 talked to the 35th meeting of the local government and communities committee in 2018. Can I remind everyone present to turn off their mobile phones? As meetings papers are provided in digit format, tablets may be used by members during the meeting. This is the third day of stage 1 evidence from the Fuel Poverty Bill that we will hear from two panels at today's meeting. Chiynau, we have had one further evidence session on this bill with the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning gyda yma ymryd i ddechrau, ac mae'n gwneud i'r parlymynyd yn y byw yn y gyflwyllustol. Felly, mae'n gweithio i ddweud dr Keith Baker, co-founder o Fenergi Poverty Research Initiative, a prof. Donald Tush, director centre for research and social policy, Loughborough University. Thank you for your submissions. We will go into your questions from members. Graf ddatblygal gwirio, Graf. I appreciate what your question is for, Dr Baker, but, as you can think about, professor Hirsch can you jump in? Feel free. So, what is it meant by a folk-first approach to tackling fuel poverty and what is wrong with the Government's current approach? I blame my colleague Dr Ron Mould for coming up with that. But it's a nice catch-away of saying that up until now and under the current proposals our measures, policies for tackling fuel poverty are driven largely by technical solutions. This is including things like using EPCs, which we would argue are fundamentally flawed, the way they're currently produced. As a driver for tackling fuel poverty, we do not fundamentally believe that the proposals as they stand using EPCs as a driver will have that desired effect, probably anywhere near. Our workers have reconceptualised fuel policy showing how the current Scottish definition, the boredom-based definition, can be reconciled with a wider conceptualisation of vulnerability, and that was something supported by the expert panel workshop back on 1 August last year, and to actually turn the whole thing on its head partly, and this is us as building scientists saying that we need to actually turn the problem on its head and look at the human factors, the vulnerability factors as drivers of fuel poverty, and tackle those primarily, which may well lead us to recommending technical solutions as well, but to actually consider a much more holistic approach to the way we deal with householders. Does that make sense? I think it kind of does. It leads into my second question that was mentioned in the same evidence, almost a criticism of what you described as a fabric first approach, which I must admit that I didn't quite follow, but I'll come on to why, if you can respond to that, maybe explain what you mean by that. Okay, well at the moment we use a very limited number of measures, predominantly income, and measures of technical performance to decide what we need to put into houses when we go and treat householders. What we've been saying and what we've been showing is actually yes, there will be a group of householders, or groups of householders in fuel poverty who can be treated that way, where the building is the main problem, but actually in most cases that we've found, particularly in rural and island areas, which we'll come on to later, it's actually the human factors, the vulnerability of the householders, their ability to understand information, their ability to manage their future energy circumstances, that those are the real drivers, the behavioural stuff, the contextual stuff. We can treat houses, and building scientists I've been doing this for decades now, I can go in and look around a household and tell you what technical measures need to be done, but actually you need the occupants engaged, you need the occupants understanding what we're doing, and we need those technical measures to be correct as well, which I would argue that EPCs don't drive. I've actually got a policy paper coming out with common wheel on the 18th that will propose an alternative approach to the way we develop EPCs, but that's probably a bit tangential for this committee at the moment. Well, it's not really, and it's something we've looked at as a committee before, so I'd certainly be interested in seeing it. The key driver there is we use model data, and this actually relates to the fuel poverty problem and the energy efficiency problem. Virtual policy making at the moment relies on using model data from things like the home energy efficiency database, which we would argue is incredibly poor and probably detrimental to solving the fuel poverty problem, where we've actually used access to real household energy consumption data and accurate household data, be it technical data, household composition data, household characteristics, through local authorities, through housing associations, through trusted intermediaries who have that ability, authority to process that data, and through that, that's partly how we've shown that the rural energy spend, or sort of the urban rural energy spend gap is significantly greater, and when you look at that, when you normalise all the other variables and factors going underneath that, you clearly see that it is the human, the social, the behavioural, the environmental problems that are driving that big gap rather than the technical solutions. If you treat somebody's house and make it as energy efficient as possible, let's say if you build something, let's say the ultimate is a passive house standard, so if something is built to that standard, you can almost eliminate fuel poverty. You wouldn't disagree with that. It depends what you're measuring and how you're measuring it, because at the moment if you're improving a dwelling, your improvements will be directed by what comes out of an energy performance certificate or a standard assessment procedure assessment, and there is vast volumes of evidence going back several decades showing that the accuracy of EPCs for drive and SAP for driving those improvements, and selecting those improvements is not good. It's hugely inaccurate. There are studies saying that SAP and EPCs are unfit for purpose for doing that, so fine, if you're going to install technical measures, great, but make sure that you're actually installing them based on a proper technical basis, which we're currently not. But there's also the contention of, particularly amongst vulnerable householders, lower-income householders, that those measures will not necessarily deliver the savings that you're expecting, because we're not getting the baseline for those householders right. We're not dealing with things like self-limiters, we're not dealing with people who switch their heating off, and often they've admitted that they don't have this data, so we don't know what numbers are out there. We put this into layman's terms. If you make a house as energy efficient as you possibly can, it's really well insulated, it's airtight, you don't need to put the heating on. Let's say that if you build a new house to what was mentioned earlier, a passive house standard, we don't actually need radiators, then that slashes fuel bills. If you slash fuel bills, you cut fuel poverty. Right, well, as a building scientist, I wouldn't say that passive house is necessarily the only route to go down as well. Passive house has got its use in Scotland in certain areas, in certain places, but there's also the natural design approach, which is the school that I've built and signed signed from, which is maybe more appropriate in Scotland, but that's a matter for the building standards, and the building standards have improved, but no, you're not necessarily going to do that because of the number of other factors that are going on, and this is just us having looked at the evidence as I say, we're building scientists, we don't want to stand round and say, please don't give money to our field, don't support our field, but we're actually saying that if you look at interventions that have been done, they're largely not as successful, particularly amongst poorer and more vulnerable householders, as the model data will suggest, and then when you go and look at these households in real life and actually get your measured data out, you're not getting the savings that you would expect, and that's partly due to things like the rebound effect and the prebound effect in terms of how householders use energy. If you're a nice middle-class household and you get insulation installed, you'll get pretty much the expected savings, but once you get beyond that standard household archetype, your uncertainties, your variation, get significant, highly significant, so you can't just assume that it's doing it, and the other point to mention there is because of the way householders changed behaviour before and after intervention, we make this assumption that just because you put in energy efficiency measures into a household, that after that they will necessarily start behaving in ways that are going to make them more resilient to fuel poverty, and that's based on an assumption and not any evidence. I mean, you're talking a lot in jargon. Sorry. I'm not really clear whether you're in favour of taking energy efficiency measures or not. I mean, I don't think that there's a single member of this committee that would deny that, you know, you have to educate people how to use systems in the home. Surely you have to make the home as energy efficient as you possibly can. You've got to make the home and you've got to make the people. Yes, you will. I mean, we obviously are in favour of energy efficiency measures, but we do not, and our analysis support this, we do not fundamentally believe that the impact on fuel poverty, that the energy efficiency proposals, you know, using EPCs as a driver, bringing all households up to COD under the bill, is going to have the projected and the desired effect on reducing fuel poverty levels because of the uncertainty in how those measures are likely to affect household energy consumption and household energy spend, particularly amongst poorer and more vulnerable householders and those in the Highlands and Islands. It's just a simple case of the data becomes a lot more uncertain. If you've got a nice middle-class household living in the centre of Edinburgh and you're starting to insulate them, you can probably get the savings and the benefits that the models would suggest, but once you get away from a standard household or a standard archetype, you can't, you know, that inaccuracy gets significant. So it will work and we can use, you know, we can and we should be driving energy efficiency in those groups of householders where it will have those effects, but actually clearly the majority of fuel poor householders, the real problems are, so, you know, are their incomes, are their ability to manage their lifestyles, understand their energy bills. We've got a paper coming out next year, which will show that of the, from a study in Renfrewshire, that of over 7,000 interventions done by the local authority in the housing association, over two thirds of those were just to get householders, poor and vulnerable householders, largely to enable them to show them how to use their central heating systems. So, yeah, great that we're doing technical improvements, assuming that we're getting them right, which is another question. But really, we've shown that you will get much more benefits out those who are most in need. And again, Christine Liddell's work, who was on the panel, supports this as well, by tackling the whole house. So you're going to household, you say, okay, well maybe you need insulation as well, but actually what you need is somebody to show you how to use your boiler, somebody to, you know, show you how just simple energy saving measures and maybe give them an energy meter as well and say, well okay, you know, don't use your kettle to boil one cup of water or whatever and keep doing that for a couple of weeks and appreciate how much that's saving on your energy bills. Because again, those householders, you know, if they're told, oh, you'll save, you know, 10 pound on your energy bill this week or 100 pound in the future, they'll take the 10 pound now and we know that from basic human psychology. So it's getting, building in that resilience and technical solutions will reduce your uncertainty, you know, you will put that buffer zone in, but they won't develop that resilience in households necessarily. It needs that, you know, it needs that human approach. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Kenny, you wanted to come in on this? Yeah, I mean, in terms of, you mentioned rebounds, so what you're suggesting, for example, is that a poor household gets their house insulated, et cetera, previously maybe didn't put the heating on quite as much and so therefore because it's insulated, they now feel they can put the heating on, would that be correct? Does that mean that? Yeah, the rebound effect will occur in other ways as well. I mean, the classic example, to use a middle class example, the classic example is the person who saves money on energy bills and then takes an extra flight or something. That's the classic rebound effect, but with a poor or vulnerable householder, you don't know, you know, you could be dealing with somebody who hasn't had their heating on significantly for years. Now will they then choose to adopt a very, very high heating energy regime because they could be up to their eyes in debt? This is a classic example we deal with. You've got somebody who's so far into debt that they get heating improvements and actually, you know, I'll have 26 degrees C flat in my house because it feels comfortable and I'm so far in debt, I'll service that whenever. I don't know many people who would want a house at 26 degrees, but surely, you know, if that actually does happen, then we've taken a lot of evidence that if a house is much warmer then it reduces, for example, respiratory and other illnesses. So you're actually, if people then feel able to keep their house warmer, even if the energy consumption does not decline, you know, it's much more efficiently and effectively used, so the person is warmer, feels healthier, etc. So surely that itself is a benefit. And in terms of understanding what you're saying about behavioural changes, but, you know, we've got very mobile households now, particularly in the private rented sector. If houses are insulated, you know, bills will still be lower because if people have to move around and if someone moves in the house, does that mean that someone should have to come in and explain all the kind of implications that you're explaining to them? I mean, yeah, technically, yeah. So, but surely technical measures, you know, are a base, a base, a court of that? There are courts of that, and I think you've got to recognise there are different types of technical measures as well. The commonest, one of the commonest measures being a boiler replacement, which would need in, in terms of the householders we're talking about, would need somebody going in, and if you look at somebody like Government Hill Housing Association, they do that. They work with South Seats, the charity there, who will, they've got a lot of Romanian communities, who will, they will go in and they will set them up and show them how to use their heating systems from the start, and a lot of housing associations will do that. But as you say, that's not going to capture the private rented sector, largely. It will capture housing associations, but then we know that the energy performance of housing association properties is, you know, generally higher than the rest of the housing stock anyway. So it's not going to capture our own occupiers unless they go and seek that help. Right. So I'm just trying to remember what you're going to do with the part of the question. Well, let's move on to something else. You've said that the new targets represent a significant step backwards. You're saying that the Scottish Government's ambition of reducing the number of households in fuel poverty, if you six on a thousand, hand on 40,000 per 2,040, is a backward step. Yeah. So how can you explain why it's backwards step? I'd like to hear what Professor Halsh has to say because he's been very quiet so far. Do you want me to go? Okay. Well, we did, you know, we originally had the target of eliminating fuel poverty as far as practicable by November 2016, and we would accept within that they would probably call it 3 per cent of households who were captured by that definition who weren't fuel poor