Examination of Witnesses (Questions 820
- 839)
WEDNESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2004
MR ELLIOT
MORLEY AND
LORD ROOKER
Q820 Gregory Barker: What is the
point of having targets then?
Lord Rooker: Because we will set
the target as a means of managing the programme so we can make
some changes. The idea is to get change.
Q821 Gregory Barker: Moving on then,
the task force also recommended fiscal measures to encourage the
use of the CSB when it is produced. Is their recommendation for
a reduced Stamp Duty something you are pushing the Treasury for?
Lord Rooker: We have constant
discussions with the Treasury, every day of the year about what
they are and what the details are. Frankly, you will have to ask
a Treasury Minister, because I am not going into any detail.
Q822 Chairman: Can I stick with the
code for a little bit longer. For example, it would be interesting
to know how it is going to work in practice. Can you give us an
indication of what carbon minimisation you would expect to see
arising from the application of the code?
Lord Rooker: I do not know. I
was dealing with this in the Housing Bill the other night, when
I had all these figures in front of me. I honestly do not think
I can answer that with that level of detail.
Q823 Chairman: If you use the Energy
Saving Trust best practice guidance, for example, you get a 20%
reduction. Is that something you would like to see?
Lord Rooker: I would like to see
the maximum possible, and I do not say the maximum practical;
the maximum possible. When the code is written, we will have to
be judged by it as to whether we have gone far enough, as to whether
we can make it work. It will be voluntary.
Q824 Chairman: What account are you
taking of all the various schemes that are out there at the moment
aimed at increasing energy efficiency? There are various bodies
out there, including the Energy Saving Trust, who have schemes
which are running now. The BRE does as well.
Lord Rooker: Exactly. The BRE
have been involved on the task force putting the code together.
I have been to developments, and I suspect many of the Committee
have, places like BedZED, so there is an enormous amount of work
going on out there. It is all fairly small-scale at the present
time. I think BedZED was 81 or 83 dwellings. I would really love
to see it at 5,081 dwellings and then see whether it works. When
you talk about practicalities, and to make it sustainable, cost-effective
and good for the environment, quite clearly, the ingredients are
there for something very successful, but it is very small-scale,
and one has to ask, as you lever up the economies of scale in
some way, do you keep the same benefits to the community? I am
assuming for the people on the task force, BRE and the others
I mentioned, the Waste Resources Association, these are the very
factors that they will want to put into the code. It is our job,
and we will be happy to come back, obviously, at your wish, when
we have the draft published.
Q825 Chairman: Would you expect the
Energy Savings Trust to be involved in the steering group?
Lord Rooker: I would like to think
so, yes.
Chairman: I am sure they would as well.
Q826 Mr Chaytor: Before we leave
the code, one of the things I have difficulty understanding is
the relationship between this code, which is going to take some
time to develop, and the revision of the Building Regulations.
The new ones will be published next year. There is a general consensus
amongst all parties this is a good step forward and there will
be a further step forward in three or four years. Is the code
going to be in advance of the requirements of the Building Regs?
Why can the Building Regs themselves not be the main vehicle for
delivery? If we are going to have 1.1 million homes in the East
and the South East that may have to abide by a code, and yet a
tiny number of homes elsewhere that will be stuck with the Building
Regs, what is exactly the relationship? Why a code? Is that not
an admission that the Building Regs process is inadequate?
Lord Rooker: I might be out of
step here but, as I said, the code is voluntary; the Building
Regs are not, of course. I believe in some ways we ought to be
able to do more and should do more through the Building Regs.
There is a problem, though it is not a problem that is insurmountable.
There is always this fact that, each time you change the Building
Regs or bring in modifications, you have got to be able to say
to the industry, because they are building factories to make new
products or altered product, "This won't change for a period
time," otherwise why should they invest to make the products?
You cannot have constant change, and that is a real problem in
some ways, and that is part of using the legalistic approach.
