Speeches by Esterson.

“Mr Gantley, was it not obvious that there was going to be a problem here?”

“Coming to the challenge around ECO4 being a multi-measure scheme, was it not obvious that the same installers were unlikely to have the necessary competence to install the whole range of measures?”

“To clarify, your contention is that your lack of resourcing meant that you could not pick a problem of that level up, or your scheme providers could not?”

“How could they be certified if their competence was questionable?”

“And yet they are all certified, because they had to be certified to take part in the scheme?”

“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?”

“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?”

“And was it changed?”

“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.”

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

“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 …”