just based on the problem with the definition. The large, rich household, which is classed as fuel poor just because they've got a large area to heat and a relatively low income, it's the little old lady in a castle in the Highlands to quote a very, very stereotypical example. So, yes, we've gone from a question of are we going to practically eliminate fuel poverty under the current definition by 2016, or are we looking at using energy efficiency drivers or energy efficiency as the main driver for reducing fuel poverty significantly by 2032? And I think when you're adding 16 or more years on to that from where we were, it's effectively a reset in some ways. Well, I don't think, frankly, when the Leblab had executive set the targets, they realised that fuel prices were going to go up by 155 per cent and incomes only 38 per cent over the piece. So, I mean clearly, that has had a serious impact and it was discussed often in this committee. We don't have control of energy prices or indeed income leavers. So, given that, do you not think that it's pretty ambitious given the kind of constraints, if you like, on the Scottish Government that they're still determined to try and reduce the number of people in fuel poverty? Well, given the scale of the implementation of the proposals 2032, 2040, there's absolutely no guarantee that that won't happen again or happen again more than once, you know. We've got... No, there isn't a guarantee. No, we don't think there is, but I think there's a determination. I think all political parties in the Parliament are committed to it, but of course there are always external shocks that sometimes can derail things and you can't insulate a country from these measures necessarily, but certainly not with the devolved powers that we have, I would suggest. No, but I mean, I just quickly let us hit Scottish housing condition. You shall keep findings from 2017. We've already got a substantial rise. The increase in fuel poverty is seen largely amongst households on electricity, households using LPG, households using oil. So you're getting a statistically significant increase over the last year. Now, obviously we haven't had a big oil spike or a big gas spike, but that sort of thing could be on the cast because it's happened before. OK, Professor Hush. I haven't looked in the round at whether this is a more or less ambitious target. I would say that having looked at some of your deliberations and what witnesses have been saying that a key issue is whether you are accepting that there will be a certain level, quite a significant level of fuel poverty that remains over the long term, which one does. Importantly, whether that creates a disincentive to deal with certain aspects of the problem, and I think a lot of the debate has been about the remote rural issue, and I think that on a purely numbers target-based perspective, places which are sparsely populated where interventions can not have the same economies of scale as if you're going in and refitting an urban terrace. The risk is that there's no incentive to make progress in those areas, and I think that that would be the particular thing that I would think you'd want to be careful about. Just to interrupt you, because obviously I'm sure we would go on to that. I mean, it was really on the matters that have been discussed so far, was one of your opinion on, but we're going to start on the way as a committee tomorrow. I'm pretty sure everyone in the committee is keen to ensure that that doesn't happen, that we don't, that rural areas are not left out, that it's not just a numbers game that every community in Scotland has the opportunity to see fuel poverty, and that's something that we'll certainly be oppressing on the Scottish Government. So, I mean, we've got to discuss the mechanisms of that, but we're taking evidence tomorrow and Friday on that particular issue. I accept that, yeah. But it's a bit sorry, it's just a weird response to the issues that we've discussed so far. Yeah, no, I didn't, I mean, the earlier question was a technical one, which isn't within my area of expertise. Okay, thanks. Thanks, convener. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, convener. Good morning, gentlemen. It was really picking up on some of Dr Baker's comments, because I still remain a bit confused. If you don't think the Scottish Government should, in your words, proceed with a fabric first approach, where then would you rank the need to tackle fabric issues? I mean, I have to say that, from my perspective, as the MSP for Cloud and Beath constituency, for those constituents who live in damp houses, everything else is kind of theoretical. They want that solved first and foremost, because they don't want to live in damp houses. So I'm not quite clear really what you're saying, and how it would actually help my constituents in the short term. There's two issues there. There is the practical, how we tackle it in the field, and how we identify those, and the issue of the data that we're using. We recommend the improvements based on model data, and I should warn you now that anybody who is saying that model data is good has probably got vested interest in producing it. We can direct better improvements using, as the academic panel recommended, making more and better use of real data that is currently available. Now that itself would drive better technical solutions. We certainly see technical solutions as part of it, but you have to go in and get that data on the householders and use your time to get better technical data as well to say, actually, what are the improvements that are most suitable for you? Now, I've just done a bit of work on householders in fuel poverty with dementia. Now, you may not want to put in your gold standard measures for those sort of householders because they might not have the capacity to use them optimally. It's about appropriate solutions as well. So, yes, you've got the issue. We're recommending improvements based on model data, based on model savings from modelled interventions, largely, that are not necessarily going to be delivering the benefits that they would argue that the models would say. In some cases, they may be higher, but we need to be as accurate as possible in this because if you're telling somebody that they're, you know, by putting in whatever intervention they're going to save X amount of money and then they don't, that's going to have a negative effect. At the same time, if you're telling them they're going to get Y amount of savings and they end up with more, they're going to be less incentivised to adopt further behavioural measures. I say this was expanded at the length of the paper we've got coming out, but there are, you know, if we're going to recommend technical interventions, they have to be right and the benefits that we're saying to each individual household that they will accrue have to be reasonably accurately predicted. Otherwise, there will be negative consequences one way or the other. And the way we can improve the way we do that is actually by putting the householders first and saying, yes, you know, you may need help with this, you may need help with your bills done, you may need getting an energy meter in the household, in the household to monitor your energy consumption over the next couple of months. And from that, we can get a much better idea of the technical measures and the social measures and maybe the income support measures, whatever, that that household will need and treat them as a whole. So you start off with the people, but you absolutely don't exclude those technical solutions, but by putting the people first, you end up with better technical solutions going in and cost-effectiveness. Yeah, I mean, I think for that, I have to say, I still remain a bit confused. I mean, if you're living in a damp house, what you want is in the very short term that problem to be solved and everything else would flow thereafter, work on behaviour, work on managing your household income, notwithstanding, as Kenny Gibson said, we don't control the key levers here and all the rest of it. But, you know, what my concern is, you know, I'm a very pragmatic, practical person. I don't want to live in a damp house, therefore it wouldn't be acceptable to me to see anybody else living in a damp house and that really is a technical issue. It's there, it gets sorted and things can come in off the back of that. Absolutely, the other issues are not exclusive to tackling at source the first fundamental problem. And that really, I don't really, I'm not convinced with respect to what you said. And data, yeah, I mean, absolutely use the most relevant appropriate up-to-date data. But if you go in and the housing officer in Fife goes in and sees the dampness, the dampness is the dampness, and it needs to be sorted. But if you're treating your household for dampness, you can, if you limit your problem to, I'm going to treat dampness, even with technical solutions, you may end up then causing other problems by thinking the dampness is the only problem I've got to solve. I'll give you the classic example of a study we did a few years ago, a woman in a household in a flat in Glasgow, a single parent, had a damp problem, but also had an insulation problem as well. A child had asthma, she was told by the local authority that you need to keep your windows closed to save your energy bills, and we'll put in some extra insulation or whatever when we get round to it. But at the same time, she was going to a GP who was saying, you know, for your kids asthma, you need to keep the windows open. Now, we could insulate that flat, that was a high-rise flat. It wouldn't have happened overnight, you know. You could be dealing with months, if not year or two, depending on contract. And as you say, you want to get that person the best solutions first. So there may be other ways that you could support that person as part of a more holistic intervention. You've just got to be careful that by tackling a damp problem or by tackling a high-energy problem that you don't then create other technical problems or other social problems. Put in the right solutions? Well, I think everybody would wish to see the right solutions. The things that you talk about with respect are not mutually exclusive, but it's a question of working out the first problem to be tackled and taking things from there. And therefore, to me, that would require, if you have a damp home, treating the issue of the dampness and things thereafter about management and so forth, and holistic approaches would follow. So I'm afraid I just beg to disagree, I don't think. Thank you very much for making your position quite clear, Annabelle. Can I just come in at this point then, Andy Wightman, and Ally want to come in after me? You talk about the holistic approach, but surely the bill itself is already facing up to that as saying that education has to be a key component of this. And I can't get away from... Now, I'm sure that what you're saying here theoretically makes sense and without the theory we don't get a practice and everybody has to agree with that. But surely the way that you seem to be almost undermining the fabric first approach by your folk first approach, which I accept wasn't your name for it, doesn't help, because others have already said. There's an example here that actually my colleague, Alec Rowley mentioned last week of a woman who got these interventions. She went from paying 25% of her income to her bill to 5% which helped her child with his chest problems when she was admitted to hospital. So surely the first priority is that you make sure, and I accept what you say, some things cause another and it's the responsibility of people to make sure that their knock-on effects are being dealt with. But surely the first priority has to be if you see a house that has bad physical condition, there's a family staying in it, they're suffering from that. You go in there and on the back of that. And we've seen examples, the ones that were at Dundee and other places. I've seen examples of on the back of that, other services would be in there to make sure. Surely that's the right way forward. I think, first of all, I would stress that I'm not an academic sat-in ivory tower. A lot of this evidence actually. That's not what I'm suggesting. No, no, I'm not saying you are, but a lot of this, a lot of the work we do is working with housing associations, with community groups, with local authorities, in people's homes. I don't just sit out here and collect the data. I actually do work with people who are going into their homes. And actually, I'll take a step back from what you first said. The just using the example of one of the community projects we know, the first thing you can do is get somebody into that person's household straight away. And that could be at odd hours and give them the reassurance that their problem will be solved. And one of the problems we have at the moment is the relative lack of support and investment in face-to-face delivery and in home delivery. So you could, yeah, it might be that probably find an example where somebody walked into somebody's household late at night early in the morning and dealt with problems straight away, given that bit of reassurance that help is on its way. And yes, that might be about, that might lead to some early technical interventions, but then look at the whole household where you're there and if you need more down the line, you know, let's set out a plan, let's engage them from the moment you make that first contact and say, okay, I'm going to do this for you now, but then I'm going to come back in a couple of days or come into our office and we'll sort out your energy bills and maybe we'll look at a longer term plan to, I don't know, replace your glazing or make more significant improvements. And one of the key issues there is that you don't pass people from pillar to post all the time, you don't refer them from one service to another because they drop out. And you know, I don't think there's a person here that would disagree with that. I think that's eminently sensible, but it seems to be, but the outcome of that, the very early outcome of that has to be that you deal with the problem in the house, that you deal with whatever the practical thing is that you make the house more, you make the house warmer, you make sure that you deal with the damp, etc. And all the other things flow from that first meeting you have. But there's already people doing that and I accept that there has to be maybe an enlargement of that field. But we go back to, I don't think it's helpful to be almost denigrating the fabric first approach when there's no doubt at all you cannot improve people's living standards without improving the, in many cases, without improving the fabric of their house. That's fine. If the fabric interventions that you're delivering are actually going to end up delivering the savings that you're being told that your models are telling you that you're then telling the person. I mean, just to throw that question back at you, if you're treating mould, what do you do? Do you go in and I've just done with a flat and spray a bit of mould spray around it, which kills the mould temporarily? Or is that mould solution not just doing that, but actually saying, do you know what, you need you all stripped back? Because you can't do that overnight. You might be dealing with a mould problem and you might think that a mould problem is necessarily quick and easy to solve, but it... Yeah, to be fair, I'm going to use a politician's answer here. This is not a question to me, it's a question to you, but I will answer it. And the fact of that is that that's what we've already said, that you have to deal with the whole thing in the round, but you've got to deal with the problem that's causing the child's asthma, or whatever the case may be. And I think to go in there, you have to look to see if there's a knock-on effect that's still going to cause the child some problems, but you've got to deal with it. Can I, I'm going to let you in very briefly, because Andy wants to come in? It's just a wee follow-up. I mean, basically, Ayrshire and Arran, in partnership with the energy agency, is showing it in areas where wall insulation has been installed, there is a reduction in hospital admissions and GP visits, so they've produced a paper, we've actually discussed it a wee bit before in this committee, so do you not agree with that? I absolutely do, and that's all else being