New Homes: Carbon Emissions and Energy Efficiency
(South West Bedfordshire)
(Con)
1. What steps he is taking to (a) reduce carbon emissions and (b)
improve energy efficiency in new homes. [900861]
The Minister for Housing ()
Welcome back, Mr Speaker, and welcome particularly to our new
Chaplain.
Homes account for about a fifth of emissions. Driving these down
and improving energy efficiency are crucial to fulfilling our
commitments to net zero carbon by 2050. We have committed to
introducing a future homes standard by 2025, and we will respond
shortly to the 3,000 or so responses to our consultation—it
closed on 7 February—which proposes carbon emissions at least 75%
lower from 2025.
British architects such as Bill Dunster are building
competitively priced, zero energy bill homes today that not only
emit no carbon emissions, but are massively helpful to poorer
families, so what will the Government do to push our
oligopolistic and rather luddite house builders to start building
the houses of tomorrow, not of yesterday?
I am obliged to my hon. Friend for his question, and I appreciate
his desire to get the affordable homes of the future built today.
Our recent consultation proposes a new householder affordability
rating to measure a building’s efficiency and ensure it is
affordable to heat. I am conscious that Mr Dunster has an
opportunity at the Victoria & Albert Museum at the moment. I
am very happy to visit his ZEDfactory in Watford, because I agree
with my hon. Friend that we do need new, innovative small and
medium-sized enterprises in the marketplace to drive variety in
our housing market to improve the absorption rate.
(Glasgow East) (SNP)
I welcome the Minister to his position. Of course, when it comes
to decarbonisation of homes, we also need to look at pre-existing
homes. In Glasgow, we have thousands of tenement properties with
a prohibitive 20% VAT rate for repairs and renovations, which
makes it very difficult for housing associations to carry out
those repairs and help decarbonisation. In the run-up to the
Budget, will the Minister join me in calling on the Treasury to
make sure that it cuts the VAT and allows the opportunity not
just for fiscal stimulus, but to look after the pre-existing
housing stock?
I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman, and I congratulate him on his
attempt to guide the Chancellor in his forthcoming Budget. We
certainly need to make sure that proper remediation takes place
in existing housing, and that is something I and my colleagues
are looking at.
(West Worcestershire) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his appointment to this
absolutely crucial role. Does he agree that one of the best ways
to prevent carbon emissions is to make sure that the ancient
woodland we have in this country is protected when new homes are
allocated? Would he support the Save Tiddesley Wood campaign
outside Pershore, which wants to make sure that new homes are not
built too close to it?
We have a manifesto commitment to more tree-lined streets. I
would point my hon. Friend to the new Environment Bill, which
will be coming forward. However, she is quite right: we do need
to have green spaces and to maintain our ancient woodland. We all
want to live in a nice and beautiful environment, and that is
certainly something a Conservative party in government will hope
to achieve.
(Dulwich and West Norwood)
(Lab)
The Government’s future homes standard would prevent councils
from setting higher energy efficiency standards than national
building regulations demand, while also watering down the impact
of building regulations by allowing homes to pass the standard if
their carbon emissions are reduced by general decarbonisation of
the national grid, which will mean that homes can still be poorly
insulated and meet the new standard. In what way does the
Secretary of State think this is remotely fit for purpose as a
response to the climate emergency? Will he rethink these
proposals to equip our councils to go further and faster in
reducing carbon emissions and to ensure that new homes will not
have to be retrofitted in the future?
I think that a target of reducing emissions by 75% from 2025 is
ambitious. It is very clear that the more stringent targets we
are setting mean that it may not be necessary for councils to set
different local standards. We have had a consultation, which
closed on 7 February. More than 3,000 submissions were made to
the consultation from big builders to think-tanks to local
authorities, and we shall certainly be listening to that and
taking it into account.
