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Planning and Energy Bill

My hon. Friend presages some of the points I was going to make on the second group of amendments, and I will not go through them now. I simply say that one thing generally missing from the Bill is a consideration of any costs involved. If my hon. Friend looks ahead, he will see that one of my new clauses in the second group of amendments raises the particular issue of the cost of a variety of matters and their implications for the provision of housing generally. We know from research that the cost of insulation and energy efficiency measures generally can be disproportionate, given the payback time. Furthermore, the cost of adapting a house or, particularly, constructing a new one to meet energy efficiency standards can be significantly increased. However, I shall not go into those arguments now; I will save their detail until we get to the second group of amendments, assuming that we get that far this morning. The DCLG also said that it proposed to extend support for energy companies to provide subsidised insulation for 250,000 installations to improve the energy efficiency of existing homes—that relates to the point that I just made. We are extending the landlords energy savings allowance to cover hot water system insulation and draught-proofing, to incentivise landlords in the private sector to improve energy efficiency. That is important, because if we consider the performance as opposed to the policy, we see that although there have been significant improvements, the overall figures show that things are not as rosy as they might be. In December 2006, my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, South (Ian Pearson), then the Minister with responsibility for these issues, answered a parliamentary question by giving figures on insulation measures carried out, including cavity wall insulation, loft insulation and double glazing. In 2000, 211,000 homes in Great Britain installed cavity wall insulation, 415,000 installed loft insulation and 2,002,000 installed double glazing. In 2005, the figures on cavity wall insulation had gone up to 240,000, but those on loft insulation had gone down to 280,000 and those on double glazing to 1,340,000. There are two explanations for that. The first is that once the work is done, it is done pretty much for ever and, because of the progress in those five years, demand for such work was tailing off. The alternative explanation is that insulation was getting a little less fashionable and people were not doing as much as they should have. As my hon. Friend also said in his answer, we should consider the general impact on households. Sixteen per cent. of all households in England, and in Britain as a whole, have full insulation, which means that there is 84 per cent. to go. That answers the question that I posed in relation to the 2005 figures. It is therefore inevitable that something happened to stop people doing this sort of work, particularly double glazing and loft insulation, between 2000 and 2005. The figures get more interesting when we look at the nature of tenure. Those for owner-occupiers are marginally better than those for the national average, with 17 per cent. fully insulated. What is very bad, however, is that for privately rented properties, at only 6 per cent. People in private rented accommodation tend to be socially excluded, and potentially from low-income households and at risk of fuel poverty, so they are at a double disadvantage in that they are probably living in less well maintained accommodation to start with. We know from the figures that their level of insulation is very poor compared with the average overall—it is only 6 per cent., which means that 94 per cent. of that group do not have the necessary insulation. That means that their heating bills will go up even though they are probably on a far lower income than the population as a whole. The position is slightly better for local authority households, at 10 per cent. It is also encouraging that registered social landlord—housing association—households are on 20 per cent., so they have made significant improvements above the national average as it then was. My new clause would be another incentive, via local authorities setting out requirements in planning regulations, to improve significantly on those woeful statistics.