Welcome everyone to the 32nd meeting of the Local Government and Communities Committee in 2018. Can I remind everyone present to turn off their mobile phones? As meeting papers are providing digit format, tablets may be used by members during the meeting. I welcome Liam McArthur to the meeting who is attending for the evidence session on the fuel poverty Target Definition and Strategy Scotland bill. We have received apologies from Annabel Ewing. Os ym Galwysig iawn ergoedd Gwyrdd Salihau i'r Cymru.  Ddif니까ill ddim lineg iddyn nhw. Rhaid i dda i'r digwydd gan yr ymarfer, wedi'i medallig ar tref, gweithio'r gweithgareddau. Felly, gweld i chi i gael monocolwyr ar hyn o gwnaeth ffagorethgesen. The position of deputy convener is now vacant. That Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish Labour party are eligible for nomination as deputy convener of this committee. I invite any nominations for that post. I myself am happy to nominate Alex Rowley. Do we agree to choose Alex as our deputy convener? Thank you very much. Connor Cymru has gweld mewn gimentos y gwn. Before I go on to the third item, the fuel poverty, The Be Dopers, Bill Will The Witnesses I just put on record my thanks for all those who came to meet us at Lochhead Community, Hubband Indeed to talk about their experiences of fuel poverty. It's vital that alongside hearing from experts, such as yourselves, we hear from those with lived experiences and we're grateful so many people took the time to come and meet us with us in Monday Felly, ystod wrth fy wirwch o'r Llyfrgell Gwyllach Dynnol, a dwi wedi'i'n ddigwyddol ar y bil i hefyd, er bod yn ddigwyddol â'u gyflitch ar hynny, i ddim yn y byw i'r sgolion, yr unig sy'n yn ddigwyddol i'n ddweud, i ddim yn ei ddweud yn ei ddweud, i ddim yn ei ddweud, i ddim yn ei ddweud. Rydw i'n ddweud yn ei ddweud. Rydw i'n ddweud, i ddweud i'n ddweud, oedd iawn, photolwyddem yn ymateal ar gyfer! yng Nghymru i Gwylsaiddio Cysystodol Ffwrdd, andeithio Gwylsaiddio Gwylsaiddio Gwylsaidio Cyfrifiadol, Normyn Kerr, Fyllfaedd, Llywodraeth Cymru, Ynwgol yw Alexander, Gwylsaidiaeth Cymru, Ynwgol Ynwgol Fyllfaedd, Fyllfaedd, Llywodraeth Gwylsaidio, gyda'r grwp hynny. Galli'n ddigon i gyd ar y gwaith i chi i ddweud i gynnwys, a wnaeth i gweithio gwaith o fwy ar gweithio gyda'r gwaith i gyd. Ia gennym y ddwyb bodedgeol o'r fiefedig i ymmeru cy ookag a'i pwedi iddod o 1954. Oedd誰b i gael Tiang? Fe oedd ce fion comork y bodieddu gwirter. Mae gweld i ddweud quemith ddweud cymdeithやr negoeddion. Ac ni'n ffordd yn ddongas a pobl wedi mai winn straight little dar llwyddion hyn The extent to which that is a contributed factor has not been well measured or defined, although you know that behaviour change can reduce bills at a around 10 per cent if you amend how you use appliances set heating so that it is a contributed factor. Mae'r meisgwm, across Scotland in terms of energy efficiency, has been drawn from the House Conditions Survey—and we have seen the levels of energy efficiency rise over a period of time. Scottish Government statistics have shown that, if you increase income, it is a better outcome than increasing energy efficiency in the shorter term. However, given that fuel prices continue to increase, we really need to pardon the pun, insulate homes against rising costs. The more energy efficient the home, the less energy will be used. You're allowed one pun of visit. Good, thank you. I declare my pun then. But we have that complex interaction, and just because you sort one element doesn't mean the others will fall into line. I don't know if any of my colleagues want to add to that. Greg, I'd second what Norris just said. I think that just to give a bit of insight into the impact of behaviour change, we've carried out a lot of research over the last year into the support needs of people in fuel poverty and, in particular, the forms of support that people who rely on electric heating require, and electric heating is an area that we know that there are very high levels of fuel poverty due to high costs. However, one of the things that we see in that is that a lot of people, the way that they use their heating, have a big impact on their heating bills in that area. We see a lot of people who have storage heating that don't necessarily know how to use their storage heating. We have a lot of people who have time of use tariffs, dynamically tele-switched tariffs and metres, which they don't necessarily understand, and so they're using their heating at the wrong time. What that tells us is that the behaviour change aspect is complex and can apply quite differently to different circumstances. It's definitely an area where we need to get more evidence, but it has a big impact on certain groups. We welcome the fact that the strategy is looking at all four drivers of fuel poverty, and we particularly welcome the commitment from the Government to remove poor energy performance as a driver of fuel poverty. It's certainly within the powers of the Scottish Government, and it's a really high time that we did that. That was removed as a reason, because we can do that. There's no technical reason why that's not possible. It's a matter of investment, it's a matter of planning and, as we know, working on the behaviour chain to maximise the impact of whatever measures are put in place. At the same time, we recognise that there has to be work across all the drivers of fuel poverty. That's why we've argued that any progress reports, measurement and targets should reflect the four drivers, and so there should be reporting on outcomes across the board. Before I bring in Mdl Sunlip, something that you talked about is about some of the drivers. The Scottish Government obviously has limited powers in some of the areas of fuel prices and household incomes, for example. What do you think of the wisdom of setting a target—fuel poverty target—when it doesn't have control of all the drivers? I'll start off. I think that the Scottish Government can push the boundaries of its powers, which have grown in the past few years. There are more powers in the areas of social security. There are exploring areas of how they can affect price energy prices through support of community energy or even looking at this publicly owned energy company. There are areas of pushing the boundaries even in areas that are reserved at the moment, but we think that they can set this target because ambitious targets drive innovation, drive investment and provide certainty for the supply chain to invest in this area, which again can help to drive down prices in the longer run. We believe that ambitious targets are achievable. The one thing that I thought to myself to say today is that we have to be sure that this bill means that this really is the last generation that will live in fuel poverty in Scotland. It really is. If we can't walk away from this session or with a bill confident that that's what we're setting out to achieve, then we've failed. I would like to say about the fuel prices and citizens advice. We very much welcome the cap on the charges for pre-pay customers and, additionally, the safeguard tariff that's being rolled out, particularly for those in the priority services register. I think that, however, it's still falling short of the mark and could actually be a very useful tool in helping to pull people out of fuel poverty. At the moment, if you're on the priority services register, we're mostly looking at vulnerabilities in relation to health conditions. However, I think that those who are financially vulnerable without necessarily having health conditions