equal, regardless of all the other issues that we've talked about, that alone, they feel has had an impact and reduced number of hospital and GP visits. Yeah, and so fabric does work. What that, of well? Not entirely, but to anything. It will need some reduction. It won't, in most cases, lead to a change in the end point of that person's health condition. I actually was one of the authors of the book environment report supporting RPP3, and what we said there is yes, she will get a reduction in GP admissions, but what's fabric first, or what that intervention will do, will just push back the trigger point, in most cases, where somebody will go and seek help from their GP. So the classic is you've got a, you know, the elderly person goes from the nice warm living room to their bathroom, gets a bit of a heart palpitation, goes and sees their GP. If their whole house is insulated, that point at which they consult their GP is going to be pushed back, which could be several visits, and there will be savings there. We haven't done the maths on what those savings are to the NHS, and I think it absolutely needs to be done. And actually, that's one of the things that kind of supports our argument. If we could get proper data on these figures and data on those savings, we could use that as a justification for actually more in-home advice and in-home support, which would drive technical solutions, but it would also, as we say, put householders first. Thanks very much, convener. So some further questions, and I'll be directing some particularly at you, Professor Hart. To begin with, the bill that we're scrutinising at the moment sets a target, a definition that makes provision for a fuel poverty strategy and some reporting. So I just wanted to confirm early on in your evidence, Dr Baker, that you were talking about the inadequacies of the EPC ratings and all the rest of it. The bill doesn't make any provision for that. The references that you're making there are to how we deliver, just to be clear, but that's fine, and so that'll be up to the strategy in delivering all the rest of it. So just looking at the actual definition of fuel poverty, which is now a more complex definition, the first thing I just want to clarify is that definitions of fuel poverty are used with the Scottish Household Survey and other statistics to come up with a national figure of the proportion of the population living in fuel poverty. We had the latest data, I think that you just mentioned it yesterday. That definition is not used, and while I'd be interested in your view, can it be used, or to what extent could it be used, in actually designing delivery programmes? Because the definition, as I understand it in the bill, is to provide headline stats for the country, how Glasgow City Council, how Argyll and Bute Council, how anybody else goes about reducing fuel poverty and deciding where to target it, is a separate question. Would you agree? Yes. I mean, in itself it doesn't, because it's obviously a heterogeneous problem, and there are different drivers in different areas. It could, the way in which you design it and the incentives that that produces could influence the emphasis put on different interventions. So, how you phrase your definition matters for that reason. Coming on to the question of modelled data, which Dr Hirsh your critical of, what is fundamentally the problem with modelled data? Is it a problem in getting an accurate assessment of the proportion of people living in fuel poverty, or is it a problem in relationship to ensuring that the programmes designed to reduce fuel poverty are well designed? Sorry, what was I saying? Just you. I was not quite sure what you mean when you said I was critical of modelled data. No, sorry, Dr Baker. I'm sorry, yes. The simple answer to that is both. We, I think it's become quite clear particularly from our work, but also from even from the new SHHS stats that the definition, there is this question of do we need a rural adjustment or a remote rural adjustment in the definition. Is the question or is the issue of or condition of fuel poverty significantly different in rural areas to urban areas and particularly remote rural areas? I think it's very, very clear that that answer is yes. What we do about that is obviously up to the committee and those working on the bill, but we would, you know, we have, and I think Donald would agree, we've argued for a need for a rural adjustment and the new SHHS stats do actually show that that's, so that the increase in fuel poverty over the last year has been proportionally higher in rural areas. In terms of delivering the measures, yes, we are currently recommending measures for households based on a model, based on an assessment procedure, and based on EPCs, which in many cases and particularly in Scotland and particularly amongst traditional properties, remote rural properties, more anything, the further you deviate from a standard nice build to two, three bed semi, the more accurate these predictions or model results become. And sometimes you will get higher, you know, higher than expected savings and sometimes you'll get lower than expected savings, significantly. Potentially orders a magnitude difference and you need much greater accuracy in order, you know, in order to not have negative consequences, in order to, you know, if you, if you're, in order to both drive better energy efficiency behaviours and at the same time, you know, actually say that if you're going to get X-matter savings, they're going to be delivered. So, Dr, Professor Hirsh, on the minimum income standard, thanks for your evidence, which is short and concise. And you are currently responsible for producing a minimum income standard for the whole of the UK with a London waiting, that's all you do geographic, I mean, that's a big job, but I mean, all I'm saying is you produce two measures or do you produce any others? Okay, so first I should declare an interest that this discussion debate is going to be about whether there should be a remote rural measure. But we'll come on to that in a minute. I just want to clarify that. I just say from the outset that insofar as that comes into it, we may well potentially have an interest in the sense that we would maybe ask to do part of calculating that. So I should declare that interest. What we do is, we now regularly do the UK version, and that is the version in which this bill is presently drafted would be regularly taking data from. It wouldn't require any extra work from us, although we have been in touch with the Scottish Government in terms of how you would actually mine that data, as it were. We do regularly do a London version of that, and we have, in 2013, with some updating in 2016, done a remote rural version of that, a remote rural Scotland version of that. Indeed, the calculations and the proposed measure put by the independent review panel used a crude estimate based on that work that we've already done on remote rural Scotland to come up with their estimates of what the results would be if you did have that element. So the method is there. It's been done, it could be regularly updated, the issue about whether there would be any extra research required is about whether one updates something that has already been done in those areas. Okay, that's helpful. So why did you do that remote rural Scotland for 2013? Was that for the fuel poverty panel? Did they work? No, it was Highlands, Islands Enterprise and in partnership with quite a lot of organisations, including local authorities in the area and other groups that rehab the rural and islands housing association forum. So there was a coalition within that area who not solely because of fuel but because of the perception that there was a range of additional costs in remote rural Scotland asked us to do a study and funded that study. Okay, that's very helpful. So you've said in your evidence that it would you say you can say see no conclusive argument against taking up the expert panel's recommendation to produce a remote rural variation. What the ministers told us is that that's not necessary and would be quite expensive. Well, I saw the note which they put. The would be quite expensive. I did, I have talked to them and my estimate is that were we to do it and I can only tell you what it would cost us to do. What it involves is not every year but on some regular cycle making sure that your estimate of additional non-fuel costs in those areas keeps touch with reality and also that when you apply a premium to the UK Ms that you do it in a way which is adjusted whenever the UK Ms changes because you've got a different start and point. There are like touch ways of doing that. You could do it in more or less detail in terms of how many areas you looked at but it would require some additional qualitative research of the kind we did initially of talking to people in those areas about the extra costs and some regular fairly routine updating of prices. My broad estimate is that where we to do it it would cost something in between 50 and 100,000 a year. I don't know quite why they put half a million over four years rather than five but that would have been a maximum in our view. Is that a lot of money? Well I read that they spend 100 million ish addressing fuel poverty so 50 to 100,000 a year is not very much in comparison to that is it and I reckon they spend about two million on the Scottish house condition survey. So you need to if you want to make sure you target things properly you need to spend a small amount on gathering knowledge. I don't believe that's a large amount. The other question is it wouldn't make much difference. Well the fuel the independent review panel estimated that in remote rural Scotland under their measure which included this adjustment there would be 40% fuel poverty and the Scottish Government's technical annex estimates that in those areas it would be 28%. So I don't think that's a negligible difference. I think it does. There are all sorts of technicalities about how those measures are compared but the underlying thing is that if you're saying which is what our evidence suggested that it can cost 25 to 40% more to live in an area then why wouldn't having a threshold that much higher make a difference to the numbers you're saying in fuel poverty? I mean it's a large percentage of the population would be in that band between those two thresholds and so I'm a bit confused by the notion that well this wouldn't make wouldn't really change and this isn't driving the reduction compared to having no it's true that if you have no income threshold there are some people who are on pretty decent incomes who spend more than 10% and I really strongly agree that those people shouldn't be considered to be in fuel poverty because just because you're spending a certain percentage of your income doesn't mean you haven't got enough left to cover your expenses. The important thing though is that this is why I think that there is a case that in the same areas where fuel costs are high so are other costs and so if you've said in the past that fuel poverty is a problem because people spend a lot on fuel then saying well how much have you got left after spending on fuel is that adequate it's really important to take into account those additional costs because that's part of what's what's making things difficult for those households. I mean the other thing I would say is that we've done work in different areas we did a project in rural England where there were some differences in costs but they were quite small people can still get to the main supermarkets they don't have to travel vast distances to get to work some of the some of the they don't pay for extra delivery charges some of those things which you're seeing in remote rural Scotland I think from the research we've done it's really unique in the UK in terms of producing those extra costs London produces extra costs but a lot of them are things like housing which you can take account of and the measure does take account of but this is about extra costs across the board which in my view it's kind of almost we almost found that it was the only part of the UK which was really really different from our main sort of urban model Okay, that's helpful Do you see a case for having a Scottish MIS or is that a much less important distinction Yeah, that issue has come up Yeah, that issue has come up and for that reason this year in our routine work we made sure that we did some of our research in Scotland as well as in England to see whether our hypothesis which had been partly based on some earlier work was valid which is that really most parts of the UK are pretty much the same most urban parts particularly are pretty much the same in terms of the way people look at how people define minimum costs and we do pricing at national supermarkets and at national chain stores and so on which would be accessible to somebody in Falkirk but not in Stonaway and it was quite striking that when we did that research we found pretty close to zero difference and I'm aware that with the living wage which is also based on our research that there is a standard which people have been applying across the UK and it would be very confusing to start dividing it up and of course it's used a lot in Scotland and so I think that if we felt that this was producing something which either had not been looked at in Scotland or was very different because people in Scotland do things very differently and have different ideas about living standards then it would be really important that we don't have some kind of English version but as I said we have now done work across the UK which doesn't suggest that Okay thanks So as I understand it the data that we have on rates of fuel poverty is gathered nationwide through the Scottish household survey and other statistics and then it's broken down by local authority and we have that data published would it be more advisable on the assumption that we were to agree that we need a remote rural and we need to yet to take a view on that but on the assumption that we were would it be better to present these statistics in relation to the sixfold urban rural classification than the administrative boundaries of local authorities? Well I think that it's good to do both I mean in particular if you're trying to develop strategies than having the sixfold classification is really helpful because it talks about area types which are likely to have some commonalities in terms of approaches I mean a lot of the local authorities are mainly within one of the sixfold but can I just raise an issue which actually has come to my attention since I wrote my submission looking at some of the things that have been said and reflecting on all this and that is that the sixfold classification has actually got two categories which we think from our research have got significantly higher costs one is what's called what is called in that classification remote rural which is remote rural settlements below 3,000 and more than half an hour from a larger town the other is what is category 4 which is remote towns which are between 3,000 and 10,000 and also at least half an hour from a larger place and in fact we look when what we called remote rural Scotland included that, included a place like Thurso and Stonaway and Lerwick and I suspect that the initial calculations made by the independent review panel I only looked at category 6 but actually there's just as much a case I would submit also having category 4 included in that I mean it's all part of the same work and we made the calculations and that's because if you live in Thurso and if you'd have somebody else living in a village outside there so most of the costs we identified are still there because it's about possibly having to travel quite ways to work not having access to a large supermarket and therefore paying higher prices and in the case of the island somebody likes them, like Lerwick having large delivery charges a lot of goods cost more so that's just a caveat and the reason I mentioned that is because were the legislation to be amended and the words remote rural to be in there that could be taken literally to be the category 6 which has that label I think that in terms of how it would be advisable to do that and the logic of doing that I think it would be categories 4 and 6 so it would be remote rural and remote towns yeah okay that's extremely helpful thank you very much indeed and for that just a couple of brief questions and then I'll conclude