Domestic Premises (Energy Performance) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-02-07
Topic: Housing
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I declare my interest as a trustee of an organisation in the south-west called Regen SW I am someone who loves quizzes—pub quizzes, family quizzes at Christmas—but when it comes to English literature I am useless, except perhaps for two classics, I suppose. One is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, with its first line: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" I can get that one. Then of course there is the first line of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" It is a quotation that I think is amazingly sexist. I am told that even in 1813, when she wrote it, it was meant purely ironically. However, while working out what I was going to say in this debate, I came across an even better first line: "UK homes are not fit for the future" Of course, that is the first line in the climate change committee’s report into housing in the UK that was published under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, exactly one year ago Why is the UK housing stock not fit for the future? UK housing accounts for 14% of our carbon emissions, a major amount. Between 2017 and 2018, that actually rose by 1%. One of the outcomes of that, and one of the major themes of my noble friend Lord Foster, is that we still have 2.5 million households in the United Kingdom classified as suffering fuel poverty. My noble friend Lord Redesdale mentioned how many of us have talked through these subjects over many years. If I am right, that number has gone up and down, but it has never gone significantly down. It has changed with the changing price of energy bills over time One reason that it is not working is because of the chopping and changing of policies that we have heard about. There was Warm Front under Labour, Green Deal under the coalition and the energy company obligation. ECO, one of the current policies, has taken the low-hanging fruit but is now finding it more difficult to find ways to increase household efficiency. We have had others as well, including the renewable heat incentive, the future of which we do not know. There has been very little continuity of policy in this area As other noble Lords have mentioned, that has had a secondary effect in terms of skills. It is not so much that we do not have the skills in the UK economy to do what is needed in this area, it is that we train people, build them up, get them in programmes and when those programmes stop, the companies make them all redundant. They all go and we have to re-employ them two or three years later and upgrade their skills until we have a new programme and, we hope, some stability into the future One of the other areas that does not work, as mentioned by other noble Lords, is that where we have the regulations we do not check that they are enforced. There is laziness from contractors, builders, planners and even local authorities in making sure that our intentions, even when they are a regulatory or legislative necessity, are applied. Part of that is due to local government cutbacks but there is also a mentality that, once we have made a regulation, we can almost say "Well, that’s it; cheerio, job done" when in reality we have to make sure that it is enforced As a result of that, in terms of energy efficiency levels and energy performance criteria just 1% of our housing stock in the UK is A-rated. That means that 99% does not come up to the standards that we will need for the future. That is why our housing stock is not fit for the future. I recommend, having come across it, the Scottish Government’s programme of effectively interest-free loans to get a lot of this to move on. Germany has a very effective scheme as well I welcome my noble friend’s Bill in this area because, as he has explained so well and simply, it puts the obligations the Government have given themselves morally and as targets in such things as the clean growth strategy into legislation. As I have said, that is not everything because we then have to make sure that those regulations are applied, but at least this is a first step. That is why it is very important that this moves forward. As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has said, this should really become a government Bill rather than a Private Member’s Bill I remember that in the Energy Acts during the coalition and afterwards we had a thing called the energy trilemma: the conflict between energy security, the cost of energy and therefore energy poverty, and decarbonisation. The great thing is that, now we are in 2020, it is no longer a trilemma. Renewable energy and decarbonisation are cheaper than traditional fossil fuels and can give us security at the same time. The great vision on energy for the future is that we can go ahead with confidence in that area On this Bill we are looking at the opposite of a trilemma—perhaps we might call it a "tribonus". If we manage to do this, we will not only decarbonise our economy and have lower energy bills through energy efficiency, which means less fuel poverty, but have the added bonus of increased health and all the implications that more healthy homes and families will have on the National Health Service We all know those first two lines of A Tale of Two Cities. The next two are: "it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness" This is the age of wisdom in that we know all the technical fixes that can do what my noble friend Lord Foster is asking, but we have the foolishness yet to have grasped that opportunity and apply it to what we are doing. That is the challenge. It is a truth universally accepted on these Benches that we have to get on with this. I ask the Minister to take this Bill and make sure that it goes through both Houses of Parliament so that we can start this journey.