are doing them a disservice by not allowing them to be included in that priority service register, which, as I say, opens up access to the safeguard tariff. I think that there is definitely work to be done there on understanding the definitions of vulnerability, not just looking at health, not just looking at age and also looking at how quickly people can move from one state of vulnerability to another and how that can compound their experience of fuel poverty. I think that there's a couple of things. The Scottish Government is now taking more powers over social security and, indeed, while not energy price, the energy company obligation. Through that, the warm home discount scheme is there for the Scottish Government to administer and it could change. For example, in a remote and rural area, it may want to lift the level of the element that's applied and reduce that in an urban area, so we still have the same amount of money. There can be a recognition that, in certain parts of Scotland, it is more difficult to eat at your home. The second part is not something that's particularly new, but, through the social security powers in the mid-80s, there was an acknowledgement that certain house types—some members may be familiar with bits of Glasgow, in particular the barfield estate—was designated as a hard-to-heat estate. Everybody within that estate, through their social security payments, received an uplift per week over the winter season. Again, using social security powers, there can be a recognition that, to mitigate against fuel prices in winter, additional payments can be made. Although all the Scottish Government may not have access to all the drivers, it has access to some that would certainly help them against fuel costs in particular. Okay, thank you very much. I'll pass that on to the other side. Responding, Chair, to the wisdom of fuel poverty targets, just one specific on that. We, in our submission, think that it would be helpful to continue to measure extreme fuel poverty. At the moment, we have basic fuel poverty, which is under the old definition, 10 per cent of income, as you know. Extreme fuel poverty is twice or more. We, in our submission, say, please keep the extreme fuel poverty, because it will actually give you a guide to what's going on in terms of eliminating the worst forms of fuel poverty. We say very firmly that extreme fuel poverty is intolerable in a civilised society and that it should be got rid of as quickly as possible. We're saying, basically, within five years. As for the main target, we're saying, yes, we completely take the point that not all the drivers are within the powers of Scottish Government, but that, nevertheless, we think it should be possible to reduce the level to about five per cent. I think that you're always going to have people popping in and out of fuel poverty, no matter where you get to. Five per cent is a not unreasonable figure we feel for basic fuel poverty. Going back to the main drivers of fuel poverty, I imagine that we will be discussing in a bit more detail the question which we have raised in the rural and remote rural context relating to the level of disposable income, the level of disposable income, and why the definition needs to reflect that properly in relation to remote rural areas through the minimum income standard which we support. A driver of fuel poverty is the lack of trusted local support in some areas, particularly remote rural areas. It's quite revealing to look, for example, at the map that was produced of the heaps abs successes and otherwise for 2015-16 produced by the Scottish Government, and it shows some surprising gaps in areas where you would expect there to have been high activity. This lack of trusted local support is not to say that where it exists it isn't absolutely excellent and that there aren't good national services which are helpful, but what works best in solving the problems in remote rural areas is having people available to go into people's homes who would not otherwise think necessarily that they deserved any help at all, the old lady living in a croft house at the end of a lane somewhere. I hear so many of these examples quoted where that has made such a difference. That begs the question of the lack of reliable funding to maintain the trusted support, because there's a lot of hand-to-mouth going on here in terms of people looking round for funding. I think that an effective new fuel poverty strategy should be thinking very seriously about the public funding commitment to make sure that the proper outreach is provided in the areas where it is most needed.  Yes, I've got a couple of questions before I get to them. I just want to ask Linda something as a follow-up. You mentioned the safeguard tariff. As the convener said, three of us visited Dundee this week and we met a lot of people who pre-pay for their electricities and their electricity and gas. We heard about the issues around that. Can you tell us what the safeguard tariff is? It's a tariff for credit customers, so prepay is slightly different. There's a sort of cap in the maximum amount that can be charged per unit of gas and electricity. The safeguard tariff is essentially the same, but for those on a credit meter as opposed to the prepay meter. Right, okay, that's useful. Right, so getting into the bill, a couple of things, they're both linked, so you can answer it in that linked way, if you like. We've got a 5 per cent target, so if you can tell us what you think of that, should that be more ambitious. And the 5 per cent target has to be achieved by 2040. Now, most of you in your evidence thing, in fact, all of you in your evidence say that that's not ambitious enough, it's 22 years away. So I think that the two things are linked, so if you can tell us what you think of the 5 per cent target and that 2040 date. Yes, in our evidence, we've come out very strongly in favour of a much more ambitious target. As I said earlier, this bill should ensure that it is the last generation living in fuel poverty. So we've called for a target that would be move the date forward by 2032, that aligns with some of the work being done on the climate change bill and climate change plan, and also that the target should be down to eradicate to 0 per cent as far as reasonably practicable. So we are acknowledging that there are people that move in and out of fuel poverty and that you may not be able to get it down to an absolute zero. There will be cases where, at particular times, that's not possible. And we think that that is a reasonable position. It is achievable and so a credible target to have and something that we should be striving for. I also support what Alexander was saying is that there should be continuing to measure the levels of extreme fuel poverty or we may be able to look for examples from the child poverty bill where they speak about persistent poverty. So we're making sure that the risk is that, if you say, allow for this 5 per cent, that that 5 per cent indeed are the most difficult, the hardest to reach, the most expensive to reach and that they just get left behind. I think that we cannot be in a position where we would say that it's okay for that 5 per cent to continue to live in fuel poverty in 2040. Surely that's unacceptable. I agree with what Elizabeth Smith just said. We understand the logic of the 5 per cent. As Dice said, there is a transient element to fuel poverty, but, if that is the target that is met, there has to be a commitment to an ambition that work is then on-going or even stepped up to reduce it to zero and that