on this so Dr Baker you talked in your evidence about a workshop an expert workshop held in Glasgow in August 2017 about a consensus about the postponement for two or three years is there a written record of that that you can provide us with or? I don't have a written record but it was organised by the Scottish Government I think it was communities analytical services those communities services they are so I'd expect them to have a record I can the the expert panel presented and it was largely academics there was one person from one of the stakeholder organisations who's delivery body was in the room who had very little contribution I'd say the consensus in that room was overwhelming and was even the chair of the panel of the civil servant said I am amazed that I've got you lot in this room and that you're all agreeing around what this panel is saying I totally endorse the findings from the panel's report and it's an excellent report I just wish the Scottish Government would have taken more cognisance of it but just to comment because I know Donald can't comment on the value of doing his work which he may be contracting for as far as I'm concerned if you're going to charge 100K a year to do some work in rural areas we've already accepted that we don't have an evaluation of the savings from GPs visits or whatever in those areas providing that cost benefit analysis comes out in favour of savings to the economy I think it's an easy win you know I'd pay him if it was saving £200,000 across the Hines and Islands to do £100,000 at work a year or you know give him his money That's a helpful endorsement I've only known the thing that your job is agent as the... I'm not taking any money out of this and the final question Dr Baker from me for the moment in any case is you talk about you've consistently criticised the Scottish Government for involving delivery bodies and the design of energy efficiency and fuel poverty schemes now again that's strictly out with the remit of the bill the bill doesn't talk about who should be doing that will come on to questions about the strategy and scrutiny and monitoring and all the rest of it but could you just say briefly why you think that is a bad idea and whether you think that to date that has had adverse consequences okay I should say I was the lead author of the review of the energy systems package of the Scottish Government in a report that was heavily debated should we say and I would argue that some bits were some of the more controversial findings were redacted but have been revisited in later work we have a situation at the moment where we have certain organisations including Energy Saving Trust and Warmworks as they collaborate with Changeworks and Everworn who deliver Home Energy Scotland the national home energy helpline and online service you know which does its job for improving energy efficiency in certain groups of households we would argue that's rather small and they also manage and deliver the HEED Home Energy Efficiency Database which is model data let's not forget that the ST Changeworks although they are not-for-profit they're still knocked public bodies they're still you know they're a step away I've worked for a not-for-profit company before just because you're not-for-profit does not mean that you're still trying to increase your internal financial capital in order to sustain yourselves long-term now there are reasons why you know obviously if you're an organisation that's delivering a service you're going to lobby to have more money to deliver that service yeah I don't I don't think I mean it's just a general point that there are vested interests at stake and we absolutely always have to be alert to them that that's fine and there's no difference here has there been adverse consequences do you think as a consequence of paying too close HEED to the advice of such bodies yeah I think there are two main adverse consequences there's one that we have technical solutions and the policy around that being driven by model data now I don't have a vested interest in promoting real data you know it doesn't cost me anything and I'm I may or may not be contracting in the future but the work we've been done has been totally independent so you are going you know it costs money to develop and maintain a model it also costs money to develop and maintain databases of real data but that's largely done by local authorities housing associations as part of their their work anyway the other thing is you've currently got a very very significant investment in home energy in funding towards Home Energy Scotland which is something like two-thirds of the overall budget now we're not saying that Home Energy Scotland should go away at all no it's there it delivers a service it delivers useful advice to those who can access information by phone and online but in terms of fuel poor householders you know that's not strictly a large number of those householders we've published we're about to publish a new paper showing this exactly there are barriers people don't like talking over the phone people have difficulty understanding complex problems over the phone actually in a lot of cases or what you need is somebody to go in and show somebody how to use their heating system properly which you can't do over the phone so why do we have a bias in a significant bias in funding towards we can do it over the phone we can do it online when actually okay and I should I should actually note that the est and change works do do do in home visits as well but actually the vast majority of that work is done by local authorities is done by housing associations and charities and actually the way that we tackle fuel poverty on the ground is very much in the line of what we've been saying I've been presenting our work and I've had people come back go well that's what we do in practice yes but that's not what policy is driving okay thank you Keith thank you and Kenny you wanted to come in on the oh yeah I just want to come in and want to just a bit the kind of you know the urban the rural classifications I mean do you think there needs to be more flexibility in that I mean for example you talked about Lerwick Stornoway et cetera and third so do you think that for example all of Scotland and that represent to populate to major island communities with about 6,000 people in total do you think all islands should be included if there is an MIS remote rural classification I think that that's a really important question and something which I've been reflecting on when we did this original work it was trying to give a quality description about different areas of Scotland and it was really important to say for example that if you're on Shetland and you are on the mainland of Shetland you don't face as high costs if you're on another island where you have to have to take a ferry on the way to work for example and there are a lot of subtleties like that and we had we gave sort of I think four main sort of area types and then about sort of 10 other 10 others and that's the kind of thing which can make this kind of research potentially quite expensive although not you know not in the order of things the money that's being spent on this problem but that can make it that complexity can add to the cost however if you're if your main objective is to measure fuel poverty in general terms and also to see whether it whether in certain regions it's it's you know Scotland it's higher than others it becomes less important to for every case to sort of be really accurately measured against the exact area that it's in and indeed what the review panel did was to take an average and they applied it and of course when you're looking at at numbers even within remote rural Scotland the numbers will get smaller and smaller the more the more remote you get because there are a few people living there and so yes it's really important to make those distinctions if you want to understand about the problems and address the problems of particular areas but no you don't need that fine grained detail if you're just trying to come up with it with sort of what which way things are going and what the overall number of people within remote rural Scotland are who are in fuel poverty I mean there is an issue about islands which one would have to look at in particular the nearer islands and whether you include those and I think that you'd need a one-off to do this you would you have got a starting point which is the figures which we produced in 2013 and the kind of percentage in extra that it costs to live in areas you could you could make the calc it's wrong to it's wrong to argue by the way that you couldn't make a calculation right away because you could have that as a starting point but in updating it and refining it you would have to have a one-off exercise we really looked at which specific areas you were going to count because you need to know every person in the survey you need to know whether you're going to whether you're going to count them and you know the simple way is to do it by classifications on the sixth fold and that you might think that's a good enough a good enough way but you know there are arguments for including or excluding or adapting certain areas as well yeah I mean I think on the mainland you know you can argue to the cows come home really about what is remote and you know how big a remote settlement is and what rural is and there are obviously classification already but an island is an island and it's less than 2% of Scotland's population incomes generally tend to be lower as well as costs higher and one would have thought that if we get down the road of a minimum income standard for remote and rural I would have thought that all of Scotland's islands would just be you know unless you're going to go to the nth degree and examining every single island and which islands have got a higher you know but I think I'm right in saying that all of them would be in category 4 or 6 because obviously all of them are at least half an hour from it there are no towns in Scotland which are on an island which is more than 10,000 people absolutely so that would be covered in that classification yeah and there's clearly going to be more difference between any island in Scotland in Scotland I would think then between say if you want to go in Liverpool or Bristol or yeah I also think in that respect that the initial estimate which was crude because it was a you know it was a sort of starting point which just took an average I think for the whole of of remote rural and just took a percentage uplift I think you would want to be more nuanced than that I think you would want to have a different at least have one for islands one for highlands and maybe one for remote southern Scotland which are the three sort of main categories so I very much agree with you that they are different they are different in type for many many reasons that we identify in terms of costs dr Baker I would concur with that I'd also with with a view to climate change over the next you know took 20 30 40 years and the changes that that could incur you know let's not be let's be aware that what is already an isolated settlement or what may be a very rural settlement could also become isolated under you know sea level rises look thinking particularly Dumfries and Galloway and the the south west coast and also on the question of what is an island well we for part of our work reclassified sky as a rural area because there was a bridge going over it and the work we were doing was looking at fuel that was coming over the bridge biomass so yeah I think you just have to be careful within the bounds and what is reasonable that can be done within within policy at the moment I broadly agree with everything Dolls just said and I think in remote rural you're right to hit on Galloway because people sometimes forget their places in you know Ayrshire and Galloway and the borders are remote rural as well as islands and islands okay thank you thank you very much alexander thank you thank you good morning gentlemen can I talk about the energy performance certificates and how they have featured now they've been quite prominent in the draft fuel poverty strategy and also in the energy efficient scotland route map now the scottish government believe in these and have given them validity because they see that as an opportunity of measuring and giving efficiency within homes Dr Begge you've been quite critical about that process can I maybe ask for you to give me some expansion on that role and what you believe and what you see within that process okay to for those just to give you a bit of technical policy background EPCs have been required by the European Union since august 2007 and the way that EPCs are delivered or produced is covered under the energy performance of buildings directive Scotland had a choice a couple of years ago as to which method it was going to use and which model it was going to use that was consultation we responded EPCs are generated using a model using well using standard assessment procedure which uses the building's research establishment domestic energy model 12 and I forget the exact subversion of it at the moment but one of my colleagues is probably watching this kicking me but significant you know studies going back you know even though breedem has improved over the years I'm not going to say it's an under but it's incremental it was never useful for Scotland in the first place really the original model the original work done on the model was done on about 30 semi-detached two three bed properties in Milton Keynes that was the original empirical work done on it the further you deviate from standard building archetypes and by which I could largely mean standard English building archetypes the more inaccurate those assessments get and that's the assessment of how much energy a building is using and how much it will save or not save under any intervention they're significant in Scotland you know they're exacerbated by traditional build they're exacerbated by old build they're exacerbated by non-standard building types they're exacerbated by the fact that you know not so much work was done on Scottish properties so you know by the time you get to to a you know an old farmhouse in the you know somewhere somewhere outside in Videss you can throw the thing out the window you genuinely don't know and you know it's not just me that's been saying this is this is building scientists going back years and years and years have said look you can use these models but they are limitations and we certainly at this stage would not recommend EPCs as a policy driver in the way that they're currently being used now we are and I'll send it I'll make sure that the committee gets a copy of the paper when it comes out on the 18th but it's embargoed for the time being we have looked at it and we said actually what EPPD says under the guidance is you can you know it encourages more use of real data you know you could put on an EPC this building was occupied by a two person you know by a young family household for the last three years its average energy consumption was this we you know at a broad assessment these are the sort of measures that you might recommend for a lot of measures anyway you'd have to get somebody to go back in to do a site assessment if you're going to install the renewable energy technology on a building you have to go back anyway so why are we putting into an EPC you know this will have x amount of savings it should be a quite a broad range and by the way somebody needs to come back and have a look we can do this and obviously with smart technologies coming in we're going to be able to get a much better handle I'm quite critical of the smart meter programme but smart technology in general as a means of getting real and accurate data back to the suppliers and back to government great and we're now entering a stage where you know more and more that data will come online even things like internal temperature data we'll be able to get hold of there's a danger there that those technologies will benefit the middle class and those who can afford and those who are aware of them first and we need to make sure that good technology and by good I do not mean the smart meters being rolled out at the moment I mean your Google kit your you know your kit developed by proper data managers gets into those homes because nest is better you know I'm not going to I'm not going to recommend any particular technology but something