David Lepper

Labour Party | Brighton Pavilion

Home energy conservation bill

Mr. David Lepper (Brighton, Pavilion): I rise in support of the arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South in favour of targets—he put his case forward elegantly—and his warm tributes to the Minister. During the short time that I have been in Parliament, I have had experience of working with the Minister, and I have no hesitation in supporting the views of my hon. Friend.

The main reason for my brief contribution is to put on record the view of Brighton and Hove city council.

Hon. Members may know that the area of Brighton and Hove has many old Victorian and Regency buildings, a large proportion of which have been subdivided into flats and bedsits. There is also much council housing, built at a time when the main concern of the council was to house people as quickly as possible; inadequate attention may have been given to energy efficiency when those houses were built. The council faces a daunting task in improving home energy efficiency.

On Second Reading, I referred to the achievements of the local authority, which were listed in its latest HECA report. I will not go through them again; I refer anyone who wishes to read about them to the record of the Second Reading debate. However, I wish to point out that the achievements were made within existing budgets—within funding currently available to local authorities from Government schemes and from partnerships with the private sector. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South made a powerful point about the work of the best local authorities. I am sure that they would welcome more funding, but it is possible to make great progress even within existing budgets.

I recently received a letter from Councillor Framroze, who is the councillor responsible for housing on Brighton and Hove city council, which says:

Experience has shown that guidance alone is ineffective in ensuring the necessary commitment from all ECAs across the country.

He goes on to make a telling point:

it is essential that the opportunity presented by this Bill should not be lost. There is a real danger that the passage of a much weakened Bill could send a signal to local authorities that the Government does not consider home energy conservation of sufficient importance to warrant necessary strengthening of current legislation. This would clearly be an ironic outcome to an initiative with precisely the opposite intention.

I believe that we all would echo the concern in that councillor's words. I am convinced that it is not the Minister's intention to weaken the Bill, but I ask him to consider seriously the wisdom of the amendment