that 5 per cent, if that is a 5 per cent who are hard to reach or have a greater support need, then more resource has to be put towards supporting them. In terms of the date, we would agree that 2040 is too far in the future. It would mean a reduction of 1 per cent per year, which doesn't reflect the progress that we've seen in recent years and it would mean, as you said, 22 years in the future. We would also support a target of 2032. That would also bring it in line with some of the ambitions set out around energy efficiency, improving the energy efficiency of social housing and improving general energy efficiency standards. One of the things that relates to the previous question around the four drivers of fuel poverty is that, if we have a target to, essentially, for all intents and purposes, remove energy efficiency as a driver of fuel poverty that is around 2032 and then eight years later, we have a target to completely eradicate fuel poverty, we have a risk that there is a focus as there has, to an extent, been in the past an undue focus on energy efficiency alone and that the other drivers of fuel poverty are, in effect, left until later. As has been pointed out already, all those drivers of fuel poverty interact, they all have a significant impact and, as a result, they all need to be addressed together. If we are saying that we can achieve those improvements in energy efficiency by 2032, then work should be on-going alongside that to bring all those other drivers down. In that regard, 2032 is an achievable target. If we look at the levels of fuel poverty in 2016, we had 27 per cent. If you apply the proposed new definition to that, that brings that down to 24 per cent. There is a 3 per cent drop by changing the definition. Given that that is a 2016 target, what we are talking about if we take 5 per cent off a 24 per cent is a 19 per cent reduction or a 19 per cent out of people out in fuel poverty. By a 20-year programme that starts in 2020, that is less than a 1 per cent improvement every year and our view is that it is certainly not ambitious. That is business as usual that we would achieve. If we are going to continue to review how we measure people within fuel poverty, because the Scottish House Conditioning Survey has already changed its methodology three times in 2011, 2014 and 2016. We continue to change the methodology and, in each of those cases, we have seen fuel poverty drop. Our worry is that we continue to make changes that will not mean anything other than that we are not providing enough support to homes, but we can manage down the levels of fuel poverty by continuing to change and manipulate the data that we collect. I would like to reflect some of the comments of the panel. I agree with the 5 per cent and the 2032, but again with a secondary target stretching to 2040, particularly because I would like to see fuel poverty strategies being embedded and not simply removed once a target is reached. It must be an on-going thing, particularly when we have the rural and outlying areas. There are very small communities. They learn from each other behaviours that are learned things and we would like to see fuel poverty strategies into education, looking at how we can support young people to understand energy efficiency, how to behave in an energy-efficient way and, rather than removing them from fuel poverty or their future homes from fuel poverty, avoiding them getting into fuel poverty in the first place. I welcome the 2040 target, but with a bit more ambition, as Cagan said in Norrie, 2032 would probably be more realistic. Norrie used it about 19 per cent. By the time we come to 2020, it will be a lot more than a 19 per cent reduction. I think that the 24 per cent fuel poverty target percentage has been quite skewed by the massive fluctuations in energy prices, particularly the drop that we had around the time that the house conditions survey was done. Obviously, we have had massive increases again since then, particularly when we stand in charges. I would expect that there will be a bit more work to do than the 19 per cent. We, too, support the programme of 14 years. It matches the one that Parliament instigated in 2012, which came to its termination in 2016. It is no good reason for it to be any longer than that period. The target, I have already made reference to the extreme fuel poverty and the good grounds, we believe, for there being a target on that as well, and eliminating that pronto. I think that the point that I would make with my Highlands and Islands hat-on is that, in the Highlands and Islands, the Scottish House Conditions Survey statistics for local authorities show that 50 per cent of all households—a half of all households under the existing so-called old definition—are in fuel poverty. Therefore, there really has to be a concerted attempt to recognise the places that have the highest levels of fuel poverty, the difficulties that have been faced in eliminating fuel poverty in those areas, which has effectively been flatlining for years, and to suggest that another and new and better approach is needed to make sure that the target is reached in those areas. I get very briefly, Mr Kerr, because Mr Simpson spoke about the safeguard tariff at the start. I think that we need to bear in mind that this is a temporary measure. The worry that we have on both the safeguard tariff and the prepayment tariff caps is that it in some way will amend household behaviour in the wrong direction. In other words, people think that the Government is protecting them by applying a cap that they are less likely to switch supplier or shop around for a better deal or change their payment method. It is a short-term measure, and even off-gem would admit that they are not sure of the impact on switching rates. If we want people to find better deals and lower prices, we have to recognise that any tariff cap can only be a temporary measure. We must continue to work and support householders to view what their energy bill is and how they can reduce that and not simply sit back and think that they are protected when they may already be paying far too much. I just want to come back to you all on the 2040. It is a long way away, but in the policy memorandum, the Government says that to achieve that will involve the use of low cost-effective, low-carbon heating. As you all know, most homes do not have that. To roll that out nationwide would be a massive project, which is presumably why they have picked 2040. Do you not think that that is reasonable under those circumstances? If you do not think that it is reasonable—I know that you are itching to come in, Mr Kerr—you have all said that it should be 2032. Either that is plucked out of thin air or it is based on something. Perhaps you can explain where you have got 2032 from and why the Government is wrong when it is going to take an awful lot of work to get all homes on to low-carbon heating. We start to respond. Can I ask you to keep your answers a bit shorter, because we have a lot to get through and we have another hour to get through it in. Mr Kerr, you are the keenest. I think that we do not necessarily need to put low-carbon heating fuel poverty together, but a low-carbon heat source will not solve fuel poverty. The electricity grid in Scotland is mainly low-carbon. We will have our gas grid for many, many years to come. We will not replace that, but we are looking towards technologies that reduce the amount of carbon in the gas mix that we have. For example, biofuels and a range of other mixes that we put in hydrogen will reduce that, but