like nest is going to be better than something you're going to get subsidised at the moment if you look in the States I didn't realise in New York apparently they're now subsidising the better technologies for households so that's something we can do amongst those that need them at not substantial cost and that means we'll get better data to produce EPCs and you know we're looking at a bill that's looking towards 2040 this can be staged in there's no there's no reason to say we're going to have everything in place tomorrow but if we know that smart kit is coming online more and we can make more in better use and this is the thing we don't make enough use of the energy data that's already collected by local authorities the household data that's collected by housing associations and organisations that have the data protection clearance to manage that information because we could start talking talking about fairly sensitive information including health information and we do need to look at what how we can link the NHS into this and we will be proposing I forget if it's in that paper or another one a national energy service along the lines of the NHS a public energy service which would have the authority to collate and maintain that data in a secure environment because that's the critical thing you know the last thing we want is personal health data getting hacked and that has to be within a public firewall you know the firewall that's sat there that local authorities government are sat behind data is vitally important and is being used as you've already indicated in some locations on a much better means of measurement local authorities are tackling that some are doing it much better than others but at the same time there's not the consistency across the piece and that's where the difficulty comes because we're not then looking at like with like and individuals and organisations are putting in measures to try and support households but it may be being validated because of what data they've actually taken on board and that data in itself is not correct and is not giving the best opportunity for them to manage the energy efficiency within the house itself so what do we need to do more to ensure that takes place? Um well I mean this is one of those points where you go um you know we've we developed a study that actually did that user but admittedly using data from as you say housing associations and local authorities that were that were using it better in the first place um I you probably refer to Ron my colleague who works for Edinburgh Council now as to how we do that better but take the best examples just put the put the support in there get the local authorities together you know but we use best practice um Scottish Government has to lead on that you know has to put in place a framework you know a data collection framework or whatever or common framework which it needs to work with the local authorities to do and the housing associations we've shown we can do this cost effectively we can show we can do it you know for the give or take at the same cost of SHCS anyway um so why aren't we doing it and that gets back to the question of vested interests okay thank you convener okay thank you can can I just sorry to go on you go yeah yeah go on you go convener if that's okay so sticking with EPCs um did do you think it's possible to develop a a Scottish EPC rather than use the UK wide model um and it's totally within the Scottish Government's powers to do it but I actually I kind of think that the model that we're proposing could apply to England and Wales anyway um I don't think I don't think there's nothing in my head that says there is a specific need for Scottish EPCs there is a need for the models and the underlie EPCs if we're going to continue to use them and we will argue that in you know in the exception of new build you know for the first year or two you probably don't need to use modelling at all so there is a question of whether you not you want to spend vast amounts of money building a Scottish building model well actually that would be exorbitantly costly so why bother you know why don't we just sort of take a step back look at what the requirements of EPBDR look at how we can use more of that real data as part of generating them and we have looked at it and we said actually well not only not only does EPBDR allow for it it actually encourages it in the guidance it's quite a broad scope as to what can be done and all of it is totally within the Scottish Government's devolve powers to do that so yeah so if EPC I think that's a yes yeah I think it's a yes we could go and we could go a different way and it would be great you know if we accept that EPCs aren't fit for purpose yeah we can have an EPC when you could you could do something better here yeah that's a yes yes definitely good okay thank you very much for coming here today and to contributing towards our scrutiny of the bill I'm now going to suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to change over thank you for our second panel today I'd like to welcome Liz Markey the director of energy agency Laurie Morgan Klein public affairs officer step change debt charity Scotland Alasdair Calder housing services home energy efficiency and Bill Halladay team leading team lead for housing operations at Argyll and Buton Council council can I thank you all for your submissions and we'll go straight to questions from members Andy, do you want to go first? Yeah, I wasn't planning to convener but I'm happy to go first I'll go first if you want that's okay so this is a bill looking at a new target new definition a strategy and reporting do you think the new definition is better than the old one and will deliver better outcomes ultimately in the programmes we designed to to reduce fuel poverty well just to start off I think the new fuel poverty definition is actually a lot more complicated to convey to householders it's going to be a lot more difficult for frontline advisers to be able to provide that sort of test of fuel poverty in the line of work I think there are benefits of the fuel poverty the new definition where you will see maybe householders who have a large income and large energy costs now not fuel poor I think that's a positive but I think there's there's definite issues around the the sort of rural nature and the elements that aren't addressed in the new definition and I would say that's from our point of view a massive concern in terms of the new definition So, before there can come in on that could I just pick you up on that response you say in your evidence you just said it extremely difficult to explain to householders and make it difficult for advisers in the front line but pursuing a line of questioning I was doing in previous sessions my understanding is that this new definition is not designed for frontline advisers for speaking to people on the doorstep for even engaging people in a local authority area it's designed to give us a national figure on the percentage of people living in fuel poverty In terms of delivery of programmes you will still have to use that sort of definition to establish who's going to be fuel poor and who's not Do you do that at the moment with the current definition? We currently use a proxy for our HEAPSabs programme of Council tax band A to C and we use a specific rural and island in EPC band E and below So you'll continue to use a proxy with the new definition? It depends if we're able to establish any real improvement on targeting of fuel poor households but for the time being we'll continue to use the proxy So a more complicated definition if under the current definition which is relatively straightforward you're using proxies to design programmes under a more complex definition it's hard to see how you would That's under Scottish Government guidance that we're using the proxy for Council tax band A to C Yeah, I understand that Okay, that's helpful Would other members like to comment on the original question? Yeah, I would say that in principle it's a good idea to redefine the fuel poor but I concur really with what Norrie Kerr said at the previous committee reports which was that it's the definition that has been redesigned several times in the last 10 years and every time that happens the number of people in fuel poverty goes down So in some ways it's a good thing and it does take out some of the people living in the larger homes but I think we need to keep that in mind that there is still huge numbers of people in fuel poverty and it is one of the schemes that we run in Dumfries and Galloway it's a fuel poverty assistance scheme and yes we use a proxy but it's actually very easy to use a proxy when we say it and this is the way that Scottish Government previously designed fuel poverty So the more complications the more difficult it becomes to explain to the public why one member of the public is able to get a new boiler and the next door neighbour or external wall insulation which is even more obvious that they can't have because they're not in that definition I think the other thing that's really important to remember is that there's still an awful lot of people in extreme fuel poverty and it's important that we don't lose that as we redefine the definition But just if I could also follow that you're saying difficult to explain to somebody where next door but at the moment you're not using the existing definition this is also due to the guidance is it from the Scottish Government that determines who gets and who does not get support the new definition won't change that fundamentally will it? We do use the new we use under the area-based schemes the energy efficient Scotland schemes we use the proxy however we have another scheme in Dumfries and Galloway which I'd like to talk about later which is specifically designed to be almost an emergency help system and is designed under a fuel poverty banner from the council and it's very easy to use the old definition for that to explain that if you use more than 10% of your income on your fuel bills then we can help you So you are using the actual definition very directly and deliberately that's helpful and it's very quick and very easy really Thanks Lauren I think what one concern we have and these things are always a bit like that is that there's an arbitrary nature to a definition so we found we sampled about 2000 or 2200 of our clients in the GPFIX post codes and we found that of those 465 clients that didn't meet the definition about 83 of those people were very marginally outside it so spending between 9% and 10% of adjusted net and their fuel costs and they were definitely in financial distress and almost certainly would be rationing energy would be at risk of suffering ill effects of fuel poverty so it seems to me to be a bit self-defeating to define fuel poverty in a way that would miss out these people that are in that situation and we're also a little concerned about how our years are reckoned in the definition so one client for instance who did not meet the definition in our sample had £5,000 of energy a year now their solution they would hopefully be spending sufficient amount to cover their on-going fuel cost but I'd be very surprised indeed if that client was not managing that potentially below what was a comfortable level to an order to see their arrears being paid and the other issue is if they are making a token payment towards arrears rather than a higher level save £1 per month along with their existing heating that might disguise the extent to those arrears No, you've provided some good examples of that but I come back to the question again that the definition of fuel poverty is to come princep in the bill is to arrive at a national picture of the proportion of people living in fuel poverty and therefore these kind of examples are kind of neither here nor there really in terms of people with arrears or people who live on an island that now has got less ferry services all these particular circumstances can't be captured by that so what you're saying here really that it's important to design the delivery programmes to make sure that we're not too rigid about who gets support I think that there's an element of not making a system too rigid but also a national picture sure they shouldn't be blurry and to mess out people experiencing fuel poverty in that national picture would to me I just think that that seems to not be the intention behind establishing a national picture if you're messing out that part of the story No, I think you make a good point about arrears but of course in any sampling which is derived from a sample the arrears would be a very small factor but I'd absolutely take the point that in terms of people living in fuel poverty who may have arrears for example they may not be in fuel poverty according to the definition and therefore there are questions to be asked very much to take that point because I have a question about the changes to the vulnerability thresholds in terms of the definition for raising it from 60 to 75 is that a good idea? I'm not sure it's particularly a good idea I'm not sure how susceptibility to the ill effects of cold are affected simply by age I think it's more complicated than that I think it's affected by health I think it's generally poverty as well age is a factor older people tend to be at home they tend to need higher heating regimes but within the definition further on you know you have you're going to define people who need a higher heating regime to an extent if they need that higher heating regime it does sort of suggest that they're vulnerable to the ill effects of cold and I would suggest that that should be your vulnerability factor rather than just simply age 75 seems to me to be slightly high in terms of age as well there's so much that you know between the ages of 60 and 75 health in particular can go one way or the other and it's just a bit too arbitrary and too high You seem to be suggesting that it's not the not particularly the rising in age but it's the use of age that you would but you would just remove that altogether I think if you're vulnerable to cold and ill effects of cold but that's already dealt with later on isn't it? Yeah, aha so it depends what you're going to use your vulnerability for if that's going to be a passport to to schemes and benefits then I think it's it's too imprecise I think you will miss out people who are susceptible to the ill effects of cold so I think it needs to be a far broader than just on age okay sorry Andy No that's fine again some of this relates to how one designs schemes to implement it and targets resources because finally sort of ask a general question I mean is it your view that where the provisions of this bill to be enacted that we would be able to target the hundreds of millions of pounds that's being proposed to spend on reducing fuel poverty would that would we would be able to spend that more efficiently as a consequence of this bill or to the extent that we're perhaps not spending as efficiently as we might at the moment does this make very little difference I think that Alex Scott referred to that earlier in his answer if you're trying to identify people who are in fuel poverty to the extent that you can help them like Mr and Mrs Smith who live at 21 High Street the best way to do that is for Mr and Mrs Smith to recognise that they are in fuel poverty and then to contact the relevant authorities to ask for help rather than seek them out I think the more complicated the definition is the less likelihood is that people will recognise themselves as being in fuel poverty and then for seek the help that we want to give them to get them out of fuel poverty There will always be people moving in and out of fuel poverty so I think it's really important we address the properties and I think if we can get the property improvement levels up then we will and the long term we will reduce fuel poverty however there is quite a difficulty if you target the individuals then you will improve the property for the long term but there will always be people who move in and out through personal circumstances or health and I think we have to recognise that so at the moment there's a lot of schemes that target just mainly the property but using a proxy system for those in poverty but there's also the national schemes which are more focused on the humans and it's trying to get those two to match is quite difficult when we're working on the ground obviously if you do whole areas then