HELMS and the Green Deal

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I am delighted to participate in the debate, Mr Robertson. I extend my heartfelt thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) for securing a debate to expose HELMS’s mis-selling of energy-efficient products under the UK Government’s green deal programme. It has affected many of my constituents. Indeed, as we have heard, we all have constituents who have been victims of that mis-selling, and who have been caused considerable anxiety, stress and financial loss as a result of the scandal. The UK Government, as every Member who has spoken has said, need to step up and take responsibility.

There is no denying that the scheme was Government-backed, but it turns out that the wider regulatory provisions failed to ensure that the deal was fit for purpose. What is required is for the UK Government to put in place a compensation scheme for all the consumers who have been left out of pocket—and there are many. We now have a situation where some homeowners who were taken in by the scheme have been left unable to sell their homes. They are not making the savings that they were told they would. It has all come to nothing. Some have been left with higher bills than they had before. The work carried out has often been substandard. Building warrants for wall cladding have not been obtained, so the consumers affected have had to pay for retrospective warrants at 300% of the cost of a normal building warrant, or have had to pay to have corrective works done, because building standards will not issue a warrant if they deem the work not to have been done properly. We have constituents who are not on a feed-in tariff because they were not registered prior to March 2016. Far too many people now face the prospect of monthly repayments for finance deals with extensive payback periods in excess of 20 years. How can that possibly be acceptable?

I am pleased that the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth assured me in a debate on 10 October that she would ask her officials to look at the loan arrangements. She pointed out:

“The green deal…was designed to unlock the issue of persuading people to improve the energy efficiency measures of their homes. Currently, all contracts are covered by existing consumer protection, but as a second action point I undertake to go away and review this specific company and write to her with the state of progress on those conversations.”—[Official Report, 10 October 2018; Vol. 647, c. 110WH.]

I await that letter with eager anticipation. I am sure that the Minister who is responding today can see that, far from unlocking

“the issue of persuading people to improve the energy efficiency measures of their homes”,

the scandal has undoubtedly set that cause back considerably, which is in no one’s interest. However, the Government could do much to mitigate the distrust that has been sown, the alarm that has been caused and the financial loss that those caught up in the scandal feel.

We have heard that the issue is complex, but in another sense it is very simple: the UK Government-backed scheme has led to ordinary consumers facing huge difficulties, and it is incumbent on the UK Government—there is a moral imperative—to put it right. The debacle shows that the UK Government’s system of regulation is simply not fit for purpose. Consumers did not have the protection under the law that they were entitled to expect. That needs to be addressed. Those consumers who inadvertently and unwittingly signed over their feed-in tariffs must have them returned. Today, those who have suffered in the HELMS fiasco simply want to know whether the Government are going to step up, or whether they are going to leave those who trusted the Government-backed scheme floundering in debt, hardship and despair. I urge the Minister to do the right thing and help the people who have been let down, misled and swindled by the scheme.

[Several hon. Members rose—]