We are pledged—I do not know what the figure is—not
to make a change within a certain number of years, and that is
notwithstanding, of course, changes in technology that come along,
and of course, it is new buildings. We ought to be doing more
for existing buildings, which we do for refurbishment, obviously.
We can cover that with the Building Regs with refurbishment, but
we are still only scratching the surface of the 22 million dwellings
in the country where we could do a lot better. In some ways, if
we get a code that is voluntary, it is easier to change. You do
need consensus, though, as I say, it is not the lowest common
denominator. That would be quite unacceptable. I would not want
to come back here and say we have gone for the lowest common denominator
and we have got really poor energy figures and savings figures,
because that is not what we are about. We want to maximise. The
idea is to get some change, but to take industry along with us.
Q827 Mr Chaytor: If the code is going
to take another two years to develop, and we are talking about
a building programme up to 2026, is it going to be the same code
from 2007-26? Will it be revised more frequently than the Building
Regs?
Lord Rooker: Put it this way:
I would imagine it would not be the same code. I certainly hope
it would not be the same code in 2026 as published in 2006, because
the scope for change would be enormous over that period of time.
In the mean time, of course, I suspect we might have had changes
from the code that we see as practical that we can get in the
Building Regs, so that we bring everybody on board. It is a question
of bringing everybody on board. We do not want people undercutting.
It is a bit like the Minimum Wage in a way; the argument is people
will always want to cut at the margin. The code has to be flexible.
We can change it more frequently than the Building Regs to suit
circumstances, but change by consent and consensus. On the other
hand, I freely admit people like the Building Research Establishment
and the scientists who are at the practical sharp end ought to
be pushing government. I want them to do that. I want them to
push us, because for us to get change as ministers, we need to
know that we are being pushed by people who are practical and
very experienced, because there are stumbling blocks. Sometimes
they are a bit close to home, sometimes a bit farther away. It
is good to have pressure on governments. I would welcome that
pressure from those who are at the sharp end, and I emphasize
the technical, practical end rather than people with the blue
sky research, because we are dealing with people's homes and the
places they work in, so we need to know we will get it right.
Q828 Mrs Clark: If I can just backtrack
before going forward, so to speak, you mentioned the BedZED development.
I think it is only fair to say that we as a Committee did visit
it and when you read our report when it comes out, you will see
that there were quite a lot of things about BedZED that we were
not happy with. We will leave that till the report comes out.
Obviously, you are hoping to build millions and millions of homes
over the next 15-20 years, but how many roughly would you expect
will be built to the new Sustainable Buildings Code standard?
Lord Rooker: I do not want to
be nit-picking about this, but the idea of building millions and
millions of homes over the next few years is not the case, strictly
speaking. Our capacity for building in this country is greater
than what we are doing and we want a step change. If we got to
Kate Barker's figures, I do not think it would be classed as millions
and millions.
Q829 Mrs Clark: A considerable number.
Lord Rooker: It is a considerable
number. We have a huge housing shortage in this country and, as
I have said, every house in this country has to last 1,200 years
at the present rate of demographic change and replacement and
building of properties. Just to say that shows how stupid it is
because clearly they will not last, so we do have to have a home
building programme much greater than we have now. They are all
going to vary. I do not know in terms of the eco-standards how
many. You are asking me to put a figure on it.
Q830 Mrs Clark: Just a rough estimate.
Lord Rooker: I cannot. Once we
have the code written, and look at the relationship between the
code and eco-homes, we want to maximise what we can do with new
building, using new techniques, using modern methods of manufacture.
I think the evidence is a lot more eco-friendly homes through
modern methods of manufacture than we get due to traditional methods,
and yet it has only produced something like 2-3% of home buildings.
Even if we double or triple modern methods, we are still only
going to scratch the surface, so we want to give a big push to
modern methods because we know we will have better produced properties
that are much more environmentally friendly, both in the materials
they use and of course in the output in terms of gases and being
energy-efficient. We know that will happen.
Q831 Mrs Clark: But still just a
voluntary basis when it comes to the private sector housing. Is
it going to work?