it's much cheaper you can actually do the measures at a much better value price whereas if you find properties all over the place it's actually much more expensive to do the individual properties so I think we need this mix of targeting properties and targeting the people which we have at the moment and I would encourage to keep that rather than going entirely for the human end and not focusing on the properties okay thank you thank you very much okay Liam you wanted to come yeah it kind of follows on from that I don't know if you were here for the earlier session but there was quite a bit of questioning of Dr Baker his somewhat confusing views at times on a fabric first approach so I guess then all of you could answer this is it is it worth having a fabric first approach ie dealing with the property making it more energy efficient I would say absolutely definitely do the property and we'll get on to it later I suspect but we were in time to hear about the energy performance certificates and I have more faith in energy performance certificates but we might get to that later yeah so anyone else I think our experience with our our clients and obviously we are we are dealing with them at a quick sort of in a different way and we're dealing with them when they're in a problem debt situation and that can be a very acute crisis and it can often involve a lot of different agencies being involved to support someone in that situation so from our perspective it would maybe be more of a people first approach but obviously I don't think either the two should be mutually exclusive exclusive if we are able to get someone on to a firm financial footing and have a sort of payment arrangement for their ears in place helping to stop those ears occurring in the future by maybe dealing with the fabric will be necessary as well even though we maybe have to look at income maximisation and welfare advice for that person so it's probably a bit of both though we from our perspective we would be more towards looking at somebody's individual circumstances and how support can best be provided to them I would just echo what Liz has said and just to add that we should be looking at the property as a whole that's not just energy efficiency wise that should be property maintenance and repair as well Point if not, I've got some questions I mean we always say that we ran out of time in the last panel but I was wanting to put one or two points but I mean obviously I think this is quite crucial to this whole discussion this issue about fabric or folk and I think I take on board that you really have to do both you want to look at improving the house and at the same time give advice to people and try and get them to maximise income and use the kind of use the heating efficiently and help with behaviour etc but I notice you've got some really interesting information here Liz where you say that alongside anecdotal reports of improvements to existing health conditions such as COPD and asthma and reports of improved mudfalling insulation pre and post health questionnaires also indicated increase in both physical and mental health scores for those who perceive their home to be much warmer following insulation and you said you go on to say that 94 per cent of the grade of the appearance of their home has improved and the average fuel bill savings are around 250 pounds a year or 23 per cent and fuel poverty rate fell by 45 per cent pre-insulation to 27 per cent post insulations are still as an issue obviously post insulation but so what you're basically saying is that you refute what Dr Baker was saying in terms of rebound because he was trying to say you get your house insulated and then people just put other radiators on et cetera so they're not actually really any better off you're smiling so I take it you don't really agree with that view point it depends on the property and our health studies and then the original one we thought yeah and the individual the health studies that we're working on are on the back of the area-based schemes so the properties tend to be really difficult to heat in the first place they are suitable for external wall insulation so that means that actually the heat is escaping really quickly out the external fabric of the house and they are area-based so there are a lot happening in one area so people are very positive about how much the area is improved and then how it affects their mental health and they're happy for people to drop them off because they're now proud of where they live they didn't used to want anyone to know where they lived and the areas I think you quoted the 94% of respondents agree that the overall condition of their home had been improved and then the few who aren't positive about it tends to be ones where there's maybe only part of the property's been done or they're in an area where it's not been an area-based approach which happens more in Dumfries and Galloway with the nature of the schemes there so they're more individual homes so that's why not everybody's convinced but we have had amazing I mean there's a case study on the back of a report I can send round afterwards where people, several case studies and there's a reduction in gas consumption of 60% and others of 40% and you know the people are so varied I think that's what it highlights people are living at such different temperatures the elderly retired lady on her own living at 14.7 degrees on average over a three-week period so all our temperature and humidity measurements are done over three weeks and the graphs are only we've only got it down a week because it just gets too complicated but it's extrapolated from the three-week one and so once her external wall insulation had been done she was living at 15.7 degrees and she thought she'd want to watch she thought it was so hot now most of us are living probably at 21 degrees in the living room so you know it is really cold but she thought it was great and she said her health improved the same what we're also now trying to look at is whether there's an impact on children's attainment levels because by what people tell us instead of everybody living in one room in the house that's cold but at least that one's warm because everybody's in it and the dog and the telly and the food and the kids are trying to do their homework that actually as soon as they have their house insulated they can use more of the rooms and they can use it as a whole house and then the children are doing their homework in a separate room so it must have a major impact in terms of the health benefits the other people say that they arthritis improves very definite COPD and mental health improvements very quickly so and there is more analysis that's been completed by NHS Ashrin Aaron on actually how much can we define this down and take out all the other confounding factors to look at the real impacts on the health budget but we are quite nervous of getting too involved in that because I think taking money from a health budget and putting it into energy efficiency might be quite controversial even if we are saving money on that but for the whole Scottish budget it must have a major impact and if we can also show children's attainment level then it's thinking of energy efficiency as just a really vital part of our fabric and our world that we live in and nobody should be living in really cold damp homes okay thank you for that just can I just say that as previously been convener the education committee that was a really interesting point about the homework because one of the things that came across time and time again was kids can't do their homework in school because there's no place for them to go so thanks for that I like you wanted to come can I just come in on the back of some of these issues because I think the Dr Baker earlier people had a go at him but I think I knew who he was coming from in terms of the people first approach but in terms of the energy efficiency ratings there's no doubt that that despite the doom and gloom I mean last week I don't know if you saw the evidence but I mean I think Kenny was saying that since he's been in here the the parliaments wanted to tackle fuel poverty and it's been a go with the parliaments since it's established to tackle fuel poverty and you can get a bit down thinking well you know they've not really succeeded but the reality is that where you introduced the energy efficiency ratings for council housing there's no doubt no question that council housing house and association housing has improved significantly so one of my questions would be given that that has been the case do you think that that we need to start to look sector by sector so the private rented sector for example should we be looking at energy efficiency standards there the second point is that where the Dr Baker talked about the people first approach I met with an organisation in Fife this week called Cosay Kingdom and they do free home energy and debt advice are combining the whole lot in terms of a strategy to tackle fuel poverty do we need to be targeting more resources through those types of organisations which would come back to the people first point that Dr Baker because certainly when I met with them this week they do the home visits they go out they are there speaking to people and my third point would be you know we heard people talking earlier about damp houses but the difference between an individual saying their house is damp and it's got dampness and the council calling it condensation is something that comes up time and time and time again indeed I had an email exchange this morning with a lady in Kelty who's got a young child and she tells me that the wallpaper just keeps coming off the walls because of the problems where as the council say it's condensation now when I met with Cosay Kingdom this week they said to me that the type advice they would give is that if you do a washing in the winter and you hang your towels over your radiators that that water just seeps right into the walls so there is something there about behaviour as well but if we have to succeed in tackling fuel poverty and not giving up on tackling it because energy prices will go up what is it that we actually need to do and do we finally need the Scottish Government in their financial memorandum say that there is no real new money going into this do we need more money going into it is it a strategy got to be from the ground rather than centrally There's an awful lot in your questions I'll see if I can cover a few of them On the health study that we've been doing in terms of the energy performance certificates the properties that we've been looking at there's now about 340 in this across the whole of Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway so quite mixed properties there's a 23% of energy saving which is the figure which is calculated from the annual fuel costs reported in the energy performance certificates and that assumes the standard heating regime so it's not the actual savings this is an average of the households by comparison for the properties that we've monitored the average energy saving based on actual usage is similar, is 22% so I would say in the areas that we have been working which are mixed housing the EPCs are remarkably good the other thing that people report is that there is a great reduction in condensation as a result of the insulation and that's not something that we don't specifically ask that we ask them what the improvements are and a large number of them are reporting a real reduction in condensation there has been worries before that if you make the house too airtight then you may get increased condensation I would say even if you do external wall perfectly you improve the windows it's still not airtight generally I'm not sure that should be on but you know there is still airflow in these properties so people are reporting that there is a real reduction in condensation but I think the important bit is that if you can deliver these schemes through local agencies they as well as having national schemes then they can incorporate all the help and advice so that the scheme that we run in Dumfries and Galloway it's very much designed around using all the national and local schemes and pulling them all together so that the main benefit is to the householder that's what we should be looking at as well as the property so the intention this comes from money from the council tackling the poverty strategy and the intention is to make homes more energy efficiency in efficient boost household income and improve quality and standard of living and it's a two-year programme and our as the energy agency we have a member of staff based in Dumfries and we work with all partners to deliver the most this as effectively as possible and provide brilliant customer service and it's centred on human beings as well so within the two-year period we've now in the end of year one there's 75,000 to spend per annum and we've achieved 140 homes with measures, 116 measures out of the 30 contractors that we've used so far 28 of them have been based within a 20 mile radius of the householder and this is in very rural Dumfries and Galloway the other probably key thing is that because they're local contractors we make sure we pay their bills really quickly the bills are paid within seven days of completion of work we want them to keep wanting to work with us and deliver these schemes so it's a question of getting everything in the right category and really believing you need to focus on this the average time for getting measures in place is about three weeks the most recent one it was 14 days for a boiler replacement and it was someone who needed a mental health support worker with him so it took slightly longer but there are lots of schemes of really good local delivery that's happening particularly in rural areas where you have to rely on local smaller organisations to do that sort of work sorry I'll start talking private rented sector and I think the short answer is yes we do need standards in the private rented sector and that's a difficult nut to crack some of my housing association colleagues have difficulty in tenement blocks of mixed ownership where you'll have some owner occupiers in the private rented sector and beside RSL tenants and they have their e-standards to meet and then you have landlords and owners who aren't really that interested in doing works we have had some success with the housing association partners utilising the area-based money available to do external wall insulation and Argyll and Bute still has a small amount of private sector housing grant and we've done external fabric repairs to external walls and roofs and they've been remarkably successful completely transforming the property both in terms of the energy performance internally and the external appearance but they're few and far between but yes I think there does need to be standards set in the private rented sector particularly where you have where you're letting a property that property should meet well it should meet the repairing standard and it's up to the Scottish Government to determine what energy standard should come into the repairing standard but there should certainly be a standard of energy performance before you let to attend and I would argue Okay Just to follow on from Bill's point I think in terms of energy efficiency standards as a whole we've got to bear in mind that in certain rural areas it's going to be difficult to attend a certain EPC rating we've had examples that where properties reached an EPC of band G01 on Nile of Gear and after we've went in through our HEAPSabs programme and installed internal wall insulation I suddenly went up to G19 and that's with significant investment so these rural areas are really discounted and it's something that we maybe need to keep in mind the other point I'd like to make just following on from Lizzie's point with local delivery partners is that Argyllun but comes as an energy efficiency forum and that brings together the likes of local energy agencies it brings together energy trusts and folk with an interest in fuel poverty and basically just to try and share best practice and try and make use or make best use of the resources that are currently available so I would encourage other local authorities to have a look at that I agree with one point about private renting as well the sample of clients those that we identified as meeting the definition 29 per cent of them are renting privately marginally