 The next item of business is a member's business debate on motion 5081 in the name of Ivan McKee on UK Green Deal, supporting aggrieved householders. This debate will be concluded with any questions being put. Can I ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request-to-speak buttons now? Colin Ivan McKee to open the debate. Seven minutes are there about, Mr McKee. Thank you, Presiding Officer. One of the key roles of elected members of this Parliament is to pursue issues that have significantly impacted our constituents to gain redress for injustices caused and to work to prevent a repeat. The Green Deal is one such issue. The UK Government's Green Deal scheme has a tale of good intentions gone badly wrong. An initiative by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change aimed to make millions of homes and businesses across the UK more energy efficient in installing new green technology with little or no upfront cost to householders. New financing frameworks were created to enable improvements to the energy efficiency of both households and non-domestic properties, either through a charge on future energy bills or by allowing the householder to claim back upfront costs that they had paid out, using a cash back voucher paid on satisfactory completion of the work by the energy saving trust. The Green Deal should have saved householders money, it should have saved the environment in terms of energy use and emissions, it should have been a win-win, but something went very badly wrong. Concerns over the Green Deal scheme emerged from, apparently, individual and disparate instances of constituency casework coming into my office that of Anne McLaughlin MP and other MSPs around the country, including Clare Hockey MSP in Rutherglen. Individual householders began approaching us seeking help regarding external wall installation and solar panels that had fitted to their properties. However, a clear trend emerged and it became clear that that was an issue that reached beyond our constituencies and across Scotland. We do not know yet the full extent of the Green Deal misselling, but I hope that this debate today will encourage others to come forward. Through the nature of those cases, shoddy workmanship and misselling of inappropriate products, we quickly discerned a pattern and became aware that people had fallen victim to unscrupulous companies that saw financial bonanza facilitated by the lack of oversight of the Green Deal. Often, those companies were owned by individuals with a history of misselling and leaving a trail of liquidated businesses in their wake. The scheme was innately regulated from the outset. Official Green Deal assessors, the individuals that were approved to advise householders on the work that they needed done, were required only to undergo a two-day course before they were let loose on households. That lack of oversight attracted unscrupulous salesmen, authorised to advise householders to sign contracts worth tens of thousands of pounds. Green Deal contractors had to be authorised and were listed on the Department of Energy and Climate Change website. The approval of contractors for the state of energy efficiency work was the responsibility of the UK Government. While the Scottish Government was charged with the roll-out of the Green Deal in Scotland, it had no opportunity to influence who became it approved. It seems that the UK Government was not too fussy about who got on that list. That is encapsulated by the unfortunate experience of an elderly constituent of mine, Mary Firm from Birmolach in Glasgow, who spent her life savings on the Green Deal to provide a legacy for her family, as she saw a better greener environment and an investment for her grandchildren's future. She had been dorset but unscrupulous Green Deal providers whom she trusted because they had been approved by the UK Government. However, her fast-buck approach and failure to comply with proper procedures meant that Mary Firm found out that her home improvements were not of sufficient standard to attract a building warrant or a requirement of the council, which should be a formality if work had been done properly. Many had been assured that they did not need building warrants or that they had been applied for, and in many cases they had not. My team had been working with Glasgow City Council to find a solution to that particular aspect of the problem. In worst case scenario, some homeowners have had to have had work completely redone at great cost to themselves. Mary's home is now in Limbo. It is uninsurable, unsellable and, for all she knows, unsafe. Every month, her energy bill and cars are surcharge for so-called home improvements that have not taken place to standard. As you can imagine, she cannot sleep at night. Many of Mary's neighbours and many others like them find themselves in very similar situations. The different and unusual means of financing the scheme and the requirement for involvement from a chain of third-party organisations, each of which needs to be satisfied that things are in order before it signs off on the deal have led to unimaginable complexities. None of that helps Mary and others in her position. Working with Anne McLaughlin and MP and my colleagues, Rutherglen MSP Claire Hawhey and MP Margaret Ferrier, we have taken steps to help where we can. We have raised awareness of the issues and encouraged householders to come forward, hosting several public meetings as well as upwards of 51 to 1 discussions with affected individuals to understand their individual circumstances and provide appropriate support. We have been in correspondence with the Scottish Government's Minister for Local Government and Housing, initially to alert his office to the issues and together with some small measure of success, we have managed to ensure that some constituents who signed up to financial deals have been recompensed. However, it has become obvious that that is only due to the goodwill of some of those financiers. Many of the so-called guarantors associated with this scheme have bluntly refused to acknowledge people's concerns and currently dismissed the missailing of services with buyer beware. We have also met with Glasgow City Council to try and sort out what work will need to be done to enable the properties to fulfil the requirements for building works. There is a need that we fail to look at the building standards system administered and enforced by Scottish local authorities to ensure that it truly protects the public interests by monitoring and improving building regulations in stock, at the moment it is variable leading to confusion in the building industry and amongst the public. I am calling for better guidance on how local authorities work with trade bodies and the public to ensure that the decision making process is transparent and inclusive and fair to those most affected by the regulations, that is the individual homeowners. We have also secured this debate in the Parliament to further raise awareness of the issues as we work towards some resolution. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome many of the affected constituents from my constituency to the Parliament today in the gallery to hear this debate. I am proud to work with other members of the Parliament on this matter and I thank the many members who have signed my motion on this subject across parties. I think that it is one of the best examples of this Parliament working together. However, we believe that the source of the problem, the UK Government, must be held responsible first and foremost for fully compensating householders for the inspection and remedial work that they need to have undertaken to get their homes back to standard. It needs to strengthen the processes that are used to authorise contractors on this in any future programmes, including provisions to guard against so-called Phoenix companies, which are new contractors with the same owners as Greendale companies, which have previously gone bust, re-emerging and targeting the same individuals that they coined previously. In conclusion, the Greendale misselling scandal is something that has severely affected many of my constituents and others across Scotland. It is a state of affairs that should not have happened if those responses had done their jobs. While myself and my parliamentary colleagues have had some limited success so far, there is much more work to be done, both to gain recompense for those affected and to assure that such a state of affairs can never happen again. I appreciate why you wished to applaud, but I ask you to dissist as we don't permit it in the public area in Parliament. I now move to the open debate, Alexander Burnett, to be followed by Clare Haugheyn. Mr Burnett, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to point the chamber towards my register of interests, particularly those in relation to the renewable and construction sectors. I would also like to congratulate Ivan McKee for bringing this member's business to the chamber today, because it is a great opportunity to speak about the Greendale deal. The deal was set up with the best intentions at its heart, aiming to help consumers to save money and increase energy efficiency throughout homes—something all of us should continue to aspire to. Strict processes were in place for regulating the Greendale deal, but I am aware of complaints about some operators, particularly home energy and lifestyle management, who were charged with malpractice and have since gone into administration. It is right, then, that the Secretary of State took the necessary action to protect future consumers of companies trading at a level that is not deemed appropriate. In November 2015, it was welcomed that homes were sanctioned for breaches of the Greendale deal code of practice. Clare Haugheyn. I thank the member for taking an intervention. I am reassured to hear that the UK Government is going to do something for consumers who are going to take out some Greendale investment or improvements on their houses, but perhaps he might enlighten the chamber what the UK Government is going to do for my constituents and for the constituents that Mr McKee has been referring to who have already suffered under the Greendale deal. Alexander Burnett. Thank you, and those points will be specifically covered in about a paragraph. So it is important to note here that the framework established by the then deck was sufficient enough to bring about action on helms. It is also right that the Greendale ombudsman remains active and intervenes where malpractice has occurred. It has significant powers to investigate complaints and can require energy companies to remove charges or provide a service. Furthermore, it can award compensation of up to £25,000. Even if a Greendale provider has gone into liquidation, consumers who have entered into Greendale plans will continue to be covered by the Greendale framework, meaning that plan repayments can continue to be undisrupted. If there are problems with the Greendale finance contract, the financial ombudsman service also has a role to play. Similarly, if a service was misdescribed, trading standards can also get involved and specific energy companies can be reported to Ofgem. It is right that the law provides protection to consumers over areas including faulty goods, poor service, problems with builders and rogue traders. Where malpractice has occurred, I would urge that all avenues available are used to protect consumers to the highest level. Although that was a specific case, I feel that it raises the much wider problem on how we tackle energy efficiency. As the chamber will be aware, heat accounts for 50 per cent of all energy consumption in Scotland. It is simply unsuitable for us to meet our climate change targets without facing this problem directly. That is why the Scottish Conservatives remain committed to energy efficiency measures. Given that 57 per cent of Scottish dwellings are energy performance band D or worse, it is right that we should aspire for all homes to reach band C or better by the end of the next decade. I would also like to see spending on energy efficiency reach 10 per cent of a capital budget by the end of this parliamentary term, accumulative £1 billion in contrast to the £500 million pledged by the Scottish Government. That would help with more than just Scotland's climate change targets, because