My Lords, I strongly support what my noble friend has said about these matters. Can the Minister give us a little more clarity about how we are going to ensure that these changes actually happen? I remember getting terribly excited some years ago about the provision that every new house would have to have a SAP certificate in it. I am forgetting what SAP stands for but it is about the energy efficiency of the house. We passed regulations that said that every new house should have a certificate, but they have never been enforced. If you go into new houses, you will never see one. So when we talk about this, one of my main concerns is: how is it to be regulated?
There is another issue that I have come across. I should declare my interests as a vice-president of the LGA and as president of the Sustainable Energy Association. In my role over the years as a councillor, one problem, particularly when I was in Berwick-upon-Tweed, was that builders would start to build something and then stop. There was nothing we could do to progress it if they did not carry on, so I worry about the abatements. How are we to ensure that they will actually be done? Will there be a timescale? This throws up the problem we have with all this. We are all very keen on it and want it to happen, but most of the detail will be in secondary legislation and regulation. It would be helpful to have indications from the Government about that and to see some of it before we finally pass the Bill.
I am really concerned about how we make sure that it happens. I am told that the building inspectors will of course inspect new buildings. However, supposing that a builder builds a whole block of flats and has not done it properly. What happens to those flats and that builder? If I were doing it, I would quite like to have a few examples of people getting heavy fines if they do not do it in the first place. Again, I do not know how we are going to police that. Regarding the abatement, how are we to ensure that that happens? Will there be a timescale and will people be able to allow that to drift?
I also strongly support my noble friend’s Amendment 93AD, particularly its subsection (d) about community heating. This is a great opportunity to promote community heating and attach people to bigger district heating. I saw that many years ago in Scandinavia, and it is something which I was involved with as a councillor in Southampton, where we set up one of the most successful district heating schemes in the country. It has everything on it from private housing to public housing, schools and hospitals, shops—it has the lot. However, we have been quite slow in getting domestic properties on to community heating schemes, and I hope that what we are proposing here, particularly given the points that my noble friend made, will progress that along the way.