ahead of those renting from housing associations and then the lowest were mortgage or owning outright we also see area I've met with Cosy Kingdoms at an event a few months ago and they do really good work and you can see where that an intervention on multiple different issues and there's some great examples of partnership working and from what Lizzie was saying there that actually and that comes back to my point that viewing it as a fabric versus folk to me is far too polarised I think there's actually there's opportunities to do both if you're going in to speak to someone about improving the home and it comes up that maybe they've got health issues that you might be able to sign post them to you can get an intervention that's much more comprehensive and ultimately then successful so we would be better than I mean so we know that the the government intervention and energy standard for council housing and social landlord housing worked and has been successful so there is policy at a national level but actually the more I look at this the more I hear the kind of work you're doing do we almost need regional strategies that will take account of the regional variations across Scotland so in areas where there's like we need to take consideration of the off-grid for example do you think that that's where we need to be developing this more if we're serious about actually trying to reach these targets that you actually need to look at regional strategies as opposed to one Scottish strategy to some extent but I think I would really appreciate the same standards across the board there's no reason why if somebody's in a private rent they should be living in a worse property than somebody in social housing and the Dumfries and Galloway project is open to every house ownership the area-based schemes are under energy efficient Scotland we are now not able to help private landlords which in principle I completely agree with however in practice it's really really complicated and it can hold up schemes going ahead and the other three owners or other ownership type within a block of four are held up because we can't help a private landlord and it's people living in those properties who are really badly off so I would really like the Scottish Government to be very clear about building standards across the board of all domestic properties to bring them all up to the right standard on that in terms of a you know I would echo Lizzy's points with in terms of the private rented sector and we also find there are a gael and mute that we have a high proportion of empty homes that don't qualify for well the only assistance that they would qualify would be for the equity loan that's currently available which may or may not always be a feasible option so we would encourage having a look into either energy efficiency standards for empty homes or any grant assistance that can be made available for them Okay, thank you. Graham, did you want to come in? No, not on that one Okay, thank you. Can I ask you, the Scottish Government have made two targets, 2045 per cent target rather than the 0 per cent target is having a target necessary? And if so, why? Literally you're starting again, Liz. I've just got an expressive face as I was thinking I think having a target focuses people's minds and we would like to see nobody living in fuel poverty but the realities we've already discussed is depending on people's personal circumstances they can often slip into it even if the house is not too bad so I would like there to be no target well to say that we will have nobody in fuel poverty but I don't think that's probably a realistic option from where we are at the moment particularly not in the next 10, 15 years so yeah I think we need a target but yeah maybe 2.5 per cent or something rather than five five gives us quite a lot of leeway and also if we say that it's practically possible that also gives leeway space Okay, does somebody else have any comment? I'd like that, you know we're talking about housing and people being warm and dry in their homes we should have a target that everybody should live in warm dry homes that they can afford to heat properly so I agree we need a target it does it focuses the mind and with five yearly reviews we can adjust and adapt as we go along but I think we definitely need a target that we aim for and I don't think warm dry homes in 2040s is overly ambitious Yeah I mean just to echo what Bill has said my only other comment would be if it is to be no more fuel poverty or fuel poor households by 2040 by five per cent my concern would be that that five per cent would be disproportionately represented by rural areas given the nature of the off-gas grid the nature of the housing stock and other issues properties being in conservation areas or listed buildings meaning that energy efficiency improvements are generally more costly or more difficult to implement Yeah I'm sure my colleague Kenny Gibson will want to come on to that shortly Why? I would agree with that about the five per cent that the worry there is that all the easy stuff is done and the people in the most acute difficulty are left as well there's the five per cent the target's been met successfully let's have a party and so that would be my worry about with the five per cent there I think as well we can also see from our own figures that electricity rears the average amount that our clients sow is actually that's the second fastest growing debt type we see it's up by about 37 per cent from 2013 to 2017 and it's also increasing more more faster in Scotland we've seen about 11 per cent of clients in 2013 saying that they had energy rears electricity rears sorry and that's gone up to 15 per cent whereas when you look at the whole of the UK if the step changes UK client data that's been far less steep it's been 13 per cent to 14 per cent so it's clearly it's a growing issue in Scotland and so we're welcoming that there's a target to meet it the timeline of that feels 2040 feels very different a distant considering that we're you know we've seen a 4 per cent increase in our clients with their struggling with energy at the moment so that's a concern do you say that you've got some concern about the 2040 target but do you see the rationale behind it or do you obviously there's a realism there we do see that that the rest of this sort of thing takes time but if we've seen a kind of a 4 per cent increase in five years there's a danger that all we're doing is standing still OK, does MDL have any other comment on either the 2040 or the 5 per cent part of the targets 2040 seems an awful long way way it does when you're my age I can assure you and it would mean only 1 per cent increase every year so that's really not moving very fast I also suspect my colleague Kenny Gibson's going to come in on that point as well but so my feeling is it needs to be much sooner than that and we really welcome the fact that energy is a part of the national infrastructure programme and that's absolutely brilliant but it really needs the spend on it to it's linking into the preventative spend if we can get properties warmer we can the other thing within south and east air show we're trying to research whether there's been a reduction in the police having to follow up on social issues in the areas where the work's been done that needs two or three years but we think that there probably is a reduction in antisocial behaviour so if you can look at the preventative spend that you're getting as a result of energy efficiency in terms of health, education, social behaviour the strengthening of communities, local businesses then actually I would have thought it would make sense to spend more on the energy efficiency side of things to improve the other aspects of our society okay that's a good plug for more money for just a second a Zimdielsef any comment on that? I think we have to be careful you know in point I was at 1996 the home energy conservation act and then we had the 2016 target which was missed by a long way I think this is going to be a long and slow process and I think we have to recognise that that we're not going to achieve overnight changes we can perhaps step up on the energy efficiency improvement of housing but the actual tackling of fuel poverty the the issue of income levels and fuel costs are going to take a lot longer to change there is still something of a resistance to switching and getting on lower tariffs and that that's going to take a long time to change people's attitudes and householder attitudes the behavioural thing I'm a little uncomfortable with bringing behaviour into this because there is a tendency for that to sound as though you know well actually you're making yourself fuel poor and I don't believe that anybody is for a minute but there are undoubtedly behavioural changes that are required and they take time and they take resources and it's quite old fashioned resources it's really feet on the ground going out talking to people, leading them through a process and then coaching them through that process and that takes resources as well but it also takes time I tend to disagree with you I don't actually think 2040s that far away although you know in other ways it is you're younger than me okay sorry just the you talked about fuel prices and income levels which are obviously to the issues that we don't have levers over in this parliament which makes it I suspect makes 2040 a more rational target possibly than one that's closer to because we can't quite be sure what's going to happen and we might not have the measures to be able to deal with it would you agree with that? I would tend to agree with that yes but I think if there's five yearly reviews then that it can be adjusted as things go along there will also undoubtedly be technological improvements as well which will improve what can be delivered for people which will have an impact as well and you know I don't know what's coming along the line there could be something that makes a step change and then you might want to bring that target forward but currently from where we're sitting today I would think 2040s realistic I think if you bring it sorry Liz but if you bring it too far down I think you risk people going back to what happened in 1996 and the 2016 target and it was just missed and for at least that half of that time people knew it was going to be missed and you know we're probably just waiting on it passing to find out what came next Is there a danger that we're trying to tackle too much and we're so broad that we end up missing a lot because if you take for example and I think somebody said earlier about the warm homes you know most people would think it's not it's not really been over ambitious to think that in Scotland we would have houses that were watertight and warm and should we not be actually starting to break down more where we're about if you take the supplier side of things there's now I'm told 72 suppliers out there a lower couple went bust on the last week you know is that a separate issue? Are we trying to combine all these issues together we can't control the prices energy we don't have the power to do that but surely surely it's not ambitious in Scotland to say that everyone should have a house that is warm watertight and has the heating facility there is that over ambitious? In some ways no but in other ways yes I mean we know from the Hecke experience in the 2016 target that was not met that yes it is ambitious and it is difficult to achieve and with another hat that I wear I would also say that you know it's actually proving quite difficult in Scotland to have houses particularly tenement houses which are dry and not unstable never mind anything else you know the condition of a lot of our housing stock is quite poor careful about wanting to limit it any further one of our worries about the bill is that it has narrowed things down and actually previously it was looking at more of a warm homes bill and it's now become more of a fuel poverty bill and we're quite keen for it to become a bit white to be as wide as possible so that we can target properties of all types through it okay right okay but do we accept that this bill is also working in tandem with other legislation that's going through the parliament that's done thank you okay yeah my understanding is it's one of three bills along with climate change and a warm homes bill that'll be in this parliament so to tackle all these issues and they'll complement each other just but in terms of ambition I think at time of stagnant wages and political uncertainty with Brexit and fuel prices rising above inflation I think to reduce the number of people households in fuel poverty by a net 23,000 a year for 20 years consecutive years is ambitious and that represents not a 1% annual decrease from 600,000 to 140,000 not a 4% annual decrease so I think that is ambitious but the point I wanted to really go on was the issue of rurality because that's been mentioned a couple of times and you know in this Argyll and Bute Council submission it's quite hard-hitting and I think it's a really good submission it says here it talks about the blanket target which is Scotland-wide and he says a potential that households in remote and rural areas will be disproportionately represented in the residual 5% and you've already touched that on that and you go on to say that despite the non-additional costs associated with remote and rural areas there's still no allowance for this in the fuel poverty bill so I'm just wondering what measures you feel should be implemented in order to ensure that we don't have a situation whereby you know as Mr Cleane said the low-hanging fruit is effectively dealt with first in order to meet targets and you end up with the most difficult hard-to-heat houses and people in the deepest fuel poverty being left to the end of this process Are there Bill or Alistair I don't mind which one so far? Yeah I mean I think I think I've mentioned that you know the rural factor isn't really addressed in this bill I think using the the MIS which is a UK based approach that doesn't really make sense for us we could look at developing a Scottish minimum income standard and with that have a rural element in it alternatively if the way forward is to continue to use the MIS the UK wide one I would maybe suggest to look at instead of having a 90 per cent sort of measurement against fuel poverty to account for rural areas why not have a 110 or 120 per cent measurement against fuel poverty to take account of these areas that are on higher higher energy costs like fuel like oil sorry or electric heating I don't believe that that would substantially change the likes of folk who are heating their homes using gas which is substantially cheaper so I think that that may be one way of capturing the rural issue Professor Hirsch gave evidence before said there's no really any difference between urban Scotland and urban England excluding London so there's no really any necessity if you like in terms of that issue to have a Scottish MIS but there is an argument whether the committee and the Government agree or not for a rural and I would say rural on island remote remote MIS would all of Argyll and Bute be included in that or would you define it more how would you define this because I think with the best will in the world we might all been favour of that I don't know because we haven't discussed it as a committee yet but how do we actually grapple with that and deliver that because it's one thing to say oh I wish to have that but how do we get down to the nitty gritty and ensure that we tackle these really difficult party heat houses in rural Scotland indeed in other parts of Scotland currently through the heapsabs programme we have a remote rural on island uplift of £9,000 that's using the eightfold definition of rurality we find that works quite well in some instances however Campbelltown is a really good example of an area that is a band five however it is extremely rural in my opinion I think it's very difficult to get contractors to go out there and work on the supply chain issues that are linked there as well so it's a difficult one if I'm honest but I think the eightfold with a few tweaks would work favourably in terms of identifying rural properties okay Mr Haldie have you got anything to add since you come from the same local authority not particularly no I would just agree with everything Alasdor said Argyll and Bute goes from Helensborough to Tyree with about 200 small communities Contire