13:37 Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)

I am glad that the Minister intends to lay the statutory instrument as soon as possible. It was, of course, the advent of a general election that made it impossible for the previous Government to proceed with that. Overall, however, he is of course fortunate to have such a good framework on which to lay his future plans, and I am grateful to him for the acknowledgment that he just gave. Labour’s Climate Change Act 2008 led the world in establishing the first national legal limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and I share the Minister’s pleasure at the fact that it finally achieved an all-party consensus.

Energy efficiency is central to addressing both climate change and energy security. That is why, in September 2008, we announced the home energy saving programme, a package worth £1 billion. We did so, of course, for exactly the reasons that the hon. Gentleman has outlined. There is no disputing the failure to build well-insulated homes in this country, but at no time was the situation worse than under the previous Conservative Government, when Mrs Thatcher’s ban on council house building drove people who could not afford to buy into decrepit private sector housing with the lowest possible insulation standards. I regret to say that history is about to repeat itself, with housing benefit changes certain to drive already poor standards down further. Will the Minister regulate private landlords, as we planned to do, to ensure that privately rented accommodation is properly insulated?

Furthermore, Budget 2009 announced £100 million of funding for local authorities to deliver new energy-efficient homes, and “Building Britain’s Future” announced up to £250 million for direct development by councils of around 3,000 new energy-efficient homes. Will the Minister tell us whether those programmes will go ahead? Or will the draconian cuts in local authority budgets, announced by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, put an end to all the progress made on energy efficiency in the social housing sector? What will happen to local area agreements, under which 97% of local authorities had opted for at least one of our three climate change indicators? What is happening to the £25 million fund to help local authorities support community heating infrastructure? When will the Minister make an announcement on that topic?

When answering an intervention, the Minister said that we could not afford free insulation. He—or his colleague the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry)—may like to clarify that in the winding-up speech, because of course we have been providing free insulation to millions of people through the CERT programme.

Let me make a little more progress. We also introduced the CRC energy efficiency scheme—again, there has been no mention of that today—which is an extremely important energy efficiency measure. It is a new mandatory emissions trading scheme to improve energy efficiency in the large public and private sector organisations that were not otherwise covered by the climate change levy, or indeed the emissions trading scheme, which is, of course, European-based. Consequently supermarkets, banks, universities, hospitals and other organisations were all brought into an energy efficiency framework. The scheme is intended to target emissions from the energy use of those organisations, which represent no less than 10% of all UK emissions. What is the future of the CRC energy efficiency scheme? Again, the Minister has been silent on the issue. Will he guarantee that this important scheme will continue?

I have reminded the House of the big changes that Labour was making in energy efficiency and in putting the country on track to meet our climate change targets of a 34% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 and at least 80% by 2050.

According to the Committee on Climate Change, the emission reductions achieved in the past year have been almost entirely a result of the recession, not a result of Government action. To hear the right hon. Lady talking as though the previous Government did wonderful things to achieve climate change targets beggars belief.

In the same vein as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), I must point out that the achievement of the Kyoto targets was due to other factors—in that case, the dash for gas, which transformed the pattern of greenhouse gas emissions in this country. That and the recession achieved far more than the previous Government.

Again, I am sorry to say that the hon. Gentleman knows better than that. Nobody disputes the fact that the dash for gas was a factor, and more recently the recession has, indeed, been a factor, but the independent Committee on Climate Change has acknowledged the difference that Government programmes over that period made. Lord Turner, the chair of the Committee on Climate Change, said very recently that the last Government

[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) mutters from a sedentary position, “That’s about the future.” Climate change and what we need to address is indeed the future. I pointed out our considerable achievements in the past. No other Government had made the leap forward that we made, and as I said at the outset of the debate, we left a very strong framework from which any Government could proceed to reduce carbon in the UK.

In order to dispel some of the wild hyperbole on the matter, I hope it will be helpful to observe that the Committee on Climate Change said today that 1 megatonne of CO 2 emissions out of a total of 4 megatonnes of CO 2 emissions could be directly attributable to Government measures on energy efficiency and associated activities in the past year.

