 Fyelwch, dweud y mae amddiannol gynnal y cwm yn ddiddos i'r eisteddfod i'r cyflau rhai reference bod oedd yn gwybod i gael dweud o'r cyflau yn ddiddos i'r eisteddfod i'r cyflau wahanol. Fyelwch, dwi'n ddydig i hynny'r cyflau ond i gael gan gweithio'r cyflau i'w cyflau, I call on Nigel Dawn to open the debate around seven minutes please Mr Dawn. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I am bringing this motion to the Parliament this evening because whilst fuel poverty occurs across all regions, all housing tenures and all ages of property, it is significantly higher in pre-1919 buildings and in those constructed from traditional materials. What are these pre-1919 buildings? Well of course they're not just the buyers and the bothies nor are they just our ancient castles. They actually are the cottages, houses and tenements that are the centres of our cities, towns and villages and they're the heart of our built heritage. They were also built to last and the ones we're concerned about now of course have lasted at least thus far. Condition surveys tell unfortunately a sorry tale. At the cross-party group 1 construction, which we held earlier today, we heard from Chiara Ronsini from the International Scientific Committee for Energy and Sustainability, who spoke knowledgeably and interestingly about the situation in Edinburgh. We also heard from Jamie Baker from Eastlothian Council who reviewed work on buildings in Harrington and Trinant. Trinant of course, apologies. Without wishing to be in any way particular and to pick statistics from particular places which really wouldn't help, I think I can suggest some general numbers which may come as a surprise. Around 90% of old properties will need repairs. Many of those problems are in roofs and walls and 70% of the faults are in critical elements. Who cares? Sounds like a daft question. Historics Scotland plainly do, they understand this, but they are responsible for relatively few of those buildings, albeit of course many of the high profile and very big public ones. Public bodies are probably generally aware of the issues and they're likely to be trying to do something about it, but they're also quite likely to put off unnecessary repairs, partly for the very obvious budgetary reasons, but also because they're often going to try and get out of a building before those repairs become very critical. I think most of us will have the experience of talking to our councils about the buildings they've got and knowing that they're trying to move out of this one, they're trying to centralise, and a lot of capital expenditure within the NHS, particularly around our hospitals, seems to be, well if we build this new one here then we can actually pull out of those buildings and therefore we don't have to deal with the backlog maintenance. Now as long as they get into the new building that does work of course. Owners and it doesn't really matter whether it's owner occupiers or landlords probably don't understand the problem and I think this is where the difficulty for the government actually lies. What do we as owners of buildings need to understand and I'm grateful to Emily Tracy of the British Geological Survey who was the other speaker at the cross party bridge at lunch time who reminded us, and this is the bit I think we haven't got our minds around generally as a population, that stone deteriorates in water, therefore roofs and facios need to be waterproof, gutters and downpipes need to work, they need to be kept clear and they need to be leak proof. I suggest that the evidence around us is that most of us don't give much thought to these aspects of our homes either because it's out of sight and out of mind and some of what we were told about at lunch time would have been out of sight even for the professionals or because we're tenants and it's not our problem or because it's just too difficult. We are actually much more likely to redo the kitchen or the bathroom inspired perhaps by popular TV programmes and according to government figures the £600 million pounds which are spent each year on pre-1990 buildings actually haven't reduced the levels of different repair at all. It is presiding officer perhaps necessary to say that homes which are not wind and watertight are going to waste huge amounts of heat. I think it's pretty obvious to those of us who are here today those listening to us in the gallery and those interested who will be listening to this debate but I suspect it's not obvious to the wider population. Given the truth of that it follows that there's very little point in spending money on insulation if the escaping heat is actually going to bypass that insulation and soggy loft insulation because it's actually been leaked on will actually just make matters worse and of course there's very little point in reducing energy sorry it absolutely must reduce energy usage before we find ways of using renewable heat or micro generation. Now fuel poverty is defined in the context of people's incomes and it therefore disturbingly can hide what's really going on. Chiara Rucicini's presentation at lunchtime showed us what's happening in the middle of Edinburgh literally right here and what it showed us is that the significant fuel poverty immediately round this very building but gave us the impression that there is no fuel poverty in the new town. Actually the buildings there are probably not significantly better always than the buildings here. Those statistics reflect the fact that the incomes will be higher there than they are right round here. It's also clear that fuel poverty is more likely to occur in rural communities off the gas grid. In general terms oil and LPG fired boilers will cost more than 50% more to run than a condensing gas boiler and electricity is significantly more expensive still. We need to put this in the context of climate change of course and the global warming and it's clear in all that that we must eliminate wasted heat especially if it's generated from fossil fuels. We also need to make our houses more thermally efficient quite simply because I think the welfare social and health benefits of that are entirely obvious to us. So what is to be done Presiding Officer? Now I appreciate that Scottish Government is actually