nearly a third of all Scottish premises live in fuel poverty. That is 748,000 households paying more than 10 per cent of their income to merely keep themselves warm, which is unsustainable. There is a huge amount of work to be done to cut emissions, whilst at the same time helping to keep bills down. I urge that we grasp this opportunity urgently. I will let you continue, but I am reading the motion. It is very specific about the Green Deal and the mis-selling, etc. Just bear that in mind for another occasion. There is a little more liberal touch by the chair during members' debates, but be careful next time. Thank you. Claire Hawke to be followed by Mark Ruskell, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I can also thank Ivan McKee for bringing this motion to Parliament and also to welcome the constituents in the gallery and to those who are watching us at home. I know that there are many. The problems with the UK Government's Green Deal scheme was not confined to one area of the country. Neither, as we have heard, was the scheme confined to home improvements, cladding, boilers and insulation. In my constituency of Rutherglen, solar panels were widely sold to householders in Blantaya. People were told that they would not pay any more for their electricity. People were told that they could save money. People were told that they were helping the environment. So far, 60 individuals have attended a series of local public meetings that I have organised in conjunction with the local citizens advice bureau. Attendance at these meetings quickly expanded to include disillusioned solar panel customers from Hamilton and other areas. Time after time, we have heard stories of high-pressure sales techniques, sales people insisting on documents being signed at tea time doorstep calls and a 14-day cooling off period—absolutely, however, on day 15 work commenced. Feed-in tariffs, the money that householders were owed for generating electricity, were signed over to a third party with little, if any, explanation to the purchasers. Solar panels were fitted to the roofs in Blantaya, not exactly the cost of El Sol, and householders will have to repay the cost of those panels for the next 25 years through their electricity bills. I have seen one contract that specifically states that the feed-in tariffs pay for the panels. However, many people have not only signed over their feed-in tariff, but they are also paying for their panels again through a finance deal. Solar panels were then fitted to houses where the electricity meter was not compatible with the installed system. In fact, the meters were not only charging for the energy that was used, they were also charging the householders for the energy that they were producing. That has resulted in huge energy bills for people and huge debts, adding to the fuel poverty that Mr Burnett alluded to when they were actually expecting to reduce their bills, not double them. Worriingly, the debt of the solar panel rests with the property, not with the individual householder, and that has led households to be unable to sell their properties. A few companies will mortgage or remortgage those properties, and I have been told of how sales are falling through because lawyers are advising buyers not to continue with a purchase. Several thousands of pounds were recently lost by one of my constituents when a buyer withdrew their offer to buy her house after she had put in a deposit on another property. Solar panel deals were missold to customers who were told that those deals were guaranteed by the Scottish Government. That was untrue. Solar panels were a green deal product promoted by the UK Government. That was the type of reported misinformation used by Helms, who are now unfortunately in administration since April 2016. I say unfortunately because customers have been left without resolution whilst the financial ombudsman determines where liability lies. Following our meetings in Blantyre, both myself and Margaret Ferrier, former MP for Rutherglen Hamilton West, have been working to get fair compensation for the issues that are experienced by many customers in our constituencies. In doing so, we have worked closely with the offices of Ivan McKee MSP and Anne McLaughlin, former MP for Glasgow North East, and we are grateful for their support and co-operation. However, I suspect that the situation in Blantyre in the east end of Glasgow is just the tip of the iceberg. As tens of thousands of those deals were sold to Clorox Scotland and the UK before the scheme was halted, the more we learn about the issue, the more we come to realise that there are potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of people affected. I met the cabinet secretary in February and thanked Angela Constance and her officials for undertaking to continue to press the UK Government Department responsible for a resolution on the issue, which continues to leave so many Scottish customers out of pocket. This is a situation that is causing real financial hardship to many customers who feel full of the company's practices and of other companies' abuses of the green deal. We should do everything that we can to get them the resolution that they deserve. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I also thank Ivan McKee for bringing this debate forward. He said that there are a few things more stressful in life than moving house, but having spoken with a number of constituents who have had a bad experience with green deal, a botched house renovation can take the stress level up to an entirely new level, and in some cases, as we have heard already, it is impossible to even sell your house. I know that through the green deal that solar panels and wall insulation have been incorrectly sold to consumers as being government backed, with many consumers signing up through doorstep sales. The UK Government does not back the cost of equipment failure, so people have been repaying loans for equipment that does not work with no recourse to government for support. For many home owners, they have been unable to pay for the remedial works, particularly associated with inappropriate cavity wall insulation. We have already heard that many householders