simply by giving someone low-carbon heat does not take away the fact that they will be fuel poor. It may contribute to their fuel poverty if the technology applied to gain that low-carbon heat, for example by stripping out completely the gas grid and moving to electricity for heating alone. The additional cost of that is very significant. As for the 2040 target, it is about scaling up ambition. We could all certainly say that 2040 sounds absolutely fine, but that does not give any step change in the productivity levels or the number of homes that are tackled each year. It does, in all honesty, condemn another generation to live and fuel poverty. The 2032 target is set in terms of what we can reasonably expect in a number of parliamentary terms and an increase in the level of budget. That expenditure has got to come, and I am sorry, convener, my answer is exceptionally longer than you had hoped. However, if we maintain the budget at its current levels, that is what we will get. Some time ago, Energiacs in Scotland talked about a need for £200 million a year. That is a very old figure. We have never achieved that level of expenditure ever, so we are way behind. We need to significantly raise our game. Thank you very much. I will move on. Alexander, you have a question to ask. There has been lots of discussion and you have touched on already this morning about the new definition. Can I ask the panel's views on the new definition? Do you believe that it is an improvement or is it not an improvement? If it is an improvement, why is it an improvement? If it is not an improvement, why is it not an improvement? It is a bit like a cured egg to answer your question, in that it is good in part, but not in others. We welcome the fact that we have this fuel poverty bill going forward. We are more than happy to see a reexamination of the definition, because the definition should logically underpin everything that flows from it in terms of giving the evidence base to show what is happening across the board in relation to fuel poverty and therefore enable the proper evidence-based development of policies and programmes to address the problems and achieve the elimination or but of fuel poverty in a way in which previous fuel poverty strategies have failed to do. In the rural context, we welcome the fact that the minimum income standard is being used to underpin to inform the evidence-based understanding of poverty, the amount of disposable income that people have available to them, but where it falls down and falls down very badly and undermines the whole approach radically as far as we in the Highlands and many other organisations have been making exactly the same point, is in the context of not using all the available minimum income standard evidence, and as you are aware, there is evidence that has been gathered on exactly the same basis effectively as the minimum income standard UK data for remote rural Scotland. It was first gathered in 2013, and it was refreshed in 2016. We are saying, please use this evidence, and the independent panel of academics who came up with a new fuel poverty definition themselves recognised that there was a particular problem in remote rural areas of Scotland and suggested an uplift. In the same way, for example, we have a London uplift on the Miss UK data when it is used to inform the living wage, for example. We are saying, please, please do the same thing for remote rural Scotland, because we know from the Miss remote rural Scotland data that, depending on the household type and location, families need between 10% and 35% more income to achieve the same basic level of income. That has to be a fundamental contributor to fuel poverty that follows from that. It is not the only contributor, but it must be recognised in any definition if it has the credibility and to serve the purpose for which it is designed, I believe. Just to build on what Dias just said, he is absolutely right. We support the new definition with the exception that the minimum income standard for remote rural areas has to be included. Our research has backed up a lot of what organisations such as Highlands and Islands Enterprise have come out with that, as Dias said, 10 to 40% higher incomes required last year. It has commissioned some qualitative research with households that were defined as being fuel poor into their support needs. One of the interesting things that came out of that was that the groups who self-identified as having a significant need for fuel poverty support corresponded quite closely with the groups that were more likely to be defined as fuel poor under the Scottish Government's impact assessment, based on the new definition, with one exception. That exception was households in rural areas. Households in remote rural areas particularly said that they needed all sorts of support, advice and financial support. The fact that that was the one group that didn't correspond with what was in the impact assessment would suggest to me that this is the one area that there is a real need for a fundamental change. Do you believe that having that change will progress it? If that change is not put into the process then it will be flawed and it will ensure that individuals are not being captured in the locations that you have identified that are in the rural areas or in the more remote areas and the harder areas to ascertain. Without that new definition being encapsulated, the new definition is going to be flawed. Thank you very much, convener, so much to ask. I am not going to ask all the questions that I would like to because of time, but first of all I would like to support the position on the minimum income standards that I mean representing over 6,000 island constituents. I am just wondering on that point. Does the panel believe that when we look to tackle fuel poverty there should be additional emphasis on island and rural communities to bring them down, if you like, to the proportion of people in an average local authority area that suffer from fuel poverty rather than a situation whereby one local authority might have 10 per cent of 15 per cent, but in some of the highland and remote authorities you might have 30 or 40 per cent. Do you think that there should be a specific focus initially on getting additional resources put to that, to reduce that, to at least the Scottish average initially, would people support such a measure? I would just like to make a very general comment. In East Ayrshire we are not remote rural, but we certainly have some rural areas. Particularly we do see difficulties with access to support services. One of the main ones is access to finances in order to travel, and the second is access to transport to make the journey to reach the support services. Those people do very often end up living in isolation. They look to neighbours, friends and family for support, but those tend to be in the exact same position. We need something within the strategy that identifies those people in those groups of society that is potentially needing extra support. Thank you very much for that. Some of the answers have been received. As other people have said about the Scottish Government needing to be more ambitious. However, the Scottish Government does not have much control of our incomes, for example pensions—an obvious one that we do not have any control of, for example. The Scottish Government, even if it set up its own energy company, would still be subject to, for example, world prices. Even if it set its fuel at cost. How realistic is it to reduce fuel poverty year on year? It was not successful