Home Insulation Schemes

8. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of Government-funded home insulation schemes.

Home insulation delivers warm homes and lower bills. I have visited Government-backed schemes across the country and seen their impact on households and consumers, but we also know that there are too many examples of homes not being upgraded to the required standard. We are not happy or comfortable with that. We are committed to overhauling system so that when people have home upgrades, they can be confident that they will be of the highest standard and that, if things go wrong, they will have redress so that we can take them on this journey with us.

Further to the questions raised by the hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) and several other hon. Members, I, too, have picked up numerous cases in my constituency of Government-sponsored defective home insulation work and of extortionate, poor-quality and defective work of unscrupulous cowboy contractors who masquerade as operating under Government schemes. This includes Mrs King in Helston in my constituency who has paid out £19,000 to have insulation installed and then removed. I am pleased with the Minister’s response, but surely the Government need to do more to give householders confidence that these projects are both cost-effective and provide proper redress.

The hon. Gentleman is right: it is just not good enough for any householder to get a home upgrade that is not up to standard. I am sorry to hear about the example of Mrs King. We are working with Members across the House on supporting a number of individual cases. If it is a Government-backed scheme that is at fault, mechanisms are in place for the work to be remediated at low cost. But, at the end of the day, we have acknowledged that the system requires root and branch reform so that when consumers opt for upgrades they can have the confidence of knowing that they will deliver what we are saying: warm homes that are cheaper to run.

I call the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee.

Next week, the Select Committee will be hearing from some of the victims of the botched solid wall insulation installed under the previous Government’s energy company obligation and GB insulation scheme. That includes people whose homes may well have to be rebuilt, as the cost of repairing the damage may be higher. Will the Minister tell us how such a thing could have happened, and will she confirm that she is happy to come back to the Select Committee to add to the comments that she has already made about rebuilding consumer confidence after the disaster under the previous Government?

What is clear to us as a new Government is that the system of regulating home upgrades was too ad hoc and too fragmented. Accountability was not clear enough and consumers were not at the heart of the system. We are committed to turning around that system. Put simply, when someone has a home upgrade, they need to have the confidence that it will work for them and that, when things go wrong, redress will be put in place. I am committed to update the Select Committee on the progress that we are making on getting a grip of what we have inherited and on making sure that such a thing never happens again for consumers.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

As we have been hearing, Dickensian conditions of cold, damp and mouldy homes are shamefully on the increase. In my constituency, more than 4,000 households are having to make that difficult decision between eating and heating because of the previous Government’s dither and delay on insulation. However, even now, local authorities and families are in limbo, anxiously awaiting confirmation of the 2025-26 funding for ECO4 and the Great British Insulation scheme through a ministerial statement. Will the Minister act with the urgency that is needed to bring those schemes and the warm home scheme forward to tackle fuel poverty?

I thank the hon. Member for pointing out the inheritance and the legacy. That is material, because it is the backdrop to everything we are trying to do. We are clear that we need to drive forward with momentum and pace. That is why we are already upgrading up to 300,000 homes this year alone. It is also why we are working with local authorities and social housing providers to deliver warm homes that are cheaper to run for communities across the country. We are absolutely moving at pace with our warm homes plan. We will be setting out that plan, and at its heart is an ambition to ramp up the number of upgrades massively, so that more families across the country can benefit from what we know works: warm homes and lower bills.