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Climate Change Bill [Lords]

I am sure that the Government could—and I hope that they will. For me, the most exciting point with which all the German political parties connect is that our future will probably be determined not by the building of the 100,000, 200,000 or 250,000 new houses a year that we may need, but by what we do with the 25 million houses that we have today. The scope for retrofitting holds the possibility of genuinely transformational energy and carbon saving economics. In Germany, that transformation currently delivers a domestic economic multiplier with a turnover of €30 billion a year and almost 300,000 new jobs a year. That is the sort of momentum for which I confidently expect the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister to provide in unveiling the new package of green economics that will drive our transformation in the UK. However, we cannot achieve that transformation without setting targets and standards as the benchmark against which we measure it. I therefore make a plea to the House: new clause 10, which covers sectoral targets, sets out some impressive ideas about Government responsibility for the public estate and from where leadership for that should come, but they will not be realised if we do not push them to a vote or a point of acceptance, so that targets are written into our commitments. The ideas become fantasy economics only if we will not take the transformational steps that define the route map. For all its weaknesses, I would rather the Secretary of State had a permissive power to introduce those regulations than no power. My preference was for a duty—for ““shall”” rather than ““may””. Whatever performance standards are set, I would prefer serious debate in the House between the different parties about what they should be to the current debate about whether we should have performance standards for new power stations. If we are not prepared to say to ourselves that there must be performance standards, how can we say that to any other country on the planet that intends to build a power station with no standards? That is not so much hypocrisy as inconsistency, which is out of tune with the demands of not only the public but the planet and our time.