in the previous strategy when the Scottish Government, despite its best effort, is still buffeted by those external factors. One thing that I would say to the panel is that it is all talking about the Scottish Government only aiming to reduce fuel poverty by 1 per cent a year. However, if we were to reduce the number from 600,000 to 140,000, that is a 77 per cent reduction that is being planned for the number of people who fuel poverty at the moment, which is more than 4 per cent a year, I would suggest. The question in terms of ambition, while I certainly commend the fact that the Scottish Government has such a strong commitment and, indeed, this Parliament to the eradication of fuel poverty and has, over the years, had a series of programmes to address that, mainly focusing on energy efficiency. However, one would argue that, you know, let's learn from the lessons that, you know, why hasn't it reduced as much as it should have done and, you know, let's learn from evaluation of programmes that hasn't been done until fairly recently. And looking at how forming of the types of partnerships that they're looking at in the strategy could make these programmes more effective, how greater investment, yes, it does come down to, you know, numbers in the budget of greater investment in not just the delivery of measures but the before and after care of helping people to understand how to manage their energy more effectively, how to do switching, all of that, it will require greater investment if we seriously want to eradicate fuel poverty. And so, I think, you know, we have to, as Norrie was saying, we have to up our game. We have to, you know, it requires a step change. If we're going to go along at a business as usual budget, a business as usual strategy, then we'll have business as usual results. And I think, you know, the whole point of this bill and the strategy following on the work of the rural fuel poverty task force and the strategic working group is to change, is to build on what we've been doing and improve. To follow on from that, I think that your submission, like all the others, is actually excellent. And what you've said is that you note the positive results from research undertaking by energy agency in NHS Ayrsharnarn, which is my own area, where preliminary analysis of the health impacts of area-based solid wall insulation schemes suggests lower hospital admission rates for respiratory and cardiovascular-related conditions in those areas, compared with the control group, not in the scheme. So, I'm just wondering, I mean, have you had any, have you had specific discussions with Scottish ministers, for example, about how a switch, for example, of some NHS resources into fuel poverty reduction, because you're suggesting a budget increase of 110 to 234 million, which on the face of it looks quite ambitious and, you know, on a year-to-year basis. But if you look at how you could perhaps save NHS money by putting money into this, I know this is something Norie's talked about for a number of years as well. Have you had any kind of discussions, any positive response from ministers on that kind of issue? Is that something that's been considered? How has it been taken forward? It is certainly something that we have raised in terms of that, you know, should we be looking more globally at the budget and not just at a, you know, it shouldn't just be in the housing division. We should be looking broader of, you know, where are the other benefits coming from? Who else should be investing in this? And it goes beyond health, of course. It goes to economy because of all the jobs that could be created and sustained through an ambitious programme that just in terms of the energy efficiency side. But you're right, we're now starting to see hard evidence of the health benefits, and Ayrsir and Aaron have been a real leader working with the energy agency to demonstrate that, and we need more of that evidence, that evaluation done, so that we can actually cost what those benefits are to the NHS. But previous research has indicated that it would be up to 80 million a year, just savings to the NHS, let alone the health and wellbeing benefits to individuals. And so we think that that's why we were so disappointed in the financial memorandum, because it fails to look at the issues of cost of reaching the target, whether it be even if it's just a 5 per cent by 2040, or true eradication of fuel poverty. You know, what is the cost of that, and how are we going to meet that cost with public investment, but also some private investment coming in through other policies? We're looking at other portfolios of the Government, but we're disappointed that the finance committee apparently is not going to report on the financial memorandum, but that's one of the questions that we think they should look at, not just the amount of the budget, but where does it come from? Just lastly, actually, thanks, convener, for your indulgence. You've said again in your submission, and I'm sorry that I'm focused on one individual, but I just want to discuss this one point. It says, as you said, the Scottish Government is stating the draft fuel poverty strategy will develop, if appropriate, a wider energy efficient Scotland bill for later in this Parliament, and this would be the vehicle for any further legislative change need to support energy efficient Scotland beyond the fuel poverty provisions contained in this bill. Do you feel, other members of the panel, that perhaps this is a missed opportunity and that it should be a much more rounded bill, instead of looking to have, for example, maybe another bill a year or two from now, everything should be contained effectively in one bill? Would you like to see additional provisions in this bill if possible? Well, this bill, we feel, had its genesis really as a warm homes bill, and it was speaking about warm homes for everybody in Scotland, warm, low-carb and affordable homes. And so, yes, we were disappointed when a decision was taken to make this just focus on fuel poverty. We welcome the focus, but we feel it is limited and misses out that opportunity to support it by providing a complementary statutory underpinning for the Energy Efficient Scotland programme, which we think is very much needed to, again, to provide that ambition, to deliver on removing poor energy performance as a driver of fuel poverty. And so, we know that there is a consideration of a possible energy efficient Scotland bill, perhaps we'll hear more about that when I believe the minister is going to make a statement to Parliament on Thursday, so that would be very positive if there was a firm commitment to that bill and what it would contain. But failing that, I think that this bill provides a perfect opportunity to take this forward in a timely fashion in a way that would support achievement of the targets in the fuel poverty bill. Thank you very much, convener. Just on that last point, we also have evidence from the Energy Poverty Research Initiative in Commonwealth, saying that they are disappointed that the Scottish Government has chosen to ignore the consensus in the expert workshop in 2017 that the finalisation of the new definition should be postponed for two or three years to allow the definition and inclusion of a robust Scottish definition of vulnerability in the new definition of fuel poverty. So, we're having a bit of conflicting evidence, but that's what we need to deal with. I just want to ask the panel, I mean, Diolch, Alexander, you said that the definition should underpin everything that will flow from it, should be the evidence base for presumably the strategy and the implementation and the delivery of the target.  