I was referring to the fact that we had made changes and were putting the country on track to meet our climate change targets, but we were never complacent. That is why, one year ago, we launched our great British refurb programme, and in July last year published the UK low carbon transition plan. Our proposals signalled a step change in the level of ambition for the household sector over the next decade—precisely the game-changer of which the Minister spoke.

We have discussed energy efficiency in the context of reducing the energy used by better insulation. But climate change dictates that we not only reduce our use, but decarbonise what we do use. That is a much more comprehensive strategy.

In government, we were pleased to achieve a wide consensus for our Climate Change Act 2008 and Energy Act 2008. We were gratified by the enthusiasm with which our 10-year transition plan for low carbon was received, particularly by the CBI and the TUC.

Government is about leadership, setting priorities and, yes, making hard choices, but it is also about holding one’s nerve and seeing things through. The coalition had a choice. It could have balanced deficit reduction with investment in the future, investment in manufacturing, such as Sheffield Forgemasters, and investment in decarbonising the electricity supply. However, it clearly lacks the vision to do so.

The Minister promised to make his Government the greenest ever. All I can say is that he has made a shaky start. We will judge him on his strategy to deliver a low-carbon future that tackles climate change, on his record of creating green jobs and on whether the transition to low carbon is made fairly.

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14:11 Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)

The need is urgent. If we are to achieve throughout Europe a target of 30% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, which I believe should be the target for the whole European Union, we will have to make those radical step changes in policy. Indeed, we need to do so if we are to have any chance of reducing the concentration of atmospheric CO 2 to 450 ppm or lower, which I believe is absolutely necessary. If we do not do that, the chance of global warming increasing by more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels rises, threatening food production, conflict and, ultimately, the economies on which we depend to finance public sector and Government programmes.

In that respect, energy efficiency is no panacea. Not long ago, I visited a company near my constituency called Messier-Dowty, which provides world-class aircraft parts, particularly undercarriage. I remember having a conversation with its staff, in which they extolled the virtues of those parts and the aircraft industry’s efforts to make aircraft more efficient and lighter, and use less energy as they flew. However, I pointed out that eventually the industry would have to adjust to a world in which people learned to fly less and used alternative means of travel and communications. The same analogy is true for the whole economy. Energy efficiency is the first and most cost-effective area to address, but it is no substitute for the wholesale decarbonisation of our economy, which we also need to work on.

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14:26 Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)

When I wrote to the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden, in May, to request a meeting with him, I was advised that the demands on his diary are considerable at present—as I am sure is the case—and that such a meeting could not take place. However, let me say to both Ministers that if they, or anybody here, were to meet the people who are developing this technology, I am sure that they would become as enthusiastic as I am about the product.

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15:04 Jim Shannon (DUP)

Wind turbines can go a long way towards creating the energy levels and efficiencies needed. I would also make the point—I have made it in the past—that many birds and wildlife migrate to Strangford, in particular Strangford loch, in the winter. Brent geese are one of the important birds that go there. However, wind turbines and migrating fowl together will create problems, so I have suggested to those involved that perhaps we need a balance and some protection. We are all playing the renewable energy game, but the provision of wind turbines must strike a balance and integrate well with nature. It is wonderful that the SeaGen turbine has become the source of electricity for thousands of homes in my constituency. I believe that we can do this even better; we should replicate the SeaGen turbine in Portaferry right across the United Kingdom. One size does not fit all—I accept that—but we have to look at the ways we can achieve those things.

I put down this marker when it comes to offshore renewable energy: one thing must be protected, and that is the position and interests of the fisherman. Any future plans must ensure that they do not detract further from or decrease fishing locations, which would put the fishing industry under even more pressure. Given the potential for perhaps 300 sea and wind turbines on the coast, I believe that there will be an impact on a great many areas around the Irish sea coast, the Scottish coast and the rest of the UK.

The fishing industry is very important in my constituency. As such, although we all want to see the benefits and opportunities of energy efficiencies and renewables, we also want the fishing industry to be protected. By its very nature, and because the European Union is mostly responsible for the restrictions, the news for the fishing industry is not always good news. We want to make sure that we strike a balance. We need to make sure that the targets for renewable energy are met; that fishing can continue and co-exist; that the threat of habitat extinction is recognised; that fishing boats are not allowed near the sea turbines due to collision risks. Noise is generated by wind turbines; those who have one not too far away know that. If that is multiplied by 10, 20 or in some cases 100, we can see the problems. We need to be sure that people’s quality of life is not affected.

