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Planning and Energy Bill

My hon. Friend asks a question that I do not believe anyone can answer. There are times in the life of a building when things happen—for example, replacing a boiler contributes to improving energy efficiency; conversions or refurbishments often mean major work; roofs have to be replaced every 30 years or so—and that is an opportunity to do something about insulation. When a house changes hands, what needs to be done is highlighted. Home information packs can be important in that context—I propose to refer to them later. A range of measures are needed and the Bill—I hope with my new clause—would make an important contribution to the process. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury made an important point when as a Housing Minister she addressed the all-party group on climate change in November 2006. She said that energy savings could be made in existing homes by taking simple measures such as cavity wall insulation, which does not have to be very expensive. The review of the sustainability of existing buildings showed that the number of homes with more than 150 mm of loft insulation increased by 4 million between 2001 and 2004, but a further 8.5 million could benefit from cavity wall insulation, which typically costs £340 to fit and pays for itself in 2.6 years. In five years, householders will get a 200 per cent. return on their investment. Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North spoke about the need to educate the public about such matters. Those figures are simple to convey. It could take many years to achieve the payback on some of the proposals in the Bill for microgeneration. However, loft insulation and cavity wall insulation have an almost immediate effect. To revert to the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, carrot and stick measures include education as well as making grants available to less well-off households, pensioners and so on through the warm homes initiative and various local authority and London-wide measures. The Bill also has implications for the decent homes standard, which the Government established as a key check list of fitness for acceptable dwellings. Central Government have made significant grants available to local authorities for improvements to their housing stock. I am pleased to say that, in Barnet, we have £88.5 million from central Government for improving our council housing stock.