It's a modelling exercise, and as far as I can see, it measures fuel poverty by local authority area. We have a map in the spice briefing showing that. You were asking for an uplift to the minimum income standard in relationship to remote and rural Scotland. I think that you also mentioned in your submission a better alignment with the urban rural classification. So, my question is, first of all, how well can the current measurements of fuel poverty align with the geography of Scotland? And secondly, if the bill is passed as it stands, will it actually help to prioritise and plan where and how we're going to spend money? Right. First of all, does it align with the geography of Scotland? I think that it could do better, particularly in relation to the way that information is gathered according to the Scottish Government's urban rural classification system, which, as you know, is based on, it's called the six-fold classification system, and category one is effectively the cities, and then you work down one and two effectively the cities, three and four effectively towns, and then five and six are effectively rural. That is to say, they are settlements of 3,000 or less, and category five is whether they are within half an hour's drive time of a major conurbation, and category six is effectively remote rural, which is more than half an hour's drive time from a major conurbation. And although information is gathered to some extent on the two categories, it's very often, and it's been the case in relation to a degree with the fuel poverty information which is gathered, it's globalised up, so you just look at rural, and you say that rural being categories five and six, so it's aggregated. We're saying, please, henceforth going forward, make sure that all information is gathered on the basis of, so that you can see clearly what is happening in both category five and category six, in other words, accessible rural and remote rural. Remote rural is, it's commonly recognised, not least by the independent panel of academics who came up with the new definition. Remote rural is where the greatest problems are, and you need to have a much better understanding of outcomes. The point has been made already by my colleagues here about the importance of measuring outcomes. An awful lot of assumptions are made on the basis of inputs, that is to say, energy efficiency inputs necessarily equating to affordable warmth outcomes, that isn't the case. Experience shows that too often an energy efficiency input doesn't necessarily mean that the person living in the house actually ends up achieving the warmth at a price which they can afford and they still have a problem. So we need an improved system also to complement the much better understanding of what's going on in remote rural Scotland as well as accessible rural Scotland of the outcomes. I hope that the new fuel poverty strategy will take that question very seriously indeed, so that we can, going forward, have a much better understanding of what works and what doesn't work. I think that that's been one of the major weaknesses of the fuel poverty strategy previously, is that it hasn't looked nearly closely enough at real outcomes in terms of affordable warmth. Forgive me, I've forgotten the second part of your question. Part of my question is, and others can come in. For example, if I'm a policymaker in five years' time, I'm in the Scottish Government and I want to eradicate fuel poverty on the island of Skye, am I in a better position to do that after this bill is enacted than I am to do? Right. Well, that is about not unless you also take the, unless you really think hard about it from the perspective of the people who need the help and what kind of help works best for them. And the experience of the, wherever I've come across it, but I mean in particular the place that I know best, which is the Highlands and Islands, and the people who are engaged in the front line trying to tackle the problems, like for example, Lachausen Skye Housing Association's Energy Advice Service, is that where you have a skilled trusted fuel poverty alleviation persons based in the community who are able to find the, make sure that they don't miss anybody out. And a lot of this is building trust and then word of mouth and then actually getting into the house and looking at all the aspects, all those things which are causing that household to have difficulty, whether it be the fabric of the property needs improvement insulation, whether it be the heating system needs changing, whether it be the electricity tariff, which of course is a feature of remote rural areas, which are essentially off gas, and the way that they are using the system and the hand holding support that they may need, particularly if they're elderly and very independent minded and simply don't understand the way what the system has to offer them. The way you do provide that service, then you can actually, with the mix of technical and what you might call social work approach, almost, I don't mean to say that in any demeaning way, but people do need a lot of hand holding in some instances, that that works, that's the way to get to grips with the problem. Now that requires resourcing, it requires revenue funding for individuals to make sure that that outreach, that effective outreach actually takes place, and where it does take place, it works extremely well. Self won't make a difference to that, it's about how we implement things on the ground. Yes, that's right, I mean clearly there is… Sorry, okay, that's fine. Sorry, I wanted to come in. Sorry, I think that you talked about the measurement. The Scottish house condition survey uses breed M12. Breed M12 has a number of anomalies in it. For example, in calculating fuel costs, it uses a Scottish average for oil. Oil prices in remote and rural are very, very different from inner city oil, so you've got an average there. I would suggest that if we're really going to have the house condition survey as our main touchstone, then we need to amend breed M to take into account a number of those issues. At the same time, you're right, it gives it to local authority area, and that's quite difficult in, say, the highlands when it's such a huge area, but you can apply additional work that will get good figures using proxies, and we will always use proxies down to ward level within certain areas. That requires additional work. So the bill itself won't make targeting resources to fuel poor households any easier. The minister, when he talked about introducing the bill, was looking for a door step tool that someone on the door step could make an assessment of fuel poverty. Given the complexity of the definition, that door step tool is nigh on impossible to take into account somebody's income, somebody's fuel costs, then work out the MIS. So a door step tool for an individual house is really a non-starter, but we can amend breed M, we can do additional work and move it down to ward level that would be more useful for local authorities. I might come back to the committee with some further thoughts in writing about what that would involve. That would be quite useful. A slightly more general point, although I agree with that, but there's also something to be said around how you use the definition in terms of budgeting. Obviously, if we have a more accurate definition, that could play a role in aligning fuel poverty budgets. Obviously, that's a very general point, but how do you do that