Miatta Fahnbulleh

I thank the hon. Member for his response. I am glad that there is consensus across the House that energy efficiency measures and home upgrades are key to delivering warmer homes and lower bills, and I hope all Members are supportive of the action the Government are taking. In answer to the hon. Member’s questions, we are still conducting audits to get a full picture. From sampling that has been done—I stress that the sampling was geared towards the installers that we thought were most risky—it seems that a significant proportion of that sample has major issues, which is why we are taking this action. On the 39 installers that have been suspended, we are working through certification bodies and TrustMark to require them to go into households and remediate the work. In the cases that we have audited, that is happening. The vast majority of installers want to do the right thing and want to do a good job, and where issues have been flagged, they are repairing the work. Where we think there are problems, we have mechanisms in place for making sure that the installers deliver on their obligations, and the guarantee system acts as a backstop. A crucial question is how we ensure both that where remediation work is being done, it is being done to the right standard, and that future solid wall insulations are done to a better standard. We are putting in place additional spot checks across the piece to make sure that where work has been remediated, it has been done to the required standard, and critically, all solid wall insulations will be given more monitoring and checks. Suppliers have committed to that, so that when people are having this work done, they can be confident that it is being done to a much better standard than we have seen. On keeping everyone informed, we will be writing through Ofgem to all households that have had solid wall insulation installed. We will be doing quality checks on all 65,000 solid wall insulations. I should stress that we hope the vast majority of those will be okay and that any issues will be minor, but we want to do a quality check across the piece. Our priority is getting in, making sure we are doing a proper inspection of the property, and getting key issues remediated as quickly as possible. Through all of that, our priority is the consumer, whose experience has to be as hassle-free, stress-free and cost-free as possible. This should never have happened in the first place, and we are determined to get this right and fix it on those consumers’ behalf.