13:30 Mr Tim Yeo (South Suffolk) (Con)

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Gray. It is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, and I will endeavour to stay within order. I also welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), who will reply to the debate. I have had an apology from the Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), who is out of London today, but I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North will be a more than adequate substitute.

My Committee is delighted to have secured this debate. The green deal links directly to the last Westminster Hall debate that we had on one of our reports, just before Christmas, in which we discussed the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Promoting energy efficiency through schemes such as the green deal is a good way to respond to the challenge of climate change.

I much regret that two of the hon. Members who serve on my Committee and who took part in that debate are not present today, although I am sure they have good reasons for not being here. During that debate, they both questioned the scientific conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the extent to which climate change is taking place. In the context of this debate on the green deal, I would have welcomed their comments on last Friday’s joint announcement from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which confirmed that 2014 was the warmest year on record, and that 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred since the turn of the century. Only the most determined flat earther could now continue to claim that there is a pause in the trend towards higher temperatures.

“This is the latest in a series of warm years, in a series of warm decades. While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases.”

One cannot be much plainer than that, though doubtless my right hon. Friend Lord Lawson, and some other members of the upper House, particularly his henchmen in the Global Warming Policy Foundation, will dismiss NASA as yet another part of the global conspiracy, which apparently exists, of grant-seeking academics and left-leaning politicians who have invented the evidence that climate change is a clear and immediate threat to the conditions of climate stability, which have made it possible for the human species to enjoy phenomenal and possibly unprecedented success—very recently in the context of a planet with a 4-billion year history on which humans have been present for less than 0.001% of the time.

I want to assure my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North that the Committee’s comments on the green deal are intended in an entirely constructive manner. The green deal was an ambitious policy, vaulting in its aims. It had and still has my full support and that of my Committee. Increasing the energy efficiency of UK households addresses all three aims of energy policy. It improves security, cuts energy bills and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. It particularly helps the fuel-poor to make their homes warmer and more comfortable, and it improves public health as well. So, energy efficiency is the true “no regrets” policy. The Committee fully supports the Government’s efforts to call quits on cold homes and to stop wasting heat through buildings that are inadequately insulated and inefficiently constructed.

First, we urged the Department of Energy and Climate Change to make the finance package more appealing. We recognise that a subsidised interest rate is not appropriate, but we suggest that the way in which the golden rule is calculated could be reviewed. Perhaps the assumptions in those calculations are too cautious. We also suggested that other incentives should be explored. I have long advocated more radical incentives to kick-start the process of investment in energy efficiency in our built environment. As we all know, in the UK we have a high proportion of older properties.

Interesting evidence was produced by the Committee on Climate Change about changes in the habits of new car buyers. In response to quite modest incentives and differentials in the road tax or vehicle excise duty charged on different types of vehicle, there was a surprisingly large shift towards the purchase of low-consumption vehicles. Even though the cost of running a car might be £2,000 or £3,000 a year, or even £4,000 or £5,000 a year, buyers who think that they can save £200 or £300 a year on the vehicle excise duty are surprisingly influenced by the extent of that saving.

In conclusion, the Committee supports the Government’s vision for a green deal brand. We agree that a choice of initiatives is needed, which is why we have recommended prioritising communication and restoring trust. We acknowledge the positive changes already made by DECC and the efforts made to engage consumers more effectively. The green deal is truly a “no regrets” policy that can make homes warmer and more comfortable, while also saving money, cutting consumer bills and, crucially, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but we believe that the Government should be even bolder. They should continue to promote the green deal through long-term planning. Quick fixes will not make much difference.

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13:45 Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)

I commend the work of the Energy and Climate Change Committee and agree with many of the comments made by its Chair, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo). The report is an important one, given how disappointing the green deal has been.

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13:53 Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)

I thank the Energy and Climate Change Committee for giving the Government the opportunity to respond to the report and some of its criticisms and suggestions. I also thank its Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), for presenting those to us today. I read the current and previous reports on the subject, as well as the Government responses to them, and a few things stuck out for me that I would like to address.

The Committee report contains valuable steers, and I will tell the Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), to take them on board. Those important and valid points were meant in the spirit of constructive criticism, as the Chair of the Committee said, and our response accepts that. We will work to improve our communications and ease of access to enable the green deal to change people’s behaviour across the board.

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14:04 Mr Yeo (in the Chair)

We share the aim of eliminating energy waste. It is a scandal that millions of buildings in this country are still so energy inefficient that a large amount of energy is wasted. A consistent thread running through all our reports is our concern to ensure that the UK achieves the challenging targets we have set for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Energy efficiency has an enormous part to play in achieving those targets. Our criticisms derive from our disappointment and frustration about the relatively slow progress of the green deal so far. Even the most ardent defender of the coalition’s policy—as my hon. Friend the Minister knows, there are few more ardent defenders of the coalition than me—would not claim that the high hopes about the green deal have yet been fulfilled.

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