Energy Bill [ Lords ] (Ninth sitting)

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Whitehead]

As always, you are right, Ms Nokes, so I will temper my remarks. I hope that common sense will prevail and that a thumping majority will ensure that the clause is retained so that the Bill can progress to its next stage intact. The clause is important to Government policy, so it should not be taken out and disabled in the way suggested.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. I rise to speak in defence of clause 204, and I agree with the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test, that the Government have suggested an interesting tactic.

Our housing stock has been described as the least energy-efficient in Europe. That means we are the least prepared to absorb future price hikes, like those experienced in recent years, and to address future temperature changes. In England alone, more than 13 million homes—59% of them—are below a C rating on the energy performance certificate standard. As a result, housing is one of the main sources of carbon emissions in the UK, accounting for around 20% of total emissions.

We should be making massive efforts and strides to improve in this policy area, yet energy efficiency programmes have been cut and home insulation rates have plummeted over the past decade. In 2013, the coalition cut energy efficiency programmes, after which insulation rates fell by 92%. The number of energy efficiency insulations peaked at 2.3 million in 2012, yet fewer than 100,000 upgrades were installed in 2021. That is rather pathetic, it has to be said.

The Bill and clause 204 in particular provide a golden opportunity to put in place the financial structures and programme to give the necessary upgrades to the 19 million homes in our country that are below band C on the EPC scale. Clearly, that is what a Labour Government would do.

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

Has the hon. Lady heard of our ECO4 scheme?

[Olivia Blake]

Yes.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Has the hon. Lady heard of the issues with the ECO4 scheme? The energy companies have not met the target number of properties because it needs to be rewritten.

[Olivia Blake]

Those are the exact problems. In recent years a number of Government schemes have either failed because they have not had the workforce to deliver them, or experienced challenges because people have been drawn into other roles, particularly in the building sector and in relation to cladding issues and so on. That is exactly why the Opposition would be very pleased if the clause were protected. We need that action plan. Delivery is only worth something when it happens. We cannot just have targets that we repeatedly continue to miss. It would be exceedingly challenging to argue to the public that we should not prioritise getting their bills down by £1,000 a year or come up with an action plan to deliver that.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Yes, the British public would experience significant benefits through bill reductions as a result of insulating their homes, but who is the hon. Lady suggesting should pay for the intervention that would produce that benefit? It would be a significant scheme, especially given that 30% of the housing stock is really old. Who would foot that bill?

[Olivia Blake]

Moving away from this Bill, Labour has a fully costed plan for achieving that and it is targeted at the 19 million homes.

[Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although the Government are reticent about placing this clause on the statute book, surely the fact that they are Government targets means the money will be found anyway?

[Olivia Blake]

Absolutely, and I will come to that point. This issue is so significant: it is important that we find the funding for these sorts of interventions because almost 9,000 neighbourhoods in England and Wales have very low incomes but higher than average energy costs because of poor insulation. That requires Government action, and I fully support Labour’s plans, which I believe would cost £12 billion a year—I might be wrong about that.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is £6 billion.

[Olivia Blake]

Sorry, £6 billion—I have doubled my ambition. That is a large amount of money, but it would be very welcome in meeting the challenges we face.

I am not alone in my concerns about delivery in this space. In January, the Environmental Audit Committee rightly said that we need a national war mobilisation to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon. The public are crying out for action to address fuel poverty and household emissions: 80% of respondents to National Energy Action’s polling supported funding retrofits for those on low incomes and, according to the New Economics Foundation, 64% of Conservative voters and 65% of people in the north support a national retrofitting taskforce.

Without the clause, the Bill will be another missed opportunity to tackle the cost of living crisis, to bring forward the emergency energy efficiency measures we need, and to start a national 10-year mission for home insulation. Delivery is important, and without an action plan I am not clear how those millions of homes, and the millions of people living in them, will benefit from better energy efficiency. We need to get on top of our carbon emissions and we need to ensure that housing is not forgotten, given its vast contribution to emissions.

It would be a mistake for the Government to remove the clause. All it is asking for is a warmer homes and a business action plan to set out how His Majesty’s Government intend to deliver energy efficiency. It is important to keep that clear ask in the Bill. I will be deeply regretful if the Government do not support the clause, because it will be another missed opportunity.

[Andrew Western]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. At the risk of repetition, I too rise to defend clause 204. It is interesting that, in my first Bill Committee, we appear to be having something of a groundhog day moment. When we had a similar discussion about low-carbon heating last week, the Minister stood up and gave us various assurances that these things would be done, while resisting with all his might any attempts to compel the Government to do that in law.

It is incredibly challenging when the Minister says that superb progress is being made on these issues and that we have gone up to 40% over the past 13 years. In fact, on current projections we have something in the region of 200 years to go to upgrade the energy efficiency of the UK’s draughty housing stock. National Energy Action says that progress on energy efficiency is too slow, and the UK Business Council for Sustainable Development has calculated that the pace of the Government’s recently announced scheme would take almost 200 years to reach homes in need of upgrade. It is clear why the Opposition are so keen to see the targets in the Bill; clause 204 is therefore so important.

I warmly welcomed the addition of the clause in the other place because although the Minister talks about the energy White Paper, the net-zero strategy, the heat and building strategy that was published alongside it, and the future homes standard, none of those things actually compel the Government to act. That is the problem. The Government can miss their targets time and again because there is nothing that forces them to take the action needed. Warm words will not provide warm homes—it is that simple. This will not get us where we need to go unless it is on the statute book. We know that because we are already missing the targets.