is as remote as obviously there's no there's no ferry journey to get there but it's still that remote by the time you get down in Peninsular obviously Helensborough ferry runs about three times a week and there's someone much less so if you're living in Helensborough which is just on the boundaries of you know that urban conurbation of the west central belt we have towns that do have gas but that gas is it's not on the gas grid it's transported in and of course 23 inhabited islands which adds on to another another difficulty so yeah I would just use the factors that Allie mentioned and I think that would that would produce a reasonable outcome for us okay that either do you want to add something on this because this has got a key issue for rural and rural at my own place South West Scotland is pretty major issue particularly as you get down as far as Dumfries and Galloway and it's more of the rural areas of of the other ashes too it depends what you're trying to do if you're trying to do boilers you know like Dumfries and Galloway you can use local contractors if you're trying to do external wall insulation you need to be using the bigger companies who are based in central belt so there is a real problem of getting depending on what issue you're trying to solve and I would say external wall insulation is the most difficult right but the 5% target I mean see if we've all got a 5% should it be 5% for each local authority and within each local authority should they then try should they be incentivised in some way to ensure that the more difficult properties are tackled first I mean how do we get around this area of the low hanging fruit actually which we're supposed to clean others have mentioned and look that because that's really the number what we're trying to do it's not just about reducing the number of households but trying to ensure that we we don't leave this city ashmore by 95% of houses are heated well and the other 5% are like horrendous you know yeah oh no I haven't got a solution it's a real issue aren't you I think there's a possibility there that you could do it by local authority area within our local housing strategy we've got nine distinct housing market areas you know we could reduce it down to that sort of level and say within each housing market area we're looking at the 5% so that there is potential for narrowing it down further in area ways but you need an incentive really because obviously the council is councils aren't exactly a wash of money at the moment so if you've got you know five houses at £5,000 each and five houses at £15,000 each you know obviously you would think what we can help more people doing the cheaper homes so you would maybe want the subsidy to resources additional resources to make up that the the 10,000 per house difference for example in that resources are always important housing market areas is tidy and call so you've got difficult house types you've got the workforce over there getting the workforce over the whole supply chain and yeah just the difficult island location of them so you know it all adds up into an extremely difficult area to deal with that so it will need extra resources but at the same time you don't want you know if we do the whole of Argyll and Bute you would not be looking for our 5% to be disproportionately located on islands or extreme rural areas so we have whatever the challenge is nationally we have it locally as well to make sure that we have a good distribution of all the schemes that we operate okay thanks very much okay okay let's see what we can do I just think that that the area-based schemes that we've been talking about they do have some flexibility in there and that's really important that everything is not too rigid that there isn't a bit of flexibility because you know at Dumfries and Galloway it's the project that I've been talking about comes out of their fuel poverty their poverty budgets to improve poverty in the area so there's some creative ways of doing things that it's not a very expensive amount of money but it's helping an awful lot of people so there are ways that people are doing it and it's maybe managing to combine that creativity as well as having quite rigid rules about what we should be doing and be achieving in the long-term Andy, you want to come in the back of us? Yes, just a couple more questions about slightly different topics I think Liz or one of you sorry I can't remember which talked about extreme poverty so I think it was Dai Alexander advocated that we have a separate target for the eradication of extreme poverty which is based on a 20% income at the moment do you have any views on that? I'm quite positive about Dai's comments they seem to make sense that we should be having something otherwise there is a real risk that they're they're harder to reach properties and people and they just vanish off the issue really I think we would welcome that as well of course we can see some really acute cases where people are really vulnerable in real financial difficulty with extensive levels of areas and challenges heating there at their homes I think that would be would be interesting to us I think we started off by saying that targets focus the mind and I think it's important that we focus on these really really difficult cases so yes I would agree with with the rest of the panel okay and turning to scrutiny and monitoring the bill makes provision in section 6 for Scottish ministers to prepare a report however there's no provisions made for any independent scrutiny or monitoring as is the case with other bills this parliament's passed for example the climate change act which provides for independent scrutiny by the climate change committee etc or the child poverty bill by the child poverty commission do you have any views as to given we don't know if we'll reach whatever target is set out we don't know if we'll reach it obviously it's in the future but given that having an honest appraisal of the extent to which we're meeting it and what would need to change in order to meet it is a useful thing for us does the panel have any views on how we could have some enhanced scrutiny and monitoring provisions built into the bill with what you're saying I don't know how you would achieve it well one suggestion for example is an independent but yeah I think if there's an independent body over viewing it, monitoring it, making recommendations that would be good so it's a fair to say you haven't given much thought to that but if you want to come back on that feel free to do so and the final is just a question for me just a small technical point as you probably know we pass legislation here they get royal assent but then they don't come into force until they're commenced and this bill under section 13 which is the commencement provision says that this section that's section 13 and section 14 come into force on the day after royal assent section 14 just names just gives you the short title so in other words nothing happens other than this piece of paper is lob but nothing starts until ministers decide it'll start none of these sections come into force until ministers decide do you have any views on whether we should be seeking to amend the bill to make sure that some of its provisions do come into effect on defined dates and again if you haven't given much thought to that you could be welcome to write back to the committee given much thought to it's all right to the committee that's fine that's great that's superb can I add something about the independent monitoring the area-based schemes all the councils are reporting on a quarterly basis as to how much money how much work has been done and how much money has been spent and some of the other schemes are reporting back to the Scottish Government on a very regular basis I think it's absolutely essential that we do have an independent monitoring organisation that can evaluate and be really clear about what's happening maybe it's a part of government or somehow it needs to but it needs to be there to ensure that we're actually delivering the levels that we should be and I would suggest that the report should be going to that body on an annual basis at the very least and that report should be going back to government on a five-year basis if not more often and if there's a fall in output or delivery then there ought to be ways of addressing that but I think that that's really essential I think we can have all these great ideas but unless it's the reporting is done correctly and in a valid way we might not be winning or making any difference to people so you're talking there about the examples of reporting on programmes so this bill is not about programmes so that's for government to decide the point is this bill sets out a definition and a target and there's provision for five-year reporting by government all I'm asking is should there be independent scrutiny of the extent to which we're meeting the target and what might need to change in order to do so or if a new technology comes on that produces a step change can provide independent advice us to the extent to which that would allow the target to be brought forward etc that's what I'm asking about independent scrutiny of the provisions of this bill not the programmes that are delivered okay sorry yeah I think there should be independent scrutiny however I'm also very clear that I would like money to be spent on programmes and the work on the ground so there is a balance between spending a lot of money on the scrutiny when we really and there is obviously a limit to how much money we've got but I think we need the scrutiny of the bill as well and to be sure that we're achieving achieving the fuel poverty levels never mind anything else I mean one proposition was put that there should be independent valuation of the four drivers yeah yeah and when I talk about independent I'm talking about to provide Parliament with the ability to hold the executive to account on the money it spends and the policies it's adopting I'm not talking about monitoring of government I mean I know that goes on anyway yeah I'm part of the existing homes alliance and we're very definitely focused on that I think probably this afternoon and we'll come back to you with more information but thank you thank you very much thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you yeah thanks I think it was you Liz said earlier about changing the definition of fuel poverty has reduced the number of people that are in fuel poverty and of course that could suit governments of any color but the bill as it's drafted and the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has highlighted this has quite wide powers to again change that definition subject to the affirmative procedure but would that be a concern for any of you that governments can just kind of come along and change that definition any time they like for whatever reason but it could of course reduce the numbers again of people in fuel poverty if there is a possible risk when everybody else has got anything on that and again I think the existing homes alliance are focused on that one as well as to so we'll be coming back with comments on that particular bit okay but I think there is a risk yeah okay in that case and my assemblies get any sorry Alexander the way I asked so can I go back we touched on earlier with the last panel about the energy performance certificate and there was real criticism from one of our panelists about that it would be quite good to get views on what you see as that opportunity for that and the way that that has been validated and how that is looked upon and on your views upon that I think we'd be quite useful one of the comments appeared to be that we could have a Scottish energy performance type system and it would build on what's there already and I think there are tweaks happening in the energy performance the way the certificates are completed we do have them and people are beginning to understand them you know they've been when you buy or sell a property they or rent a property they've been there for a long time now and people still are much more worried about location than they are about the energy performance of their home but I think it is gradually coming into the conscious mind of more people so I wouldn't like them to be thrown out completely I think they have a place and in the certainly the properties that we've been working on they seem to have quite a close alignment to what's actually happening in the property the theoretical and the reality so it varies but the more difficult just thinking of a rural property when you change the EPC to say that it was a part of a hamlet rather than an individual property on its own the EPC went up quite substantially so they do have some strange things in it the way they calculate but it's very very complicated and I think Energy Action Scotland are working on that at the moment and various other organisations to see if there are tweaks that we can make which would be much less expensive than redesigning the whole scheme That's the point if you select that a property is in a rural location one of the measures that comes up is a wind turbine which may not always be technically feasible or cost effective and that's maybe something that needs to be looked into in terms of the EPC but I think it gives a good indication of the property as a whole I'm going back to the issue of reporting just for the sake of completeness I had asked panel members last week about what they felt about the frequency of reporting so we see that the frequency as proposed in the bill is five years just it would be helpful to get some comments on that Five years is adequate it fits in with the local housing strategy five year programme so to that extent it marries up quite well in other aspects you know with the strategic housing investment programme we give annual updates the proposals for rapid rehousing is for annual updates I think you could do short reviews annually but have a more comprehensive review every five years I think it's manageable either way to be honest I don't think you want to spend too much time you don't want major annual reports because that will take away from the focus of delivery but at the same time five years is long enough to have some concerns about what's going on and whether you're on the right pathway before you start your reporting year four and go help my Bob you know we're not going to make this it's too late so you know they can be managed within that process any other comments Just from my perspective I think every two or three years it just allows again for better reporting and it allows for an evaluation of how each programme is working and any tweaks that could be made in order to try and focus on the target and fuel power households I would agree with two to three years five years seems a bit long to me again going back to my point earlier and preceding previous five years average electricity years of our clients have gone up 37% there's a danger that if we wait every five years before looking at this that things just move far too quickly Yeah and I would say definitely two to three years I think given the fact that Andy's been mentioning how long it might then take to do something if we were if things were falling behind by the time the legislation has come into place then I think it needs to be two to three years in order that we can put something in place to improve the situation if it's or not and in terms of the substance of such reporting I also had asked panelist last week whether they felt that this should include the four drivers of your poverty any comments on that I think that's essential that it includes all four drivers if that's possible yeah Yes I agree with that I think it's really important that the income issues fully understood especially from our perspective we see income as the primary driver of people's issues with their years Yes I agree with the panel I think because we don't have our hands on all the levers to eliminate fuel poverty it's essential that we look at all the drivers all four drivers and then to an extent we will tend to focus on the ones that we can influence the most there's nothing particularly wrong with that but it means that others will not be forgotten okay thank you very much thank you very much in that case can I just thank you all for coming here today and for contributing towards our scrutiny of the bill and at this point I'll close conclude the public part of today's meeting thank you very much