My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, for speaking to his amendment, introducing the debate on this group and bringing forward clear arguments for why the Government should consider accepting his amendments. For two years or so the noble Lord, supported by the Town and Country Planning Association, has led a campaign to put people’s health and housing at the centre of how we regulate our built environment. I pay tribute to him, and I am pleased to offer our support for his amendment.
During the time that he has been pushing on this, medical evidence surrounding the relationship between the condition of someone’s home and their life chances has become even stronger. We have heard evidence of the shockingly poor standards even of some new homes that are being created through our deregulated planning system. The amendments could prevent the development of poor-quality housing, which continues to undermine people’s health and well-being. While the Government have acknowledged that housing and health are key to the levelling-up agenda, the Bill currently contains no clear provisions for how we are to achieve that objective. So we support the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in his efforts to put new obligations on the Secretary of State.
We hope that the Government will change their approach and accept these amendments as a sensible starting point on a journey to transform the quality of people’s homes, with benefits to them and to the national health and social care budgets. But if this does not happen and the noble Lord is not satisfied by the Minister’s response, we will be happy to support him in a vote.
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I turn quickly to Amendment 198 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown. I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt for so eloquently introducing that amendment because health inequalities have come up on a number of occasions throughout the passage of the Bill, and my noble friend gave some vivid examples which demonstrated them. What struck me particularly in listening to his introduction to the amendment was that there are so many co-benefits in doing this, so why would we not look at this amendment and have the Government see what could be done? Maybe the Government would like to bring something forward themselves if they do not want to accept it but, again, if my noble friend wishes to push this to a vote and test the opinion of the House, we will support
him, because we believe that the Government should really be putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to levelling up and health and well-being.
I was pleased to add my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, as we did in Committee. His amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish a consultation to amend the Building Regulations to introduce provisions for the reporting of whole-life carbon emissions of buildings. I spoke previously in Committee about our support for this approach and I thank the noble Lord for bringing it back, so I will not go into detail and repeat the arguments here. But it is important to stress, as the noble Lord did, that reducing embodied carbon is a key part of ensuring that buildings have net-zero emissions, because we know that around 10% of our national greenhouse gas emissions are associated with construction. As he so clearly said, the industry is ready to move on this, so regulation needs to catch up. It would be really good to hear some positive response from the Minister as to how the Government are going to achieve this through the consultation that has already been discussed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has two amendments in this group, and I was very pleased to hear her extremely clear introductions to them. The amendment to require solar panels to be installed on all new homes, public and commercial buildings, as well as existing ones, subject to appropriate exemptions and criteria, seems to make perfect sense to me—it really does. We know that the UK has a target to cut emissions of CO2 by 80% by 2050 but, as we heard from other speakers, the Government are way off target on achieving this. We know that solar photovoltaic panels are one key way in which new homes can create more environmentally friendly development, support energy security—as the noble Baroness said—and help us to hit those net-zero carbon targets. However, this has to start with new build. It is much cheaper to install on new build than it is to retrofit so, again, why not bring this in to planning regulations to look at how we can move this forward, not just for residential but for commercial warehouse buildings in particular?
The noble Baroness’s second amendment, Amendment 282L, is also important. It would impose a duty on the Secretary of State to bring forward a plan with time-bound proposals for low-carbon heat, energy-efficient homes and higher standards. The noble Baroness is a great campaigner on the importance of energy efficiency. Again, we support what she is trying to achieve and very much hope that the Government will give a positive response to this and to her amendment within the Energy Bill.
Finally, it was important that the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, drew attention to the huge problem of decarbonising domestic heating, as this is a huge challenge for the Government going forward.