My Lords, I am absolutely delighted to support this amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and to speak to my Amendment 98. For those who have not necessarily followed the debate, which has gone on for many years, it is worth pointing out by way of background that the International Energy Agency has repeatedly argued that the best way to tackle the impact of climate change is to reduce our use of energy and that the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly option is to avoid unnecessary consumption. Clearly, the benefits of such an approach are pretty obvious: increased national energy security and reduced carbon emissions, coupled with reduced household energy bills and improved quality of life, not least for those living in old, damp, mouldy homes. There are other benefits too, including, for example, the saving to the NHS in England of £1.4 billion a year—its estimate of the cost of people living in cold homes.
Schemes to deal with this have come and gone. Promises have been made but rarely kept. Existing schemes have been inadequately policed. The Green Deal and the green homes grant schemes came and went. Even the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto promise to invest £9.3 billion of public funding to stimulate energy efficiency up to 2024 appears to have been cut to £6.6 billion, as we see in the document produced in March this year. Measures that are still on the statute book are being inadequately policed, so the assumed impact is not being achieved. For instance, not all properties that should have a display energy certificate do so.
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In 2018 we introduced minimum energy-efficiency standards through all properties, whether residential or commercial, that were going to be let, but this was never properly policed. Despite all that, in 2020 the Government raised the standards, but to this day they still have not announced how and when the standards will be implemented or how they will be policed this time. If you look even further back, the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000 was designed to eliminate the then 2 million households deemed to be in fuel poverty, but failure to follow it through means that rather than reducing that number, it is now estimated that we have almost 8 million households in fuel poverty.
We have some of the least energy-efficient housing in Europe, with 19 million homes classed as energy inefficient. Yet sadly, in the past year alone, home energy-efficiency activities have plunged by 50%; they are now at their lowest level since 2018. At the end of last year, in his role as chair of the Climate Change Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, whom I am delighted to see in his place, said in a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that reducing energy demand in UK buildings is now the biggest gap in the current Government’s energy policy. The failure to follow through and properly police previous energy-efficiency schemes and promises means that, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, the industry has lacked the confidence to invest in the research, equipment and training of staff to do the necessary work. As a result, we are now faced with a shortfall of some 200,000 trained staff to do the work needed.
If we are to reverse this situation and give the industry the confidence it now needs to invest, we need a very clear plan of action and legally binding targets set out in legislation. I have made the case on numerous occasions, yet despite their willingness to place a range of other targets into legislation, the Government have steadfastly refused to do so for most of their own energy-efficiency targets. Now, at last, we have an Energy Efficiency Taskforce that I hope will quickly produce the plan of action. Amendment 97 covers this, but it also places a clear timetable on its production and requires its publication. The amendment, together with my Amendment 98, provides for the placing of clear targets for different forms of tenure into legislation.
I hope that the Minister will at long last accept at least the thrust of these amendments, if not the precise words. If he is unwilling to do so, on these Benches we will certainly support the noble Baroness, should she press her amendment to a vote.