weaver Vale asked about training providers and businesses. As I have already said, we have invested £6 million in the BEIS skills training competition, resulting in more than 7,000 training opportunities.

The hon. Member for Southampton, Test lauded the big increase in energy efficiency across the country. I think he argued that the figures are due to the better energy efficiency of new homes. We are not looking at an average figure—the increase from 14% to 46% of the housing stock—rather we are looking at the percentage of the total number of homes that are rated A to C. The fact that a new home will be particularly, staggeringly, energy efficient will only count as one home in the denominator. The key thing is moving homes in the numerator to make sure that more new homes are created energy efficient and that older homes are retrofitted to get them into the A to C bracket.

The hon. Gentleman asked what the Government are doing to support consumer bills. The Government have acted to protect the 8 million most vulnerable British families through a £37 billion package of support to help those households with the cost of living crisis. That includes at least £1,200 of direct payments this year, with additional support for pensioners and those claiming disability benefits. Three quarters of the total support will go to the vulnerable households who need the most help.

Later this year, the social housing decarbonisation fund is due to launch its second wave of funding to 2025, from the £800 million committed in the heat and buildings strategy to install energy efficiency measures in social homes. The first wave of that funding is investing £63 million in retrofitting around 8,000 homes in the north of England.

Improving the wellbeing and living conditions of northern communities is a key element of the levelling-up agenda that we have embedded across all Departments, with the ambition that by 2030 the number of non-decent rented homes will have fallen by 50%, with the biggest improvements in the lowest performing areas. We know there are significant regional variations in emission levels and communities will face different challenges when meeting net zero commitments. The north accounts for around a quarter of the UK’s emissions, so it is well placed to make a huge contribution to UK decarbonisation.

As Government-funded energy efficiency work rolls out in the coming years, there will be a need to scale up the supply chain and build a skilled workforce, which will take time. To meet that long-term challenge, we have provided £4.7 million of funding to test how we can grow the installer supply chain and a further £2.5 billion in a national skills fund, helping to support hundreds of thousands of green jobs.

The north is in a key position at the centre of net zero innovation, growth and opportunities for green jobs. For example, the new Lancashire Energy HQ, part of Blackpool and The Fylde College provides state-of-the-art training for excellence in energy standards; it was good to hear an intervention earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton). Centres like that may provide job and skill development opportunities for many in communities benefiting from our domestic retrofit programmes. In fact, we expect the decarbonisation of buildings to support up to 240,000 jobs by 2035, resulting in £10 billion additional gross added value by 2035.

In my Department, we know that we need to remove virtually all emissions from buildings to reach net zero. We also know that we have a duty to protect those who are most vulnerable, and to support consumers and businesses as we decarbonise our buildings. I want to ensure that consumers will benefit from higher energy performance in homes and workplaces, from improved health and comfort and from lower emissions and lower bills. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington for proposing this excellent and well-informed debate.