consulting on this and the more I've researched what I was going to say this evening the more obvious it became to me that this is actually seriously complicated. But I'd like to finish with a couple of very specific points. First of all we actually know something about the size of the task. Survey Waking Glasgow tells us that that city alone would need to employ about 300 masons for the next 20 years using around 400,000 tonnes of stone to deal with its traditional buildings. That gives us a glimpse of the financial challenge and the need in terms of skills and materials. I don't of course lay that challenge at the government's door but nonetheless that is what we're looking at. And also property owners need to understand that it's important to maintain their buildings and I think in that regard Presiding Officer we need to recognise we start from a very low point. I look forward to hearing other contributions to this debate. I've certainly enjoyed researching it and I will be very interested to hear the government's minister's comments because I know they're doing a lot of work on it as well. Thank you Presiding Officer. Millie, thanks. We now turn to the open debate speeches of around four minutes please. Margaret McDougall to be followed by Mike Mackenzie. Thank you Presiding Officer. Firstly let me congratulate Nigel Dawn on securing this debate on fuel poverty in Scotland's traditional buildings this evening. As the members' motion quite rightly observes, many of the buildings in Scotland that predate 1919, including residential properties, are in a state of disrepair. Indeed a quarter of these residential properties are in a state of extensive disrepair. The experience of living in inadequate housing can have long lasting effects and so I welcome the opportunity to speak up for people who are living in homes including traditional homes which are not up to standard. The relationship between poor housing and the occupied health, wellbeing and income is important to understand. According to the Chartered Institute of Housing, evidence suggests that living in poor housing can lead to an increased risk of cardiovascular and respiratory disease as well as to anxiety and depression. Problems such as damp, mould, excess cold and structural defects that increase the risk of an accident also present hazards to health. The Marmot review team working for Friends of the Earth has established that living in a cold home and experiencing fuel poverty has an adverse impact on the mental health of a property's occupiers. They also find that children living in cold homes are more than twice as likely to suffer from respiratory problems than children living in warm homes. I believe that Parliament understands the factors that lead to fuel poverty, low incomes, high energy prices and the lack of energy efficiency. Much of our political debate in recent months has focused on how to tackle low pay and improve household incomes by rethinking welfare reform and promoting a living wage. There has also been a great deal of commentary on the price of gas and electricity, the cost of living crises and the need to reform energy markets. The focus of this afternoon's debate is on energy efficiency and the physical improvements that are needed to make traditional buildings more economical to heat and to preserve and how to do it well. I believe that nourishing of our built environment and the preservation of our landscape heritage and historic townscapes enhances and enriches Scotland. Our traditional buildings contribute to the identity of our communities and our shared history. However, from farmhouses to city flats, those buildings are not just there to be appreciated. For many people in Scotland, these properties are their homes. Indeed, homes built before 1919 account for about a fifth of all residential properties in Scotland. We as a nation must ensure that we are equipped with the skills, the knowledge and the capacity to heat those homes efficiently and maintain those homes sustainably. I therefore commend the Scottish Government and Historic Scotland for the importance that they placed on energy efficiency in their strategy for traditional building skills. They identified challenges with insulating and upgrading traditional buildings. There were gaps in training provision and conventional insulation techniques that are not always appropriate for older buildings. The strategy also explains that Historic Scotland continues to support research into traditional buildings and materials and also into new techniques that could improve energy efficiency with the minimum of risk to older buildings. The strategy was published in 2011 and perhaps there is an opportunity for the minister to address the implementation of that strategy in her closing remarks. The Scottish Government is duty bound to do all it can to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016 in every home in Scotland. To achieve that target, we must invest in traditional building and maintenance skills and we must bring the benefits of new apprenticeships, new research and new techniques to some of our oldest buildings. We must also encourage the private landlords of those hard to heat older buildings to take up the initiatives that are available to them to make their homes more energy efficient for their tenants. Many thanks. I now call Mike McKenzie to be followed by Alex Johnston. