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11.31 am
Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet): I am grateful to be called early in the debate, and I am especially pleased to follow the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Gilroy), whose speech was the sixth in the debate. I pay tribute to all the speakers. We are witnessing a rare occasion when we are almost indulging in an all-party love-in. I hope that we shall be able to persuade the Government to join in this veritable orgy.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) on drawing no. 5 in the private Member's ballot. That is in contradistinction to my experience; I have been successful only once, in the first Session of my first Parliament 30 years ago when I drew no. 10. I believed that that presaged a rather more successful political career than I subsequently had. I promoted an Urban and Rural Environment Bill, part of which was designed to discourage chopping down trees of amenity value. The excellent measure was lost because of lack of time, which led to the memorable headline in The Guardian "Trees Bill Axed".
Our waste of energy in this country is appalling. People have died or suffered severe illnesses unnecessarily. I was especially interested to read in the seventh report of the Select Committee on Environmental Audit that it believes that that state of affairs is a "continuing national scandal". I therefore especially welcome the Bill, which has a long line of predecessors, because it is flexible to the extent that it is a challenge that the Government can accept.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West, who is the promoter of the measure, has not included a time scale. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley
and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) pointed out, the Bill contains no guesstimate of its cost. I believe that it will cost a considerable amount of money. I am not an expert on financial matters, but if I had to make a judgment, I would estimate the cost at approximately £500,000 million a year.
I also estimate that a programme of eradicating fuel poverty and ensuring that all the housing stock is satisfactorily insulated would take 15 years. However, I am encouraged by the Labour manifesto for the first Scottish Parliament; it mentioned removing fuel poverty in two terms.
The challenge can be accepted, and if we have the wit and imagination, we can tackle an appalling problem. I have been considerably helped by the briefings that I have received not only from Mr. Charles Secrett of Friends of the Earth and regular correspondence with the director of the Association for the Conservation of Energy, but by correspondence with many other organisations, including Help the Aged and National Energy Action.
More than half of all Members of Parliament have signed the two relevant early-day motions: early-day motion 108 in the previous Session and early-day motion 317 in the current Session. I pay tribute to the work of many people, not least the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson).
Mr. Forth:
Does my hon. Friend agree that signing an early-day motion is a pretty easy and, frankly, cheap way for Members of Parliament to express their views? Perhaps a more substantive measure of commitment would be attendance on a day such as today and, if appropriate, a vote in the Division Lobby.
Sir Sydney Chapman:
I entirely agree. It is a problem that the number of early-day motions increases as Session succeeds Session. It becomes a challenge to discover the early-day motions that we do not need to sign. One of my consolations when I was a Government Whip--one cannot get much lower than that--was being disobliged from signing early-day motions. I apologise to the Whip on duty, the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes).
I can be brief because other hon. Members have eloquently made the points that I intended to raise. However, I want to stress the increase in the death rate of 30 per cent. during the winter months in our country, compared with 10 per cent. or less in Norway, which generally has a much colder climate. I am convinced of two reasons why the number of excess deaths is much lower in Norway and the Scandinavian countries than in our country. First, higher building regulation standards pertain in Scandinavia. For example, in Sweden, people talk about the need for triple glazing rather than double glazing. Secondly--this is a personal judgment--I imagine that Norwegians, Swedes and Scandinavians generally have more access to plentiful supplies of timber that they can burn.
The fact that cold homes presage more deaths in the winter is given credence by the rather stark contrast between the number of excess deaths in mild winters, compared with that for extreme winters, in our country.
Mr. Don Foster (Bath):
Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on his point about building regulations? Does he
Sir Sydney Chapman:
The hon. Gentleman is right. He is knocking at an open door. When we introduce regulations, which are generally accepted, to make motor vehicles safer, we impose more restrictive regulations on new cars and leave a period of time for older cars to be adapted. We ought to draw the same policy conclusion in relation to the insulation of our homes. There are tighter regulations for new homes, as he says, and it is time to deal with the huge backlog of work in older properties.
Governments of both hues have taken initiatives over the years. For example, the first home energy efficiency scheme, which was a package of work, was introduced in 1991. Before that, there was only qualification for grants, which represented a scatter-gun approach that usually benefited those with more money living in larger houses. I readily acknowledge, as part of this love-in, that matters have been improved by the Government. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton mentioned the new HEES package, which starts in June. I understand that it will involve £300 million over two years, but--I say this relatively, not as a criticism--it will affect only about 500,000 homes at most.
I remember reading a good article by the director of the Association for the Conservation of Energy, Mr. Andrew Warren, who said that that programme, which he welcomed, would certainly alleviate fuel poverty, but not eradicate it. We have needed a comprehensive and co-ordinated approach for some years and I sincerely believe that the Bill is the measure on which such a policy can be hung. My view is that we need to insulate 5 million houses in England more effectively and, at the top end, although I hope that the figure may not be so great, as many as 8 million throughout the United Kingdom.
Of course, I welcome the winter fuel payment of £100 to all those of us who are 60 or over, but again--although I do not wish to belittle that good initiative in any way--I wonder whether a scatter-gun approach is being taken. I ask myself whether all over-60s need £100 and include myself in that observation, but, whatever happens, I do not wish to be churlish. I understand that the initiative will cost about £700 million a year--perhaps the Minister will confirm that--and this on-going policy will be implemented year after year. All the demographic indicators suggest that that figure will rise as the years go by.
There is also a tendency to incite people to burn more fuel, which must be one of the consequences of making available £100 for the elderly. Fuel prices have come down considerably--if I wanted to enter a party note, I would say directly as a result of the privatisation programmes--in spite of the previous Government putting 7.5 per cent. value added tax on fuel. I acknowledge that the present Government reduced that to 5 per cent.
Mr. Forth:
Does my hon. Friend not think that there is a paradox in the argument between, on the one hand, the so-called fuel escalator on vehicle fuels--which I understand was introduced on so-called environmental grounds to deter the unnecessary use of fuel or to improve efficiency--and, on the other, the reduction in tax on
Sir Sydney Chapman:
I confess that I have not been able to work out that paradox, nor am I too anxious to do so because I am none too keen to go on record as wanting to increase VAT on domestic fuel. However, I recognise not only that paradox, but the paradox in the Government's climate change levy proposals. As they stand, the Government will tax all businesses--from manufacturing down to the corner shop--on the energy that they use, although understandably they have had to make concessions to businesses that necessarily have to use a lot of energy to make their goods, but the opposite is happening in the domestic sector.
As we are less than a fortnight from the Budget, I cannot resist the temptation of putting my little point to the Chancellor, albeit via a third party. My advice is that he would do well to cease to bother about the climate change levy. After all, it is meant to be revenue neutral. He should let the planned gas-fired power station programme go ahead and also deal with the whole question of the effect of VAT on the construction industry, not least--and most relevantly in this debate--VAT on insulating or energy-saving materials. Creating an impost and giving it an exception creates anomalies; if those anomalies become too great, they become absurdities. This criticism would also apply to the previous Government: the application of VAT in the construction industry has become an absolute absurdity and I hope that the Chancellor will at least begin to tackle that problem in his Budget on 21 March.
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