affected by that have been unable to get building warrants as a result and put them in incredible difficulties when it comes to then selling their house. I remember attending a major consultation event with energy efficiency organisations and DEC officials in London 18 months before the green deal was actually launched. There were concerns raised at that meeting about not just the bureaucracy and the financial attractiveness of the emerging programme, but also about the quality, especially when a scheme like that is conducted on a piecemeal house-by-house market-led approach. The green deal was always a highly complex policy, with a burgeoning architecture of organisations delivering assessment training, installation and accreditation to support it, but out of the 300,000 to 259 green deal assessments that were carried out, only 1,800 plans actually successfully went ahead. Far shorter, the millions of homes that the Government play in the scheme would help when it was first launched. The interest rate on the loan to householders was also much higher than the typical loans available on the high street and wholly unattractive for householders. It was not much of a deal, and it turned out to be hardly green at all, because, as the National Audit Office reported in April 2016, the scheme had not achieved value for money, costing taxpayers £240 million and was not generating any additional energy savings either, which is hardly surprising given the success rate. All those concerns were raised way back at that Westminster meeting that I attended in 2011, but there was a failure to address those back then and in the eventual roll-out of the scheme in 2013. We need to learn the lessons of the green deal, and I believe that the answer lies in more area-based approaches to energy efficiency that can deliver at scale and can also deliver at a better quality. Germany's EN EV programme, for example, has been hugely successful. It began in 2002. Householders could get a loan of up to €50,000 from a public bank to replace a home's heating and domestic hot water systems, and the interest rate was much lower than the green deal. The programme had a clear goal to refurbish the entire housing stock and public buildings in Germany by 2030, and so far as delivered a million old homes have been retrofitted, which, of course, compares to the only 1,800 that were secured through the green deal. In Germany, those retrofits are also carried out to a very high standard, a deep retrofit, rather than just tackling the low-hanging fruit of upgrading boilers and wall insulation. It is clear that what works are programmes with a clear focus not only on an ambitious target driven by the public sector but also delivering quality at a scale on an area-by-area basis. Alongside legislation to deliver better common repairs and a focus on energy efficiency standards in the rented sector, we have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past and deliver a warmer, more affordable homes across the whole of Scotland. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I would like to thank Ivan McKee for bringing this important issue to the attention of the chamber this evening and also congratulate him on securing his motion for debate today. Commentators often say that we face three challenges when devising energy policy. I will try them, if you will. First, we need to minimise carbon emissions so as to stop the worst effects of climate change for future generations. We also need to ensure security of supply so that we can keep the lights on not just in five years but in 10 or 20 years' time, and we need to protect consumers, keeping energy bills as low as possible and ensuring that they receive a good standard of service. Striking the right balance between the strands is one of the great challenges of our time and for those who formulate policy, which is exactly what the Green Deal set out to achieve when it was launched in 2013, a noble aim that we all strive for. For a variety of reasons, the policy was not delivering value for money and it was discontinued a difficult but necessary decision. A vast majority of companies implementing the Green Deal provided a high standard of service and indeed a strict code of practice has remained in place to safeguard consumers. However, there were some incidents where some companies did not meet the high standards that were demanded. The case of home energy lifestyle management helms was a particular high-profile example where misleading information was provided when it was right that helms were swiftly fined by the Secretary of State. I condemn any company that sought to missell policies or to mislead consumers, particularly through cold calling, which the UK Government has heavily clamped down on. I am aware that some cases persist where consumers have felt let down or aggrieved by the service provided, which is why the Green Deal ombudsman continues to operate, investigate and intervene on complaints. It can rightly require companies to wave charges and indeed provide up to £25,000 compensation. I also know that Ofgem, the financial ombudsman service and trading standards have been and continue to be involved in aspects of Green Deal cases. We have a strong history of consumer protection in this country, which whether it is in guarding against shoddy service and poor quality goods, encouraging competition so that consumers can choose the best deal available or improving product safety. I want to continue to see a framework that is fair and works for all consumers, which is why consumer protection guidance and standards should be kept under constant review and any gaps plugged. It is particularly important that regulations keep up in a world of rapid, sometimes bewildering, technological advancement, which provides new opportunities but also unforeseen challenges. Although the Green Deal has ended, our commitment to energy efficiency and the driving down of costs and emissions remains. My colleague Alexander Burnett has already highlighted that fuel poverty remains stubbornly high and set out some important proposals to improve energy efficiency. Getting that right would be a win for consumers, the economy and the