Targets have been set for 40% of all electricity generated in Northern Ireland and the area I represent to be provided through renewable energy by 2020. Location is important, and co-existence and co-operation are vital if we are all to be supportive of goals that must be achieved. We cannot allow fishing fleets to be displaced; they can co-exist. The mussel and shellfish beds off the Copeland islands off Donaghadee are an important habitat and they must be protected.

There are benefits to the economy, too. This has not been touched on so far, but as I understand it, wherever we have a sea or a wind turbine, we create jobs. Perhaps that jobs factor has not come into the equation so far, and the Minister will comment on it in summing up. In other parts of the UK, renewable energy generation has been approved and there are abundant examples of how it co-exists with other industries. That is just one of the many challenges for 2020 that I believe we should look at.

I referred earlier to the willow biomass project—another example of renewable energy of which Northern Ireland has taken advantage. I believe that it will reap benefits. There has to be a fairly vast acreage in order to get the advantage from it. Again, I would like to hear what incentives are available. It is not always about what grants are available; if there is an incentive for someone to plant willow biomass, why not do that? Perhaps the Minister will give us some indication of the incentives to encourage landowners, farmers or others who have the opportunity to develop it.

The future of energy efficiency lies in renewable energy that co-exists with business; it lies with encouraging people to do the small things that make a big difference in their homes; and it lies with this House making the prospects attractive and in every way encouraging businesses and homes to go the extra mile and see what the benefits will be.

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15:39 Barry Gardiner (Labour)

“environment plans as a real step in the right direction in the task of arresting climate change and reducing the UK’s carbon emissions.

The Mark Group agrees with Gordon Brown’s assertion that the UK can take a global lead in tackling climate change and in doing so generating thousands of jobs.”

The second point is that it makes no sense to ask householders to improve the energy efficiency of their homes at the same time as increasing the cost of doing so by 2.5%. I challenge the Secretary of State to show that deep inside his new Teflon Tory exterior there is still a limp Liberal longing to get out—to show us that the Liberal pledge before the election not to raise VAT was more than just the point scoring that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has claimed it was. I ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to speak to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The latter is another Liberal, and is, I think, the Member with the longest constituency name—Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey. After yesterday’s oration to the House, he is also the Member with the shortest political credibility. They should agree to reduce VAT on the materials and labour used for increasing the energy efficiency of domestic properties. That would make a real difference. If the VAT on such work was 5% instead of 20%, that would go a tremendous way towards incentivising householders and other property owners to make sure that they do the necessary work.

If the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change will not do that, rolling out smart meters in every home; piloting pay-as-you-save and ways to make homes greener; introducing clean energy cashback schemes; and making the UK a centre of green industry—all that—is just so much recycling of the stated policy of the last Government, as set out in the “The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan”, published in July last year. The truth is that approximately 90% of what Ministers have announced in their green deal comes from that document. No wonder earlier this month the Department issued a YouTube video entitled “Chris Huhne launches Wind Week”.

Today, the Committee on Climate Change released its second annual report on progress towards a low-carbon economy. The committee makes it clear that we can deliver on our commitment to reduce emissions by at least 34% by 2020, but only if we accelerate our roll-out of renewables and effect a step change in domestic energy efficiency. So let me welcome the Secretary of State’s remarks today, in which he said:

If we are to make real progress on energy efficiency, public transport must become a priority for the new Government, which currently it is not. To put it simply, public transport must be the easiest, most accessible, most affordable and most reliable service available to the public. I was disappointed that the Minister said not one word about public transport as an instrument for delivering energy efficiency. Transport represents a fifth of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions; it did not represent so much as one fiftieth of his speech.

However, I welcome the new Government’s proposal to introduce a minimum price for carbon. The second progress report from the independent Committee on Climate Change, which was published today, states:

I hope the new Government will live up to their undoubted enthusiasm and undoubted good intentions on energy efficiency and climate change, but I warn them that we on the Opposition Benches will hold them to account where they backslide, and for the areas in which they fail to make the progress that we all need.

