Speeches by Esterson.

“We are getting a bit into the weeds here. One of the suggestions to the DESNZ Committee was that one of the problems was that the short-term nature of the schemes meant that money was left at the end of the period, and that the installers who were applying for the scheme were not necessarily of the highest quality. Sim…”

“So it has only been changed this year?”

“When was it changed?”

“And was it changed?”

“That is helpful. I have one final thought. My Committee heard that we do not have this problem in gas safety certification, thankfully, where the system is very robust. Is that a model that should perhaps be adopted more widely?”

“Well, it might not be yours to make, but should it not have been something that you spotted and queried?”

“Okay, so it is a lack of specialisms in a multi-measure installation?”

“That seems rather to contradict the evidence that Mr Pocklington just gave us.”

“Having seen solar, battery and heat pump installations, I am very surprised that they are less complex than external wall insulation.”

“That begs the question of what the standard used to be, given the seriousness of the problems before that.”

“Solar panels and heat pumps are more complex technologies, aren’t they?”

“More complicated than installing heat pumps?”

“Thank you, Chair, for inviting me today and for allowing me to ask some questions. We took evidence from Mr Ayers for our report on retrofitting homes. At that stage, the scale of this was not at the level we are now able to see from the NAO Report. But problems with insulation are not new. There has been scandal after…”

“Coming back to the 98% failure rate on external wall insulation and 29% on internal wall insulation, why are these failure rates so much higher than for the installation of other measures and, indeed, for other schemes?”

“A lot of installers were not doing an adequate job, one of the reasons for which was that it attracted installers who were not properly qualified, as they were attracted by the funds available in a short period of time. This issue has come from industry that says, “Look, if we have longer time periods, it will give us …”

“Not phoenixing as such. I am asking whether the requirement to use the money up in the scheme period has attracted people who were not up to the job, so we effectively saw cowboy installers coming in, despite the accreditation process.”

“And then the certification process covers it, right. I have one final question for now, which is probably for Kiera Schoenemann. There is the issue of the really short-term nature of schemes, as well as the changes in schemes, enabling substandard installers to enter the market in large numbers because money needed to …”

“We heard from the first panel, though, that there is a difference between the organisations being suspended and the individual installers. What assurance can you give that it will be not just the organisations but the individual installers they contract with, some of whom are not directly employed?”

“After the discovery that it was 98%?”

“Although of course it subsequently emerged that nearly every installation of external wall insulation was inadequate. The scale of this was much bigger than initially thought.”