environment. Driving down demand would also ensure that less energy has to be generated in the first place. To do so means encouraging more energy-efficient appliances, particularly white goods, but also changing consumer behaviour. I welcome the roll-out of smart metres across the country and the UK Government's commitment to ensure that one is offered to every home and small business by 2020. Nobody should ever get a raw deal when they are trying to improve their home and save money. We should be resolute in holding those who provide a poor service or mislead to account while continuing to support innovative solutions to our energy needs. Thank you, Mr Scott. You squeaked into being wholly relevant with some of the variations on the theme. It is a very tightly drawn motion. That is what I am drawing your attention to. I now call on Kevin Stewart to close the Government. Minister, seven minutes are there about, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thank Ivan McKee, Claire Hoche and McLaughlin and others for highlighting the misselling of the Green Deal. I am grateful to Ivan McKee for raising the troubling matter that has seen many of our constituents being badly let down by what has turned out to be a seriously inadequate consumer protection and safeguards. I am also very troubled by the apparent inability of the UK Government to show leadership and to take swift and effective action in those cases. Designed to install thousands of measures across Great Britain to reduce energy bills and improve energy efficiency, the scheme has seen too many people left with increased bills or being left with installations that, in some cases, are so defective that they cannot get a building warrant, meaning that they might not be able to sell their properties, as we have heard from some of the speakers before. Those problems have been highlighted to the UK Government on numerous occasions, and they are not just anecdotal. Not only have we heard from across the chamber how individuals have suffered, a national audit office report from April 2016 was highly critical of the performance of the scheme, which only achieved a fraction of the number of energy efficiency installations predicted by the UK Government. In response to a combination of poor take-up and concerns around industry standards, the UK Government announced in July 2015 that it would no longer fund the scheme, the Green Deal finance company, the administrator, which effectively closed the scheme down. Although such a move has prevented any further mishaps from occurring since, there is still much to be done to help those who, in good faith, signed up to the scheme, but who now find themselves in difficulties. It is all fair and well for Mr Burnett to say that the Secretary of State has put everything in place to protect future consumers. But what about those in the public gallery and people, like the lady from Bournemulloch, whom Mr McKee has spoken about? What are they going to get in terms of action from the UK Government to put right the failure that fully rests with the UK Government and in this effective scheme? I can assure the chamber that the Scottish Government will continue to do whatever we can to help to obtain a satisfactory resolution for those concerned. Despite not having responsibility for the UK Green Deal, the Scottish Government has made every effort to advise and assist those, often vulnerable individuals, affected by the poor practices of some of those involved in the scheme. The Scottish Government has made a number of requests over the past few years for the UK Government to strengthen its consumer protection processes. We have written to both the current and the previous secretaries of state with responsibility for energy efficiency, expressing how the Green Deal framework has failed to deliver any meaningful redress to those impacted, and we have urged that this matter be prioritised and resolved. We have also called on those bodies with an active interest in this issue, such as the Green Deal and the financial ombudsman, to put in place proper redress systems, and we convened a UK-wide enforcement group to highlight the issues that are faced by Scottish consumers. When it became apparent that the building warrants could not be obtained and our own cashback scheme vouchers could not be redeemed by those unfortunate enough to have their external wall insulation measures poorly installed by the UK Government-approved contractors, we quickly instructed the Energy and Savings Trust to make contact with all of the individuals concerned to provide guidance and support. I am aware that the EST has managed to resolve the situation for some and is continuing to provide on-going support to others. I urge all members who find that they have constituents in this situation and who have yet to do so to tell them to contact the Energy and Savings Trust, so that they too can be helped through this complex and distressing situation. However, we will continue to help and support those in need. I know that there are many members in the chamber today who are also providing direct support to their constituents, such as Mr McKee and Ms Hoche. The truth is that we need the UK Government to act and resolve the situation and ensure that it never happens again. My officials have been told that the UK Government's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Green Deal and the Financial Ombudsman, along with the Green Deal finance company, have been working to achieve just that. I sincerely hope that that is the case and that there will be satisfactory outcomes for those concerned. However, the track record of the current UK Government in this area is not great and therefore it is right that we should collectively push them to take action. I therefore have no hesitation whatsoever in supporting Mr McKee's motion, which he has raised here today, in calling for the UK Government to strengthen its consumer protection processes and to ensure that it adequately compensates all affected households across Scotland. The UK Government, no matter who it is after Thursday, owe that to Mary from Barmellach and the many others who have suffered because of this effective scheme.