Our report addresses the reasons why we need energy-efficient homes, the costs of having inefficient housing and the steps needed to get us to where we need to be to meet our commitment on reducing emissions. Why do we need change? There are many reasons why we should improve the energy efficiency of our housing stock. The most pressing is the need to deliver on our legal obligations to eliminate fuel poverty and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. The Welsh Government is required to reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. Challenging targets need challenging solutions. Reducing the amount of energy we use in our homes will substantially accelerate progress towards these goals. Achieving these targets will require a considerable ramping up of ambition and must span the whole of Wales’s policy levers.

Our primary recommendation is that the Welsh Government should bring forward a 10-year low-carbon strategy, including milestones and targets in six key areas, including retrofit, new build and planning. I will focus on three of those key areas today.

First, retrofit. The houses built in the twentieth century will, by 2050, probably massively outnumber those built in the twenty-first century, and those built in the nineteenth century, in many parts of Wales, will outnumber those built in the twenty-first century. So, obviously, we need to retrofit. Inefficient homes result in higher fuel bills and the poorest in our society bear the brunt of this. Too many vulnerable people are paying too much for their heating through no fault of their own.

The Welsh Government has spent many millions on alleviating fuel poverty through retrofitting heating efficiency measures for the most at risk. Our report commends the efforts to deal with this problem and the announcement of a further £72 million pounds in the Arbed programme to continue the programme. Despite the Government’s efforts, the fuel poverty target has been missed. We heard that retrofitting needs to be done at scale to have any impact on fuel poverty, for instance retrofitting 40,000 houses a year to have a chance of meeting the target by 2050. We have recommended the Welsh Government should aim to deliver, within 10 years, the retrofitting of all houses in fuel poverty in Wales to zero carbon in operation standards.

The second area that I'd like to focus on is new build. Although new build accounts for only 6 per cent of housing, this is something that we have to get right. Today's new builds will still be in use in the twenty-second century. We recommended that the Welsh Government, within the lifetime of our proposed 10-year strategy, should ensure that all new-build houses should be built to zero carbon in operation standards.

There are few large-scale house builders, and there is little incentive to offer more than the minimum standard required by building regulations, but some large-scale builders aren't very keen on putting in roads to adoptable standards, never mind making sure that houses are built to be warm. We were told that changes to building regulations would lead to fewer houses being built in Wales. We’ve all heard that before, haven't we, Deputy Presiding Officer? We were told that about sprinklers. But we were also told, given notice and time, even major house builders will be able to adapt to higher building standards. We believe the Welsh Government should set out a clear timetable to move to zero carbon in operation, so that house builders, the supply chain and the skills providers can prepare. I am pleased that the Cabinet Secretary has accepted our recommendation on this.

We were also concerned to hear stakeholders telling us that existing building standards are not being enforced. Clearly, the system is not functioning. The inspection system needs to be far more rigorous and independent. We have called on the Government to introduce a quality mark for energy saving measures in new builds and retrofit technology to increase consumer confidence in low-carbon homes. The inspection and enforcement of this quality mark must be independent and rigorously enforced. It should also place an obligation on the installer to ensure the required performance is delivered or repair or replace the technology. Not, 'This is what you could achieve if everything else worked perfectly.'

Of course, these ambitious retrofit and new-build measures cannot be delivered unless we have access to the right skills at the right time. We found that there's a shortage of appropriately skilled professionals working in the industry. The need to pay for additional labour increases the cost of the necessary technology, which puts off builders from installing it. The industry representatives told us that the biggest barrier to investing in training is the lack of certainty in the market. To invest in training, they need to know that those skills will be used. This is why a clear commitment to a 10-year timetable towards zero carbon in operation standards is so important. It will give the industry the confidence to train the workforce we need to bring our homes into the twenty-first century.

Finally, I would like to turn to the Welsh Government’s response. I haven’t spent much time talking about it so far. It will be very familiar to Members—recommendations are accepted in principle, but we have no idea how they will be delivered in practice. We are told that subjects are being reviewed by groups of advisers or civil servants. Members may be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu. I think of 'agreed in principle' as meaning, 'We're not going to do it, but we don't want to have an argument about not doing it, so we'll accept it in principle so that we've got a positive in there.' I think that, really, and I look at you, Deputy Presiding Officer, we need a system by which things are either accepted, partially accepted, and the parts that are accepted are named, or rejected. I'd much prefer to put recommendations forward that are rejected and I can then argue the case why they shouldn't be. How do you argue against 'agreed in principle'? You've got the 'agreed' in there—I mean, you agree with it in principle as well, so how do you argue that case? It makes life very difficult, and this is not unique to this report and it's not unique to this Cabinet Secretary. So, it's not a personal attack there, it's a fairly common Government response that I think is unacceptable.

Take our key recommendation for a 10-year comprehensive strategy for low-carbon housing. The response says that these matters are already being looked at by an advisory group that will report back in summer 2019.'Factor in the time it'll take the Government to respond, then add the time it'll take to develop an actual deliverable policy and the time needed to consult on it—we are making very little progress on our 10-year programme. I think we're down to five now after that list, if nothing goes wrong. I think it really is important that we do take creating low-carbon housing seriously.

Cabinet Secretary, I speak on behalf of the whole committee—we are frustrated by delays and a lack of progress. Our report contains challenging and ambitious proposals for Wales. We hope that in your response you will show the same ambition as we've shown in actually trying to get low-carbon housing for Wales.