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'm pleased to speak in this debate because as an Highlands and Islands member, I'm acutely aware of fuel poverty that runs at over 50 per cent on many of our islands and in many of our off-gas grid areas on the mainland. Part of the explanation for this is about high fuel costs as we've heard and part is about low wages and part is about the high proportion of our housing stock across the Highlands and Islands, which is in poor repair and is not energy efficient. If I may, Presiding Officer, I'll describe a typical scenario. The house I would use as an example is a common one. It's a one-and-a-half storey cottage with dormer windows. It's around 150 years old. It's stone walls and a slate roof. The roof is nail-sick. Gold, iron, square-headed nails are finally rusted away and the horse hair is in effect presenting the ingress of rain when slates come off as they do every winter. The mortar between the stones is degraded and is porous, so the walls now act as a giant wick transporting darkness into the exterior. It's two rooms on the ground floor, two bedrooms upstairs and a small bathroom. It originally had a fireplace in each of the rooms. A lean two corrugated iron kitchen was built at the back in the sixties and in the seventies some plasterboard wall linings were introduced inside and all but one of the fireplaces were boarded up. The occupant is a single mother. She has two jobs, neither of which pays a living wage. She runs an old car that almost always manages to take her to work. The cottage is heated by an open fire with a pan-loaf bank boiler providing hot water. The height of modernity when it was installed or mother blessed it daily just as she blessed Tom Johnson, who provided hydroelectricity to the houses right across the Highlands and Islands and also storage heating complete with a reasonably priced storage heating tariff that was the fuel poverty solution of that era. Her brother wants to put up a wind turbine close by on his croff and he says that he could provide her with free electricity. But the local planning officer just smiled and shook his head and talked about the views. Her brother then got excited about solar panels and the roof free electricity again but the wee man from the planning office smiled and shook his head again and he talked about how picturesque the cottage is. And a nice young fellow from the council came to see her brimming full of green deals and acronyms like eco and heaps but it all sounded too complicated and too costly. Especially after the local builder had talked to her about the roof and the rising dump and the rot in the floors. And when she asked how much the builder just scratched his head and looked at his feet and mummled something that sounded very like 100 grand. Presiding Officer, it's going to be another long cold winter. It's going to be wet and it's going to be windy but every now and then the sun will break through and the views will be breathtaking. Thank you very much Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I begin by offering an apology to yourself, to Nigel Dawn and to the Minister for the fact that I will be unable to stay till the end of this debate. I do have other parliamentary business that I require to attend to. I'd like to thank Nigel Dawn for bringing this motion to Parliament. It's something which I think we should all concern ourselves about but I have to say that the thing that attracted me to his motion was the mention of properties built before 1919 in Angus North and Merns because I have personal experience of those properties. I haven't been brought up largely in my early years in a freezing farmhouse a couple of miles north of Drumlithey with her backs to the hills and when the wind blew down off those hills it seemed to have the strange ability to blow straight through a stone wall and along the lobby. I do remember the rare occasion when we actually had to hang coats on the back of the outside door to stop the snow blowing through between the planks. Those were perhaps extreme measures but housing that was built in that area mostly in the 19th century was in its day of surprisingly high quality and that's why many of those houses are still standing firmly to this day. However they are not of the standard that we would wish them to be. Back in talking about that house in which I was brought up it was subject to granted modernisation in fact it was about 40 years ago this year that the job was completed and that house still stands today in fact my son occupies it and it is in good condition however we now know that when it comes to energy efficiency houses built in these years are not of the standard we would like. The advantage that a previous generation had in being able to use grants administered by the local government in order to modernise older properties is something that I believe gives us a lesson about what we must consider now because surprisingly when it comes to home insulation it is not money that is actually the problem there are many grant schemes available there are also opportunities there for money that's raised through energy charging to be used to insulate and modernise some of these houses to bring them to that higher energy standard however I've spoken to people government employees in many cases who find themselves in the strange situation where they say they can almost not give that money away they're trying to persuade people to take these opportunities but they won't take them up. I think the challenge we have is to first of all let people know what modern technology can do how the proper insulation of an old property can massively reduce energy costs associated with that property. We need people to understand the benefits that they will get from a little investment. Next we need to make sure that the available resource is targeted at those people who understand the need and we expand the knowledge of what can be achieved because only by ensuring that people believe the stories that they're told about energy efficiency and the possibilities it brings will we get them involved in the process of making their homes more energy efficient. I think the challenge is one of education but not only education about what is available but what returns can be obtained. What I've spoken about during the last moment or two is essentially the situation that many still find themselves in these same communities in which I was brought up. Many of them are owner occupiers, many of them have very limited resources. I think the challenge we have is not to limit the scope of our ambition but to ensure that these opportunities are made available to all and made available as soon as possible. Many thanks. I now invite Margaret Burgess to respond to the debate. Minister, you have around seven minutes to do so please. Okay, thank you Presiding Officer. Like others, I congratulate Nigel Dawn on securing the time for this debate and for all those who have contributed to it. Tackling fuel poverty is a key part of the Scottish Government's focus on building a fairer Scotland and tackling inequality. As