Lord Rooker: I do not have any
evidence for this. It is a gut feeling in a way, listening to
manufacturers and going on to sites. It reminds me sometimes of
what used to be said in the motor industry. Every time there was
pressure for lead-free fuel or anything else, they said, "We
can't do this! It will add ten quid to the cost of a car. People
won't buy our car." House builders are a bit like that at
the moment. They seem to say, "We couldn't put another £200
package in this house because we could not sell it." It just
sounds barmy. If they can make contact between the purchase or
the rent of the property—mixed tenures will be both—and
the output in terms of your fuel bills, for example, a direct
connection, and market it that way, then we could see big progress,
but we basically have a private sector market arrangement which
in some ways we need to try and manage through land and planning
etc. I could not give you a figure on it.
Q832 Mr Francois: To summarise where
we are, you are going to have a group of people who are going
to come up with this code. At the moment, you are not quite sure
who it is, or when they are going to meet, you obviously do not
know what the code is going to be, but even when we do have a
code, all the builders can ignore it anyway if they want to. That
is where we sit.
Lord Rooker: You can describe
it like that. I would not. If you do describe it like that, do
not expect me to sit back and take it quietly, because that is
not a very professional attitude to take. I as a minister do not
want to know when they are meeting. Why on earth should I want
to know when they are meeting? When you have asked a group of
professional people, mature adults, to do a job voluntarily—they
do not get paid for these kinds of things—and they agree
to do it, and you set terms of reference with a rough timescale—why
on earth should I be expected to know when they want to meet?
I might want to go to the first meeting to say, "By the way,
hello, thanks very much for what you are doing," or wait
until the end, which is what I have sometimes done when we have
had people do jobs like that for us. But why would I want to know
when they meet?
Q833 Mr Francois: Minister, the fact
remains nevertheless that you were not able to give us even an
indication of what proportion of houses you expect to be constructed
under the code, which I think you should have been able to give
us an answer on.
Lord Rooker: I do not think I
should at this present time. It is too early.
Q834 Mr Francois: Forgive me, but
this whole thing is extremely vague. Even now you have confirmed
that it will not necessarily be mandatory.
Lord Rooker: No. I said initially
it was voluntary.
Q835 Mrs Clark: Getting on to eco-home
standards, according to BRE there have been over 9,000 homes actually
certified to eco-home standards since 2000. They do have another
10,000 registered that will be aiming for this status in the near
future. The Housing Corporation funds the building of around 13,000
homes a year to this standard. English Partnerships also uses
the standard in its developments, and it sounds quite impressive,
but when you consider 140,000 houses were started in 2003 and
Barker has said that we need up to another 120,000 a year on top
of this, the impact of this is not very impressive, is it?
Lord Rooker: Yes, it is correct
that it is even worse than we said it was. We are only dealing
in new homes, are we not? What are we doing about the existing
20 or so million? We are scratching at the surface. I absolutely
agree with you. We are scratching at the surface when one looks
at the grand scale of dwellings in this country. In the long term,
relying on the code to get change and, as I said, from time to
time we will have things in the code that we can put into the
Building Regs so we can make it compulsory, so things will move
from voluntary to compulsory, we are still only then dealing with
new dwellings or refurbished dwellings. On the older ones we can
do some work—not all of it, it is true—but over a
period of time the figure will increase, not decrease, but it
starts from a very low base. We are miles behind where we should
be. I freely admit that. I am not saying there is a Holy Grail
but we want to go in the right direction. The speed at which we
travel at the moment, I freely admit, is slow.
Q836 Joan Walley: What you have just
said has raised a question in my mind. We are a nation of do-it-yourselfers,
people who do repairs to their own homes. You mentioned the other
21 million or so properties that are not included in terms of
just scratching the surface. Is that not an issue that somehow
or other needs to be addressed as well in terms of the quality
of the repair and renovation that goes on in that respect?
