Housing Act 2004 (Commencement No. 8) (England and Wales) Order 2007

My Lords, I promise not to make a Second Reading speech because we are looking at a regulation that is coming in. I am a great supporter of HIPs, not because of what they represent but because they include the EPC. We have discussed that with the Minister. It is an incredibly valuable aspect. Noble Lords on all Benches have said that they support EPCs, which is why no fatal amendments to the Bill have been tabled. Everybody has mentioned how this debate is being reported. In my local property paper, the Avenues, there was a whole section on how this debate in the Lords would lead to the death of HIPs. That is not the case. We should not forget that this is a non-fatal amendment. If it is carried, HIPs will carry on. Previous votes have led to a delay in respect of most properties until properly trained individuals are ready, but they have delayed only one section. I ask the Minister to make a clear statement that all the other aspects will come into force as the regulations state—for the four-bedroom house, for example. I take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton: you do not have to be intelligent to work out what is a four-bedroom house; my seven year-old son could argue the case for what is a four-bedroom house. That will change at the end of the year, and all houses will fall under the regulation. All rental property, social housing and businesses will be included. We should not underestimate the Government’s achievement in EPCs. They will save millions of tonnes of carbon. Because this has become a heated debate, I take issue with missives that we receive from lobbying organisations. The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors is a lobbying organisation, as far as I am concerned, when it sends me unsolicited e-mails—which made me rather annoyed—as if I agreed with every line and iota that it came up with. Members of that organisation are calling for an emergency general meeting to question whether the judicial review is in the interest of all their members. I know that the Minister will talk about the state of the judicial review, but the RICS has some internal issues that it will have to address. If I were an energy assessor and had paid the RICS to take the qualification, but it then launched a judicial review that meant that I was probably out of a job for the next three or four months, I would be very unhappy. I have one more issue to raise with the Government. Under EPCs, you can change two things that will change the energy rating of your house: the insulation in your loft and your boiler. Of course, changing a boiler is a major expense. However, the Government could use EPCs to indicate how inefficient a boiler is. If they then state that the boiler is inefficient, energy efficiency credits, which are issued by suppliers, could be used to reduce the amount of gas used by domestic suppliers, which is an obligation on the suppliers. That means that EPCs could be used to reduce the cost of replacing an inefficient boiler with an efficient one. That would be a massive step forward. I am sure that many noble Lords throughout the House, hand on heart, realise that they have tried to eke out the life of a boiler for five or six years past its real date of demise. If those boilers were changed in enough houses around the country, vast amounts of carbon could be saved. I very much hope that the Minister will consult boiler manufacturers and other organisations to make that happen. It could happen without regulation and would be a real benefit of EPCs. Notwithstanding the real concerns advanced by my noble friend, which we have all shared, about how the measure has been implemented by the Government—I am not blaming the noble Baroness on this, but it has been a long and arduous process—I ask the House to consider that in the vote we are seeing whether we think EPCs are important. Climate change is an issue. One way to address it is through EPCs.