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16:19 Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)

While I was sitting here and hearing about the fuel crisis of the 1970s, when Ted Heath was Prime Minister, I was reminded of the fact that the Department of Energy was created at that time to solve the crisis of the shortage of fuel and deal with the issue of coal. More recently, the Department of Energy and Climate Change has been created to carry out the different task of ensuring that our energy use is more efficient and carbon-friendly. I welcomed its new guise when it was introduced by the Labour Government and I salute it now as it is still in place.

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16:38 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

This emphasises that nuclear power is not coming over the hill tomorrow to save us all as far as low-carbon energy is concerned. The targets on carbon emissions reduction and, indeed, the replacement of something like 40% of our generation and transmission capacity by the early 2020s will have to be achieved without nuclear power by means relating to renewable energy, the building of conventional power plants—I trust with carbon capture technology—and, of course, a very substantial step forward in energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency is a crucial component of our future energy landscape. I am pleased that the energy efficiency ambitions that the new Government have set out continue those proposed, and acted upon, by the previous Government. I recognise that the new ministerial team has strong personal commitments to these issues, and therefore energy efficiency has a bright start in terms of ambition and of understanding that this area is crucial. After all, 40% of our energy is consumed in buildings and that represents 40% of our carbon emissions. About 80% of household energy goes on heating our homes and water, and that alone represents some 13% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, getting a serious grip on energy efficiency in our homes and commercial and industrial buildings offers potentially enormous, and relatively early, rewards in respect of our overall position on carbon emissions and energy consumption.

However, we as a country face this situation from a poor position historically. It is true that the previous Government made enormous strides in improving energy efficiency, particularly of public sector homes, and homes provided by registered social landlords. The Committee on Climate Change report that was published today conspicuously states that its indicators for activity on loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and energy efficiency in homes were met during the last year of the previous Labour Government. Considerable progress has been made, but our private sector homes remain energy-inefficient. The average standard assessment procedure rating in private sector homes is 49, which is a long way from level that we ought to aim for if we are to have a reasonable expectation that homes will be relatively energy-efficient and will have a low output of waste and energy emissions as far as the activities of the people who live in them are concerned.

As a small indicator of the difference between ambitions and realisation I shall discuss the new part L of the building regulations, which were published recently. I had anticipated that it would contain new guidelines on the energy efficiency of circulation pumps in central heating. If, as was suggested during consultation by the previous Government, the regulations had mandated new and very energy-efficient circulation pumps, we could have saved as much as 2% of the electricity consumption in households—that could have been done by that measure alone. However, the new regulations state that it is perfectly okay to have circulation pumps that are A to G rated, not the A to C rated that had been anticipated. That shows an immediate difference between ambition and practice. I sincerely hope that the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), who has been inviting various other people to come to see him about various issues, will invite me in the very near future to a round-table meeting on circulation pumps and why they should be more energy-efficient. I am sure that he will find time in his busy diary to have a substantial round-table meeting on that pressing issue. I cite that issue as a small example to show that one needs to keep one’s eye closely on the difference between the reality of achievement and the ambition that one has when one puts forward new plans.

For every 1% rise in fuel prices, 40,000 people are placed in fuel poverty, so we need to be aware of the obligations being placed on energy companies and the effect that they have on additional prices. If, as a result of the green deal and other new arrangements, we place additional obligations on energy companies and they pass on the effects of those obligations to their customers, we will find not only price rises but many more people going into fuel poverty as those new schemes unfold. There are already obligations on energy companies relating to carbon capture and storage, the carbon emissions reduction target, the community energy saving programme, and the smart meter roll-out. I imagine that the acceleration of that roll-out, which was recently announced by the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), will place additional obligations on companies, as they will have to underwrite that roll-out.

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17:08 Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)

“Vote blue, go green” was one of our lasting slogans from the general election, so I welcome the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), to his Front-Bench position. I am pleased that we are having a debate on energy efficiency so early in the calendar, as the subject is so important in this day and age.

I was saddened to see the outcome of the Amsterdam talks on climate change. I hoped that with the election of President Obama, the United States would show more involved leadership in this area. I certainly hope that in November in Cancun we will see a more convincing legal binding agreement, which will encourage countries to take climate change more seriously.

