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Energy Efficiency

Again, I thank the Minister for that clarification. The beauty of the concert that we are about to hear is being talked up again. However, the questions of hard-to-treat properties, rented properties, landlords and partnerships are all issues that we must consider very carefully in deciding how the green deal and other elements will work best together as far as energy efficiency is concerned. We have heard mention this afternoon, for example, of the partnership between local authorities, third sector organisations and consumers in the comprehensive redevelopment of energy-efficiency retrofitting of homes. We have heard about the very good example of Kirklees borough council. Interestingly, the example of Kirklees was based on the injection by Kirklees of £10 million into the process in partnership with other local authorities. In that context, thinking, among other things, about the debate that we had in this House yesterday on local government financing and local government cuts, I ask a question of myself. As a result of the cuts being handed out to local authorities, will there be local authorities that have £10 million to invest in future partnership arrangements? That will be very important in getting progress on the future arrangements represented at present by the community energy saving programme as far as whole-area developments in local authority areas are concerned. Will the enfeeblement of local authorities' ability to undertake such new initiatives be such that we will have eliminated one of the partners in that process in the not-too-distant future? I have a small point to make regarding landlords. The changes in housing benefit that are coming about might cause landlords at least to question whether to invest in their properties given the return that they might get in rent, so there are side effects, in relation to other policy decisions, that might have an impact on ambitions for the green deal. One important issue that I have mentioned is whether the green deal simply includes passive insulation and energy-efficiency measures such as loft insulation and cavity wall insulation. Does it go beyond that to include householders' ability to generate their own energy and therefore to operate much more efficiently in terms of net emissions? In the code for sustainable homes, the target for 2016, in terms of new build housing, will include accession to a level 6 arrangement, but that could not be adhered to without some form of microgeneration power production being built into those homes when the zero-carbon target is agreed. The Minister is right to say that we should not substitute microgeneration for energy-efficiency measures, as they are consequent on each other. However, in a real programme for developing energy efficiency in homes over the medium term, microgeneration has to be seen as very important within any efficiency drive in those homes. If we simply eliminate microgeneration from the process, we will put back for a considerable time the possibility of microgeneration following on from those energy-efficiency arrangements. It was interesting to see nothing in the Budget for Warm Front. I assume that, in the vision put forward by the Government, it will effectively be subsumed into the green deal because it apparently has very wide effects. If Warm Front is simply collapsed within a few years' time, the works that have been undertaken under Warm Front, which include the possibility of putting microgeneration devices into homes, will be lost and a group of hard-to-reach consumers who might not be particularly advantaged by the green deal will also be lost in the process.