My Lords, in supporting my noble friend Lady Parminter’s amendment, I echo the words of both the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young. The noble Baroness was absolutely right to say that the move towards zero-carbon homes had cross-party support; importantly, it also had cross-industry support.
It is interesting to reflect that the policy was first introduced by Gordon Brown in 2006. When he announced the policy, he said that it would mean that this country would be the first in the world to introduce such a commitment, which would help us to meet in turn our commitments in relation to tackling the real and growing problems of climate change. He understood the policy at that time as meaning that all new houses built from this year, 2016, would generate as much energy on site through renewable energy—wind, solar and so on—as they would use for heating, lighting, ventilation, hot water, cooking and so on.
Over time, as people considered the policy, it was recognised that there would be some occasions when trying to build an individual zero-carbon housing unit would prove very expensive indeed; hence the idea of introducing a mechanism that would allow developers to have an off-setting mechanism—so-called allowable solutions—whereby, if they could not get a particular home completely zero-carbon, they could provide funding or carry out work that would off-set the amount of carbon by other means. For example, that could be through building a combined heat and power unit for a group of housing units, putting solar panels on some existing housing or—although, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, this can sometimes be very expensive—retrofitting energy efficiency measures to some existing homes.
The policy was developed with all-party support. It was certainly true that when I took over from my noble friend Lord Stunell as the Minister in DCLG, he had been battling to persuade his Conservative colleagues in the department at that time to keep going with the policy. I certainly had some difficulty in doing that, but to be fair, under pressure, they were prepared to stick with it. It even appeared, very clearly, in the Chancellor’s Budget of 2013. I was able to go ahead and strengthen Part L of the building regulations, which as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, pointed out, increases the energy efficiency requirement on buildings. It was good to hear then that there was support across the industry for the increase being demanded in energy standards for new homes that were being built. John Alker, one of the industry’s spokesmen, said,
“it’s a victory for all those who know that industry can continue to innovate, to improve standards and reduce carbon cost-effectively … it is encouraging to see government remains committed”,
to it.
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While I was Minister, I was also concerned about an issue that has not yet been mentioned. Buildings are sometimes built to particular energy efficiency standards, but after they are built and measurements take place, we discover that they do not live up to those standards; there is a gap. The Government were able to fund research through an organisation called the Zero Carbon Hub to try to identify the cause of that gap. As an aside, following the earlier debate on self-build, it is interesting that self-build provides not only an opportunity to give jobs to small builders but often the development of off-site construction techniques that appear able to bring together the actuality with energy efficiency standards. When the Minister replies, I should be interested to hear where we are with the work from Zero Carbon Hub on that issue.
There was growing concern among some Conservatives within the coalition Government that continuing with the policy of zero-carbon homes would be expensive, that builders would become dissatisfied with it and that we would reduce the number of homes being built. I was able to convene a round table of all the major builders and ask them what they thought of it. All the major housebuilders, developers and others involved in the industry wrote to the Government saying that they were fully behind the zero-carbon homes policy. They wanted it because they believed it was right, it did not add significantly to the costs of building and it meant that they could make their contribution to tackling the problem of climate change. They are all incredibly disappointed—as am I and Stephen Williams, who eventually succeeded me in the department—that the Government decided last July to renege on the cross-party commitment by different Governments since 2006. I therefore hope that noble Lords will recognise that in my noble friend Lady Parminter’s amendment, we have the opportunity to reverse a catastrophic decision and to give housebuilders the opportunity to contribute to dealing with climate change and reducing energy consumption in this country.