The hon. Gentleman makes a statement in favour of nuclear power, but it is not based on the facts. Climate change scientists tell us that we need to get our emissions down within the next 10 years if we are to have any chance of avoiding the worst of climate change. The hon. Gentleman just mentioned the time that it takes to get nuclear generation up and running, and that means that we are now outside the critical investment time frame, and there is a real danger that if we put the money into nuclear power we will not put it into energy efficiency, renewable energies or decentralised energy, all of which have a much better chance than nuclear power has of reducing our emissions.

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change seems totally opposed to nuclear power and has said so on a number of occasions. Is he the suitable person to drive this change through?

I cannot resist either. I have two points to make. First, Dungeness is built on a floodplain; it is a bit short-sighted to put lots of nuclear power in the middle of a floodplain, given climate change.

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17:38 Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)

The wider issue is how we close the gap between our desire for a low carbon British economy and our need for energy. I suggest that we will do that through three forms of generation. I accept the role of renewables, although I am on the record as being slightly more sceptical than some of my colleagues about the size and scale of that. For example, biomass, which was seen until recently as the great white hope of renewable energy, has now, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) knows, run into serious difficulties with how quickly it is gobbling up forestry in the UK. It is now suggested that several schemes in Scotland proposed by Forth Ports will have to import wood from around the world.

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17:58 David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)

I totally agree. What the public need to be educated in is how nuclear power can benefit this and other nations in solving their energy problems. I urge the House and the Minister to consider seriously where we will be going in 10 years’ time. I think that nuclear power is the way forward. There is a place for wind farms and renewable energy, but two nuclear power stations in my constituency power more or less 10% of this national grid and if they are taken out of commission, the lights will go off.

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18:05 Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)

A number of references have been made to the number 10 during this debate. A number of Members on both sides of the House have signed the 10:10 pledge to reduce our emissions by 10% over the course of this year. We learnt today from the Committee on Climate Change that the UK’s carbon emissions have been reduced by 10% in the past year. If energy-efficient windows were installed in all properties nationally, our emissions would reduce by a further 10%, saving nearly 4 million tonnes of carbon and decreasing our national domestic energy expenditure by 10%. I urge the Minister to consider energy-efficient windows in his plans.

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18:09 Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)

I would be delighted to support my hon. Friend. It is important that schools, hospitals and commercial organisations can benefit from the green deal. There is a huge appetite for people to have renewable energy, but the capital costs can be prohibitive.

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18:16 Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)

In opening the debate, the Minister quoted the Prime Minister saying that he wants to make this Government “the greenest Government ever”; well, it needs to be—and so does every subsequent Government, because the scale of the challenge facing not just the UK but the whole world requires radical steps to be taken. Climate change is probably the single biggest challenge that we as a civilisation have ever faced. We should therefore try to achieve cross-party consensus on the radical measures that need to be taken. The Stern review, which the previous Government commissioned, talked about the possibility of 40% of domestic energy requirements being generated by micro-technologies, and this Government need to do everything they can to encourage and support making that a reality. If we can secure a huge increase in micro-energy technology, that will reduce the problems caused by carbon emissions and will diminish the need for nuclear power stations.

I said that it was important for this Government to be greener than the previous Government, but that is not to diminish the huge strides made by the Labour Administration. Let me make it clear, for the record, that they were the first Government in the world to pass a climate change Act and that their Warm Front initiative introduced energy efficiency measures to about 2 million homes. Their feed-in tariff was a very important initiative, and the massive expansion of offshore wind energy announced by the previous Prime Minister is also welcome.

My hon. Friend the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) referred to the boiler scrappage scheme. We were ahead of the game on the Kyoto commitments. Indeed, we led the world in securing them in the first place. We also led the world in trying to secure a deal at Copenhagen: that is another thing that we should be proud of, and we should applaud the former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), for the role that he played in that.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is an overlooked aspect of renewable energy, and would he welcome investment in innovative technology? For instance, the BioWayste plant in my Corby constituency takes 146,000 tonnes of food waste and, using anaerobic digestion, turns it into enough energy to supply half the needs of an entire food processing plant for a whole year.