more effectively with the new definition compared to the old one? There's maybe nothing in the bill right now that would make that easier, so one solution for that could be a more in-depth reporting requirement for either a third party or for ministers to report on the impact of each individual driver of fuel poverty, as well as the impact of measures to address those drivers individually to understand where that money needs to be spent, essentially. If we see that energy prices are holding back progress, then we know that that's where money needs to go for innovation. I suppose that's a more general point, but I think that there is a more accurate and more detailed definition that can play in terms of budgeting. We're going to come back to reporting on accountability, so I'll leave it there. Liam, you had a couple of questions on that. Thanks very much, convener. Yes, indeed, as somebody who represents, the duty is on our representing the part of the country, Orkney, with the highest levels of fuel poverty, so that's a particular interest for me. I congratulate the panel on the distinction of compelling enough evidence that the Government is so fit to issue its retaliation first in terms of explanatory note. Even in that note, the Government appears to accept that the combined impact of the redefinition targets is a greater reduction in the fuel poverty rate in rural areas compared to urban areas. We've heard from all of you that the concerns about the absence of the rural MIS goes against the advice of the rural fuel poverty task force, the advice of the independent panel and the wishes of pretty much every organisation involved in housing and fuel poverty across the highlands and islands. That appears to be based from the note on the potential costs of including a rural MIS and delays in implementing the system. I would be interested in the panel's response to those two concerns that appear to be being raised by the Government to justify its position in relation to this issue. The figure that is quoted in the paper that was tabled is of costing £0.5 million over four years. From my conversations with Professor Donald Hirsh of Loughborough University, who is the key person responsible for gathering minimum income standard data and led the work on MIS remote rural, I think that he is surprised that it should would need to cost that much. The only way that I would respectively suggest that the committee could bottom that out would be to perhaps invite Professor Donald Hirsh to come and give evidence and discuss that very thing. It begs the question as to whether it would be money well spent, our view, is that it would. The £0.5 million over four years, if we amend Bredem and again there is a reference that Bredem needs to be amended, that would not be free. There is no cost in for amending Bredem. I think that this is a figure to say why we should not do it and why not. Half a million pounds over four years is in the great scheme of things, a fairly small drop in the ocean when we are getting more accurate reporting and being able to dedicate resources more accurately into a particular area. I am sorry, I think that it is a smokescreen. In his evidence, it suggests that such a variation would be feasible with a modest amount of on-going research to keep it up-to-date. It does not quantify it, but it suggests that it is of that order of magnitude. Mr Salter, you were talking about the budgeting aspect earlier. Do you agree that if you do not get the criteria right, then where you are directing the resources thereafter is not going to be most efficiently done? Absolutely. I cannot comment on the exact figure that the Scottish Government has put on that, but, as Norrie and Diabell said, in order to get the outcomes that the bill is trying to achieve, if you start from the wrong point, you are not going to be able to budget in an effective way and you are not going to get those outcomes. I absolutely agree that it would be money well spent if it ultimately means that fuel poverty support is getting to those in the greatest need and, in particular, those who, historically, have perhaps found it harder to access support than, absolutely, I would say that it was money well spent. On the point of the delay, we have touched on the cost on the delay. Do you envisage a delay, given all that you have said, about the need to crack on with this and be more remissioned in terms of the targets? As far as, again, I have not seen any great detail from the Scottish Government on exactly what that delay would be and exactly what would cause it. As far as I am aware, and as Diabell has said, a lot of that work has already been done, Mr Hirsh, as well as Highlands and Islands Enterprise, have done extensive research on what that would include. We know that those uplifts already exist in other parts of the country, for example in London. It would appear to me that that should not be an insurmountable problem, even if there was to be a delay, as Norrie rightly pointed out. In the Scottish House condition survey, methodologies are revised and applied retroactively now. Even if there was some short delay, there is no reason that the remote rural uplift should then be applied once it is ready. I do not see that as a reason not to do it. I turn to the draft strategy that was published alongside the draft bill. I will try to seek your views on the principle of having a strategy, the time table in terms of coming out probably 19, certainly after the bill was approved, and what your thoughts are on the draft strategy that stands just now. Can the maker answer as brief as we possibly can, please? I will make a start. The strategy needs to be in place. The question that we have got is whether or not lessons have been learned from the previous schemes that will impact on the strategy just now. The strategy is more focused on removing poor energy efficiency as the main driver. We would like to see a lot more built in there for the support services such as citizens advice, which we are doing the handholding. It is important that we have a strategy, but I do not think that it is wide enough, and it is very narrow focused. I think that what has been said already about the strategy is that in our submission, we have spelled out what we would like to see included in the preparation of the fuel poverty strategy. A lot of work has already been done on that by both the strategic working group, which Elizabeth provided the Secretary for and the rural fuel poverty task force, which the Scottish Government convened, which I chaired. I think that there is a lot of information available, but can I make the simple point that I think is a very useful way of ensuring that the strategy delivers for remote rural Scotland is to make sure that it is islands-proofed as per the requirements of the Islands Scotland Act, which I think is all but in place now. I think that it has a few small stages to go, but it seems to me that the minister, Mr Stewart, has previously indicated that he would be happy to see the bill and the strategy island-proofed, as I understand it, as soon as possible. I would urge the committee to support that view because I think that it would be useful for making sure that both the bill and the strategy do what they are required to do in practice. A couple of points. First, on the consultation requirements, which we welcome the specific reference to getting the views of people with lived experience of fuel poverty, which we think is quite positive. We think that that should also happen in terms of gathering their views on reporting