Climate Change Committee Progress Report 2021

Debate between Dan Poulter and Tony Lloyd

Thursday 21st October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve with you as Chair, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne). In fairness, he tried to deliver a balanced approach and has succeeded, to a degree. I hope the Minister will take those rather sharp raps on the knuckles seriously—they are all the more important when they are from friendly fire. As the hon. Member points out, we have some real issues to face.

I was interested in the hon. Member’s views on the benefits of the 1926 general strike. I grew up in a household where we always applauded the 1926 general strike and it is good to know that he is now a convert to that view of the world. The only doubt I have is that there was something slightly Pollyanna-ish, for those who are old enough to remember Pollyanna. The world is not quite as good as it might seem. Certainly, our world—the world of which we have control—has some long way to go. Yes, we have a good record on the reduction of carbon dioxide and so on, but it is not an excellent record. Some of it, frankly, is because we saw some types of de-industrialisation during that time period, which has allowed us to transfer the production of offending CO₂ to other countries, from which we now import. That is not necessarily a criticism per se, but it is something that we have to take into consideration.

The Climate Change Committee’s report is tremendously important. It has established a baseline against which we need to measure ourselves. The overall message is that whether or not we have great plans, they are not being delivered. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) said to me a few moments ago, it may be an A for effort, but it is a D for delivery. I hope that the Minister will tell us seriously what we intend to do about that. We should look at the commentary and criticism in that report, such as the legitimate point that although we have done well on decarbonising electricity supply, we have a long way to go on agriculture, parts of industry, buildings and, of course, transport.

Hon. Members have complained that we have two debates on this subject today—one in the Chamber and one in Westminster Hall—rather like two buses coming along at once. I can guarantee that those would not be electric buses, because we are not yet there in terms of transport. There has been radical change, but even where I live, in the middle of the very busy, relatively modern city of Manchester, it is still difficult to find the electric charging points that would allow someone to make the transfer from conventional or even hybrid vehicles to an electric vehicle at this stage. There is a long way to go to make sure that the investment is there and to guarantee that the changes recommended by the Climate Change Committee are delivered and not simply planned.

Looking at other areas, I have long been preoccupied by the question of what we should do with our buildings, both domestic and industrial. We have something like 30 million homes across the United Kingdom, as a reference point—we can argue about that number, but it is not a million miles out. The overwhelming majority of those buildings—more than 80%—will still be around in 2050. That is around 25 million old properties that we have to bring up to a modern standard. That is fraught with difficulty at the moment because we do not have the delivery mechanisms to make it happen. I am sure that other colleagues will talk about the ambition around heat pumps; I would simply say that it really matters that there is ambition, and that the capacity to deliver heat pumps goes way beyond what we saw in this week’s announcement. We have to see a radical, seismic change in terms of delivery.

Although even the very basic changes we need for our homes—such as cavity wall insulation and the capacity to properly insulate our roofs—are not difficult, they are difficult for an 80-year-old pensioner living on his or her own. I have experience of that in the past, when we have had improvement systems of different kinds and we are faced with the possibility of licensing cowboy builders to do work that rips off the public and does not deliver the social good that we all want. We need skills training that simply is not there at the moment, even for those relatively straightforward tasks.

[Dr Poulter]

On home insulation measures, does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a particular challenge in the private rented sector with poor home insulation and, indeed, poor maintenance of those buildings, which often affects people on lower incomes? Does he agree that the Government need to do more to address that issue and to force, coerce and compel landlords to improve home energy efficiency in that sector?

[Tony Lloyd]

I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because I was going to come to that point. He is right. Of course, as a homeowner, I have an incentive to make improvements in my own home; I get the benefit of the more comfortable home and the lower fuel costs. However, a private landlord has no such incentive and a private tenant has no such ability to bring about those changes. The hon. Gentleman makes a very real point, particularly because we have an increasing number of private lets. As someone who, by force of occupation, has needed to rent privately in London, I have lived in places that I wish the landlord had had an incentive to improve, because very little effort was put in. It is a serious and important point, which I hope the Minister will pick up on.

The point I am making about buildings is that we lack the skills, and we are not delivering the training packages to introduce those skills. We also lack the confidence of the would-be consumer—whether a private landlord, an owner-occupier or whatever—to know that what is on the market is valid and can be trusted. If I were to ask Conservative MPs, even the esteemed former journalist, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire, which heat pump they would recommend for my home—