Lord Rooker: It is, with respect,
because there are some things that you could go into the big building
supermarkets and buy today that you could not get some years ago,
and secondly, in some respects some of the products, whether they
be boilers or glazing fittings, you cannot get the cheaper ones
because the Building regs have come in. So in some ways we are
catching up through the do-it-yourself but the do-it-yourself
person will not know that because these are the products that
are available. We have changed the products that are available
for do-it-yourself through the Building Regs, so in a way, we
are doing things through refurbishment. I am not saying we are
not tackling this. It is not part of the national plan. People
are not interested. They want a product to replace a window, a
glazing fitting or a boiler or new pipes or something like that,
and they will probably not realise that they are slightly different
to what they would have been like ten years ago. You cannot get
the old ones that were available then because they were not so
efficient as today's. So there is progress being made in that
direction, but I freely admit it is slow. There is no point in
saying otherwise.
Q837 Mrs Clark: As well as being
a bit of a Euro sceptic, I am a bit of a house building industry
sceptic. Do you think they have any interest whatsoever in meeting
environmental standards? Is there any progress there at all?
Lord Rooker: Yes. House builders
do vary enormously. I am not sure what the output of the biggest
one in the country is. It is probably not more than 11,000-12,000.
There is a huge number just building 200 dwellings, and they think
that is really great—and it probably is for a small builder;
it is quite an output if you do 200 this year, the year after
and the year after that, but it is a scratch on the surface. All
I can say is I have been on developments where the master planners
and the developers, who do not necessarily do the building but
have builders on their sites—and you have one in your own
constituency or very close to it. I cannot say it is a model because
I was only there on the one occasion. I was very taken with it.
It predates the communities plan by years—inter-generational
developers who are very proud of what they do in terms of sustainability
of the whole community and the quality of the energy efficiency
of their homes. I was on a site in Cambridge the other week, a
brownfield site—there was a former Government Office on
it actually, so we do go around knocking them down from time to
time—where there was a mixed development going on of very
good, spacious dwellings, with a real mix of prices, an incredible
price range, and mixed tenures as well, with a very high level
of standards as to the energy efficiency, noise efficiency and
the use of the garden space as well.
Q838 Mrs Clark: You have mentioned
demonstration projects. How useful are these really going to be
in encouraging better practice? Are people going to look at them
and think, "Great! That's what I want to do" or will
they just say, "Oh, very nice for them but I'll not bother"?
Lord Rooker: In going round the
various areas, the Pathfinders and the Growth Areas, I see quite
a few—some I like, some I do not, but that is subjective;
I am not a trained architect. You pick up tips, and I know that
people involved in this overall project—and it is a huge
project in terms of doing the communities plan—do actually
travel round the country. They do not just wait for commercial
fairs but they go and have a look at developments, and we encourage
this as we are setting up the delivery vehicles—as I said,
we are only halfway through at the moment—and there is encouragement
there for delivery vehicles to actually talk to each other, because
these are the decisions that are best made on the ground, not
in Whitehall. There is an enormous wealth of examples in developments
up and down the country where people can learn. There is not one
size fits all though. You cannot say "This is what is wanted
here" but people can learn from good practice all over the
country. That is what we try and encourage. One of the remits
of the Commission for Architecture & the Built Environment—because
we have upped its finances from ODPM enormously, from half a million
a year to 17 million over a three-year period to actually do this
very job—is to run the rule over both the Pathfinders and
the Growth Areas in terms of quality. I do not mean quality by
pretty and colours and measurements, but looking at the overall
quality and sustainability of the buildings and the developments.
That is very important work they are just starting to engage on.
Q839 Mrs Clark: We have talked about
John Egan quite a bit today, and of course, he has submitted to
us. He has pointed out to us that as long as house buyers are
actually non-repeat customers, there is absolutely no incentive
whatsoever for the building industry to actually improve their
product. He has also argued to us that the eco-home standards
should actually be used as a minimum legal requirement for house
builders. Kate Barker obviously came to see us as well, and in
her evidence she said that materials, energy and waste should
actually be taxed to ensure the right incentives exist. Would
you agree with that? Do you use fiscal powers?
Lord Rooker: I cannot go down
the road of talking about tax. It is just impossible.
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