Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Twelfth sitting).
16:17 Gideon Amos (Liberal Democrat)
New clause 5 would require building regulations to be made that require new homes to meet the zero carbon standard and to include renewable energy. Back in 2006, the then Labour Government rightly set out plans to achieve zero carbon in new housing. The same Government made a commitment in the carbon plan that there would be a regulatory requirement for zero carbon homes from 2016, which was the key date. That 2016 commitment was renewed by the coalition Government in 2011 and was included in the 2014 Infrastructure Bill. However, all the commitments to on-site efficiency standards and allowable solutions—the extra bit to make new homes zero carbon—were cancelled by the incoming Conservative Government in 2015, in a shocking retrograde step in addressing carbon emissions.
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16:22 Ellie Chowns (Green)
I warmly welcome the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington. I refer colleagues to the fact that I have proposed a private Member’s Bill on exactly this topic—the Carbon Emissions from Buildings (Net Zero) Bill—and my very first Westminster Hall debate was on environmental building standards, so I am fully behind the new clause.
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16:25 Ellie Chowns (Green)
In fairness, I did not draft the new clause. I recognise that it says six months, but as the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington spoke about so eloquently, we had proposals for net zero carbon building standards on the table 10 years ago. This has been in development for 20 years. The sector itself is way ahead of Government on this. A huge amount of work has been done by the Low Energy Transformation Initiative, the Royal Institute of British Architects and all sorts of organisations to develop zero carbon building standards.
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Olly Glover (Liberal Democrat)
I wish to add some concise thoughts to support the new clause, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington, which requires new homes to be built to a net zero carbon building standard and include provision for generation of solar power. My comments relate to the current political context in our country, which is—regrettably, in my view—more and more cynicism about net zero and the feeling that climate change mitigation is a negative, a drag on our lives and something that will cost us loads of money.
These proposals on zero carbon homes and solar panels are the exact opposite of all that. They are a good example of how taking action on climate change and striving for net zero brings economic opportunity by stimulating supply chains and the labour force and helping people to reduce their bills, creating more money for them to spend on the wider economy. Of course, it helps our planet as well. We need to be far more radical on policies like these, and there needs to be far less delay. We really need to get on with it, because they benefit people, planet and economy.
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16:27 Matthew Pennycook (Labour)
I thank the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington for tabling the new clause, and other hon. Members for speaking to it. They are all right to highlight the damage caused by the scrapping of the zero carbon homes standard back in 2015. It is worth recalling that that was widely criticised at the time, not only by environmentalists, but by house builders that had geared up to be ready to make the change. It is particularly regrettable, not least to me—I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen, will feel the same—to confront the collective costs of the retrofit that is now required because those standards were not in place.
The Government agree that reducing carbon emissions from new homes is a vital part of our ambition to reach net zero by 2050, and increasing solar power in the country must play an important role in that transition. However, as the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington said when he referenced the debate on the private Member’s Bill that we had a few months back, it is already the Government’s intention to amend building regulations later this year and set more ambitious energy efficiency and carbon emission requirements for new homes. The future homes and building standards will set our homes on a path that moves away from relying on volatile fossil fuels.
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16:38 Ellie Chowns (Green)
I rise to speak in support of new clause 7. I have spoken about flooding in the main Chamber at least five times. Constituents have come to see me in my surgeries to tell me that they have been flooded out of their new homes only six months after they were built, because of a lack of appropriate drainage. As climate change brings us greater extremes and severity of weather, we know that frequent flooding will become even more of a problem, so it is imperative that any new building is flood resilient.
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Gideon Amos (Liberal Democrat)
I simply make the brief point that there is a whole swathe of statutory requirements on planning—good design, sustainable development, mitigating climate change—and such legal duties can be included in planning legislation.
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