7. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: The Independent Review on Decarbonising Welsh Homes

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:37 pm on 24 September 2019.

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Photo of Huw Irranca-Davies Huw Irranca-Davies Labour 6:37, 24 September 2019

Diolch. I'm substituting for Jenny. No, no—I’m here in my own right. Diolch, Llywydd. Could I, first of all, just welcome the statement today, but also the tone and the substance of the responses that have come forward from fellow Assembly Members, and the response of the Minister as well? We hosted last week here—I was one of the co-sponsors of an event in response to the climate emergency. It was a day-long event. It went through a lot of areas, including housing. Rhun and others were there as well. Two things that came very strongly across in the panel that ended that day, where Assembly Members came along and discussed their findings with them, were the need for real, cross-party consensus to take some of these issues forward, not to bind in future governments, but actually to set a clear course of direction that would bind us all together, but secondly so we could take long-term decisions, even with the urgency on this—some of these things that go way beyond electoral cycles that we're going to have to really stick at very, very hard indeed. So, I really welcome the statement and the approach to it.

I also welcome within it the fact that you're setting up the green finance group. There is a level of ambition within this that shows that, whilst other parliaments at this moment may be in all sorts of challenge and difficulty and chaos to some extent, here in Wales we are trying to get on with responding to what is a genuine climate emergency, and has been for some time. Now, some people will say it needs to go further and faster, et cetera, et cetera, and Llyr has made that clear already. But I welcome the establishment of the green finance group, because that will have to work through some of the hard nitty-gritty.

In that respect, could I ask the Minister: has she had time to reflect and accept in principle all the recommendations that have come forward? Has she done this through the filter as well of either any discussions with, or any reading of, the future generations commissioner's 10-point plan? Two of those points in the 10-point plan were specifically to do with housing and buildings. One was to do with retrofitting, and it put a cost to Welsh Government of around £300 million, but a total of £1 billion a year. So, that green finance group is going to have to work hard to meet with what the Minister has said, but certainly the ambition that the future generation commissioner has. And for new homes—that all new homes and public buildings should be zero carbon from 2020, building on the learning from the recent £90 million through your innovative housing programme, which we've talked about here. So, has that been looked at in terms of the light of accepting these in-principle recommendations? And will she also accept that we may need to revisit these again, in light of the need to constantly ratchet up our levels of ambition as well?

Finally, I want to echo Llyr's point in terms of, if we're going to drive this forward at a rate of knots, particularly in terms of retrofitting, we really need to make sure that it's right. One of the lessons we have learnt is it has actually generated—. When you have a really ambitious green industrial strategy, which has people on every street corner setting up to install retrofit and so on, you'll have really good people there, but occasionally you'll have people who are giving the wrong advice and installing the wrong things.

I've got a chap in Tondu in my area who will lose his house over this. It's already cost him probably around £60,000 plus on his home itself, plus the cost of going to court and so on. It's devastated him and his family. So, for all the good examples out there, and there are many, we need to avoid that poor quality from some cowboys as well, giving the wrong advice. How do we make sure that that'll do it at the speed and intensity that we're going to take this forward with the retrofitting?