My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register and record my gratitude to the Minister for the Ofgem amendment. In much more elegant language, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said that it was a no-brainer. It absolutely is, and Amendment 187A is equally a no-brainer. However, before I say why, I add my support to those amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. Particularly in the latter we have a compromise which would really boost a sector of the energy industry that is of great benefit.
In terms of benefits, no one—including the Government —fundamentally challenges the benefits of improving the energy efficiency of Britain’s old, cold, leaky housing stock. They recognise the benefits for individuals and families in terms of health and reduced bills, but it goes beyond that. There are benefits for the UK because improving energy efficiency reduces demand, helps towards our net-zero target and improves our energy security. It is also potentially of benefit to the taxpayer in reducing the huge expense that the Government take on board when energy prices spike. We have seen how much the Government have spent on heating homes and that money going out of the window because of the state of the housing stock. There are also benefits in stimulating the retrofitting industry, which is a national industry. It goes across all parts of the country and helps with the training and then the providing of secure and sustainable jobs.
We have debated this—I will not say ad nauseam, but certainly at length—not only on this Bill but on the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill and the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, because of the issues that I was talking about, such as employment and the fact that the poorest people suffer most from the worst homes, in terms of energy efficiency and their health.
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As the Minister said, the Government accept the fundamental argument and indeed put money into various schemes, so the issue is whether they need to do more to make sure that we see change. Experience
in this area says that they absolutely need to bring together what needs to be done to have a substantive effect. That has not happened in the past.
We have a history of stop-go policies that have been extremely damaging. We were talking about new housing and building standards; how many houses have we built in the last eight years that are totally inadequate because we reduced the building standards that were set for energy efficiency? We have seen stop-go on that and the warm home scheme start, fail and reduce public and industry confidence. We have seen piecemeal policies, inadequate implementation and a lack of a strategic approach on bringing the policies together, on action and on making the change that we need.
I do not think that this amendment duplicates what the Government have already done; it actually focuses them on an area where we need to do better than we have in the past. If the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, chooses to test the opinion of the House, I will certainly support her.