Llywydd, there are a series of measures the Welsh Government is taking to assist households with the escalating price of energy. But there are a series of barriers, I'm afraid, to instituting an emergency programme of household insulation. To begin with, we simply don't have the capital available to the Welsh Government to mount such a programme. Astonishingly, Llywydd, the capital available to the Welsh Government will reduce over the period of this Senedd. We will have less capital to invest in infrastructure of all sorts later in the Senedd term than we do now. And when the Chancellor announced his measures in May, I know the Member will recall that there was incredulity on the part of the industry that he did not announce a single penny of additional investment in energy efficiency and insulation measures. It was, the Financial Times said, just a footnote to his announcement, despite the fact that the director general of the Confederation of British Industry had called the day before for an all-out national effort on energy efficiency. 

So, we simply lack the means to be able to mount an emergency programme. There are difficulties in implementing such a programme. Unfortunately, those properties that most need to be insulated don't deliver themselves in neatly organised bundles. They exist across the different sectors, clustered though, as the Member said, in the private rented sector. They exist across all geographies, and every home is different. Every home has a history of its own, a set of measures that have already been taken, and every home has to be individually assessed to make sure that the plan for it responds to those measures that have been taken in the past. 

And then, thirdly, the third barrier to that sort of emergency programme is the skills deficit in the workforce. Successive UK Government schemes in this field have failed. David Cameron announced the Green Deal, aimed to insulate 14 million houses by 2020. That 14 million house scheme resulted in 14,000 loans being offered—14 million houses to be insulated; 14,000 loans altogether. The result is, Llywydd, that the supply chain, both in materials but also in skills, simply hasn't developed across the United Kingdom to the point where the very sensible suggestion put forward by the Member for Cardiff Central could be easily mounted by the Welsh Government.