Oral Answers to Questions

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

Warm wishes for your birthday, Mr Speaker—and I am going to talk about warmth, as you might expect. Over the last decade, we have seen so many households living in Dickensian conditions, with dark, damp and cold homes, and having to choose between heating and eating. With the warm homes plan widely recognised as the most cost-effective way of making homes warmer, healthier and cheaper to heat, can the Secretary of State confirm exactly how many homes will be covered? Is the current scale of the plan truly sufficient to meet the challenge we face?

[Ed Miliband]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to be ambitious on these issues. Energy efficiency makes such sense for our country. We committed in our manifesto to upgrade 5 million homes and we intend to meet that commitment. I do not want to steal the Chancellor’s thunder, but we will be saying more about that tomorrow.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

The North sea’s future lies in clean energy, but despite the UK’s billing as a wind superpower, we still import most of our wind turbine components while communities around the North sea are losing jobs. Trade unions and industry are united in calling for £1.1 billion a year to build up domestic renewables manufacturing, but the Chancellor has committed barely half that. Will the Secretary of State work with his Cabinet colleagues to secure the investment that is needed to realise the job-creating potential of the green just transition?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We are trying not just to build the renewables that we need for the future, but to bring the good jobs, the manufacturing and the industry along with them. The Prime Minister has announced £200 million of support for supply chains through Great British Energy, and there will be much more to come. We are also working individually with projects and developers to ensure that we bring the jobs here, and that is why the clean industry bonus is so important.