When Bill Clinton launched the Clinton climate initiative, he said that tackling climate change provided an opportunity to save money, make money and create jobs. I wholeheartedly agree. The point has been made already in this afternoon’s debate that there is an opportunity to create green jobs through investing in energy efficiency measures. We need to examine that angle, and the Government should consider how burgeoning new companies looking to enter the field can be encouraged and helped.

When I was leader of Derby city council, I set a very challenging target—that Derby should become self-sufficient in clean green energy by 2025. I worked with local companies in the city to get them on board for that agenda, and I have to say that there was a good deal of support for it—both for generating environmentally friendly energy and for ensuring that commercial premises were more energy-efficient. To come back to the point that the hon. Member for Richmond Park made, it will be interesting to hear what the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), has to say about the commercial sector when he winds up, because if that sector is ignored it will be a significant omission.

The Government’s stated aims on public spending, and the Budget that we debated last week and at the beginning this week, seem to militate against much of what the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), said this afternoon. Without Government investment in this important policy area, it will be difficult to deliver on the ambitions that he outlined. It is important for the Government to unlock the potential in local government, but the Chancellor, with massive swingeing cuts to local government finance—we had a debate on local government finance yesterday—will make it very difficult for the innovation locked away in local government to come out and flourish. That is another area that the Minister needs to look at carefully.

If we can get it right, and address energy efficiency and tackle climate change, there will be significant implications for the size of the deficit. In the prospectus that the Chancellor outlined last week, he took a direction diametrically opposed to the one that he should have taken to tackle the deficit. His cuts package will create large-scale unemployment, with tens of thousands of public sector workers losing their jobs, and tens of thousands—possibly hundreds of thousands—of workers in the private sector losing their employment as well. Investment in green technology and energy efficiency can generate huge numbers of new jobs; that would take people off the dole, generate income tax revenue for the Exchequer and help reduce the size of the deficit. That deficit will get bigger as a result of the Chancellor’s Budget last week, and that in turn will result in further pressure to make even more swingeing cuts. We would then end up in a vicious circle.

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18:28 Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)

“Climate change is one of the most serious threats that the world faces”,

I still do not see anything like the kind of urgency that we need if we are to avoid the worst of climate change. If I compare climate change to the kind of military threat with which we are more familiar, we need a response commensurate to the response that would be forthcoming if we were facing a military threat. We need that degree of single-mindedness and that level of resources.

The Committee on Climate Change reported today, and it is scathing about what it calls the “light-touch” regulation policies of the past decade. It made four recommendations that it says should be acted on within a year, including a new national programme for energy efficiency in buildings. The chief executive of the committee said:

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18:40 Emily Thornberry (Labour)

Historically, energy efficiency has not been Britain’s No. 1 priority, with its temperate climate and plentiful supplies of fuel, whether wood, coal, gas or oil. Therefore, for far too long we have put up with, and built too many, draughty houses. As the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) said in his thoughtful contribution, we have to change the way in which we build houses. Times have changed and Britain has to change, too. Energy prices have increased massively, and now we have a choice: we can either invest in a low-carbon economy using renewable sources of energy, or wait for the gas to run out. Neither option is cheap, although the latter also comes at the price of creating man-made, irreversible climate change. In the UK, 13% of our greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the way in which we heat our homes, but the inevitable increasing cost of fuel bills has, and will continue to, put great strains on the incomes of the poorest households.

We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), who spoke passionately about how climate change had become his political priority. He strongly urged the Government to reduce VAT on energy-efficiency measures. I understand that the number of interventions during the speech made by the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) is a record. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) made a knowledgeable contribution about the power station in his constituency and the bid for carbon capture and storage. He asked the Minister to make a decision about when the competition was going to happen.

Much of what the previous Government did on energy efficiency has had broad support from this place, and I am proud of the progress that we made. It began particularly with the Climate Change Act 2008, which, ironically, will be seen as one of Labour’s greatest achievements only if the coalition Government take seriously the attendant low-carbon transition plans and the carbon budget. Lord Turner, the Chair of the Committee on Climate Change, said on the “Today” programme this morning, “The last Government set out a series of policies. As long as we drive those through, we will make a difference.” I was reassured to hear from one with as profound an understanding as my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) that the CCC’s report recognises the Government’s achievements.

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