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A Labour pledge to spend an extra £6.6bn on insulating millions of homes is under scrutiny after the Treasury declined to say whether the promise still stood ahead of the spending review next month.
Sir Keir Starmer pledged ahead of last year’s general election to invest the money on improving energy efficiency in 5mn British homes if Labour came to power.
The total extra funding for the “warm homes plan” would have been spent over the course of the five-year parliament, implying about £1.3bn a year.
Whitehall officials said ministers had been assessing whether they could trim the scheme as part of the review of all departmental expenditure, which will conclude in early June.
The Treasury declined to say whether ministers would stick to Labour’s manifesto commitment of a total £6.6bn of spending over the parliament.
“We don’t comment on speculation. At the Autumn Budget we allocated £3.4bn for our commitment to the warm homes plan,” said the Treasury.
The £3.4bn was allocated across three years, equivalent to about £1.1bn a year.
The warm homes plan offers grants and low interest loans to support investment in insulation and other improvements such as solar panels, batteries and low-carbon heating to cut bills.
Any roll-back on providing effort for energy efficiency in homes would probably hamper the UK’s ability to reach its net zero targets while also bringing down energy bills.
UK housing stock accounts for about 17 per cent of national green house gas emissions, with the country’s properties among the least energy efficient in Europe.
The government’s official climate adviser has said residential buildings emissions need to fall 66 per cent by 2040 to keep the country on track to meet its legally binding net zero carbon target by 2050.
Almost all homes would need to have taken steps to improve their energy efficiency by 2040, the Climate Change Committee said, such as insulating cavity walls and fitting loft insulation.
Last week, Sir Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister who now advises clients including Saudi Arabia, enraged some Labour ministers by implying the government’s net zero policies were “doomed to fail”.
Labour’s pledge for extra funding would take the total spent on household energy efficiency projects to £13.2bn over the period of the parliament, which is set to run to 2029.
Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute, said a decrease in funding would be “very disappointing news and a serious own goal by the government”.
“Given the rising political debate about the costs of net zero, it is absolutely critical for us to cut bills by cutting wasted energy,” he said.
Making homes more energy efficient would save households and businesses money in the medium to long-term, but many could not afford the upfront investment, making government support vital, he added.
Labour has previously rolled back its green pledges. It had once promised to spend £6bn a year on insulation schemes alone as part of a “green prosperity plan” that has since been slashed to a fraction of its former size.