Nigel Dawn pointed out at the start of his contribution, pre-1919 homes have higher fuel poverty levels than the national average and have typically lower energy efficiency ratings than newer houses. It is a concern that since 2009 we have seen reductions in fuel poverty across houses in every age band except those that were constructed before 1919. Fuel poverty was pointed out by Margaret MacDougall as a complex mix of cotties, including major factors such as fuel costs and welfare rules, which the Scottish Government has little control over. Nevertheless, there are things that we can do, such as actions to encourage energy efficiency improvements and address disrepair in our housing stock. Nigel Dawn is right to highlight the disrepair in our older housing stock and its capacity to exacerbate fuel poverty. Energy efficiency improvements can be undermined by disrepair. Homes that are not wind and water tight are likely to be inefficient and some types of disrepair, such as poor conditioned roofs and windows, can make them more expensive to heat. All members have alluded to that. The Scottish house condition survey indicates that homes built before 1919 remain among those most likely to suffer from extensive disrepair. Responsibility for looking after homes lies in the first instance with home owners, so owners need to be responsible and keep their homes in good condition. As many speakers have mentioned, there is a behavioural lesson there. Nigel Dawn pointed out that people would look more at their kitchens and bathrooms than the overall fabric of the house, but we have to encourage owners to be responsible and keep their homes in good condition. Local authorities are strategic housing authorities, and they have a wide range of discretionary powers to deal with disrepair in private homes. I believe that they are best place to develop and coordinate an appropriate response, including advice and financial assistance, where it is most needed. I recognise that there will be some homeowners, as Mike McKenzie mentioned, who need additional support to look after their homes. Not everyone can afford to do what is required to be done. However, the Housing Scotland Act strengthens the powers that are available to local authorities to manage disrepair. As part of our sustainable housing strategy, the Scottish Government is currently developing proposals on common housing standards across all tenures in collaboration with stakeholders. Where the owner is a landlord, they have additional responsibilities that we expect them to meet. Social landlords are working towards achieving the Scottish housing quality standard by April 2015, and part of that standard is to ensure that their homes are energy efficient. Private landlords must ensure that the homes that they let meet a statutory repairing standard that, among other things, requires homes to be wind and water tight. The energy efficiency standard for social housing, ish, as we call it, was published in March 2014 and aims to further improve the energy efficiency of the social housing stock in Scotland. Social landlords are expected to meet the first milestone by December 2020. The Scottish Government is also working with a group of key stakeholders to develop proposals on the regulation of energy efficiency in private sector homes that will be published for public consultation in spring 2015. It was made on that set that there are a lot of complexities in that, because that will be for homeowners as well as private landlords to meet those standards in private homes. We know that the most sustainable way of tackling fuel poverty is by raising the energy efficiency of homes. That is why, over the last three years, the Scottish Government has invested over £220 million and a range of fuel poverty and energy efficiency programmes of which Alex Johnson spoke about. Those measures have an estimated net gain in household income of over £1 billion. Over 600,000 households in Scotland have benefited from those measures. We have to encourage people to take up measures that are available and know about what is available out there. Our commitment to tackling fuel poverty is strengthened by our budget of £79 million in this financial year and the next financial year. It funds our area-based schemes, energy assistance schemes and our energy advice centres. The First Minister announced a new national fuel poverty scheme in October this year, which is potentially worth up to £224 million over seven years. The Scottish Government has taken significant action to help to address fuel poverty within the constraints that we face. Our actions have been hampered by the changes to the UK Government's energy company obligation. The uncertainty caused by those changes has led to a number of planned schemes that have focused on areas of fuel poverty in Scotland and have been unable to proceed. We are working closely with councils and registered social landlords on how best to support the delivery of energy efficiency measures in Scotland in light of those changes. As part of the Smith's commission process, we called for increased powers to tailor fuel poverty policies to meet the specific needs of Scottish households, and that includes houses that were built before 1919. Lord Smith of Kelvin has now published his recommendations. The First Minister has welcomed the transfer of those powers and will await further clarity on the scope of those new powers in terms of energy efficiency. Members may wish to note that their constituents can get impartial advice and energy efficiency and find out exactly what support they are eligible for by calling the Scottish Government Home Energy Scotland hotline 0808 808 2282 or from the Home Energy Scotland website www.greenerscotland.org, and around a third of Scottish households already have had advice from the hotline since it started. In conclusion, Presiding Officer, I again commend Nigel Dawn for bringing forward this debate and to the contribution from the members. Fuel poverty is an important issue that this Government is committed to address, and as part of this, we recognise the importance of tackling this repair in pre-1919 homes. Thank you Minister. That concludes Nigel Dawn's debate, and I now close this meeting of Parliament.