Home Insulation: Health and Mortality Rates Debate

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Department: Department for Energy Security & Net Zero

Home Insulation: Health and Mortality Rates

Lord Whitty Excerpts
Tuesday 19th March 2024

(1 month, 4 weeks ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Callanan Portrait Lord Callanan (Con)
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No, I do not accept that. There has not been a rota of schemes. The most successful scheme, the ECO scheme, has been going since the early part of the previous decade and we have committed funding for a number of years to come. The more successful schemes, such as the social housing decarbonisation fund and others, are also multi-year programmes precisely to provide the long-term certainty to industry that so many contractors say they desire. We have already announced the funding for 2025-28—another £6 billion—and we have set out the schemes on which it will be spent. So, no, I am afraid I do not accept the noble Baroness’s analysis.

Lord Whitty Portrait Lord Whitty (Lab)
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My Lords, 20 years ago, when I had some responsibility for the insulation programme, health issues were just as important, if not more so, than fuel poverty as such, or climate change. I made some attempt to get the Department of Health to recognise the preventive nature of this programme. I failed totally, but would the Minister care to comment on his ability to persuade the current Department of Health that a preventive insulation programme is very much in its interests and the long-term interests of the health service?

Lord Callanan Portrait Lord Callanan (Con)
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I have not had any discussions with the Department of Health on this. I am not sure of my ability to persuade it of anything, but I would have thought it relatively self-evident that spending money on insulation schemes saves people money and has long-term health benefits. I do not think we need any studies to show us that.