progress, and that the consultation should be more in terms of co-design rather than just a passive asking for some input and wrap-in feedback. We have some extensive comments on that aspect. Secondly, on the content, similar to the comments that I have said earlier about business as usual, does the strategy contain specific policies or programmes that are different from what we have now? We should build on what we have now, which has been successful. However, to have the step change towards accelerated progress, we think that there should be new programmes, policies using levers of either regulation or incentive or looking at issues to how we are making explicit links to other strategies, such as the child poverty strategy and public health strategies. Those should be evidenced in the fuel poverty strategy so that we know that that will be mainstreamed across all of Scotland and not just the current pepper pot approach, which means that if you are lucky, you might have a year-long project that is funded to provide the kinds of services that others were talking about—handholding. However, if you are not lucky, you do not have anything. We think that we would like to see the strategy developed so that it actually moves on from where we are today. I wanted to briefly add a point about the consultation requirements. It talks about the lived experience. From a front-line worker perspective, I would very much like to see front-line workers being consulted as well, and that would perhaps give a good indication of the trigger points for when consumers approach a trusted intermediary. Organisations such as Energy Action Scotland, Home Energy Scotland, Energy Savings Trust and obviously Citizens Advice are already a vast wealth of knowledge. I am quite sure that many front-line workers working in those organisations would be more than happy to pipe up and give their experience of it. I agree with that. I think that there is a lot of scope for more detail on how the lived experience of fuel poverty is measured, and that needs to be set out in more detail. There are a lot of options of places that that could be done. As Linda said, speaking to front-line workers is very important. There is also quite a lot of work already done through the Scottish household survey that could be expanded on to get more data on fuel poverty. The strategy will need a lot more detail. It sets out a commitment on addressing all four drivers of fuel poverty. As I have said before, we need a lot more detail on how that is going to be done. We have talked a lot today about some of the limitations of Scottish Government powers, and because of that, we need to understand what the strategy needs to look in great detail about what it is going to do to bring down energy prices and increase incomes. That is an area that needs a lot more detail. The other aspect that we had some thoughts on in terms of vulnerability criteria is that there was a recommendation from the academic review panel about having on-going work to, I suppose, define vulnerability or to produce a set of criteria through things such as health and disability that would be indicators of vulnerability. I think that there would be benefit in the strategy if there was a clear commitment to perhaps a permanent panel of public health experts or something like that that would review that on an on-going basis, because we know that vulnerability is a complex issue. It is something that changes a lot over time for society and individuals. I think that that is on-going work that needs to be reviewed. As that work is being reviewed, I think that the suggestion in the strategy that the age of 75 is an assumed age for requiring an enhanced heating regime, which I think is very closely related to the vulnerability question, that age is potentially too high because vulnerability is not just a health issue. After retirement age, we have people becoming more financially vulnerable and spending more time at home. The same goes for people with children under 5. In our view, it would be until at least that first stage of work in terms of setting out those vulnerability criteria that it would be beneficial to include households with children under 5 and to bring that age of assumed requirement for an enhanced heating regime in line with the pension age. I just wanted to return to the financial memorandum. Elizabeth Leighton correctly identified that the financial memorandum merely reflects the costs of implementing the bill itself, printing a strategy and how much time it will take to write it and all the rest of it. I think that you highlight other pieces of legislation such as climate change targets, where we have a more detailed cost of achieving the target. Can any of you say a little bit more about, given that we cannot assess the full costs of achieving this target, that would be unreasonable? What should we expect can reasonably be done to assess the broad costs of eradicating fuel poverty, either to the bill that stands or according to any amended target? I will head off on that. In our evidence, we suggested that there could be some projections made of what the costs would be. Certainly, we gave some examples of research that has been done on the energy efficiency side that has been done over the past few years by consumer futures ads and what now has become CAS, where they have estimated costs of alleviating fuel poverty in that case. It is an example of how those projections could be done and given indication of what it would cost to achieve, for example, just the energy efficient Scotland accelerated targets for fuel poor homes. Those figures indicated that at least a doubling of the current annual budget for energy efficiency and fuel poverty programmes has to be made available. I stress at least because it is only looking at one driver, and it is the research that is a little bit dated. I think that in speaking with, for example, public health officials and consulting with front-line workers, it would be possible to project how we address the other drivers as well. I would not say that it is unreasonable to do a projection and estimate of what the cost would be as they have done with the climate change plan and the climate change bill. Importantly, the other aspect that they did was that they looked at the wider benefits of action on climate change. The same could be done for fuel poverty. Those arguments are well rehearsed, the benefits in terms of health, well-being, jobs for the economy, improved energy security and, of course, energy savings in people's pockets, which then get spent in the local economy. Again, there has been research in all those areas, and that could be documented to evidence why investment in this is well worthwhile. Again, there are other Government budgets that could contribute to this effort. Just to put on the record that the Highlands and Islands Housing Association's full warmth group drew up a proposal some time ago now for what we call an energy carer based model of delivery, which I have described in my previous answers. That exists. The Scottish Government never formally responded to it. The proposal was also picked up and advocated by the Scottish Government's rural fuel poverty task force. There is work out there that gives a detail of what it would cost to deliver the kind of personalised outreach service that is required to tackle the problems in the Highlands and Islands. Another question that we have skipped over is the question of monitoring. Coming again to the Climate Change Act, we have the independent committee for climate change that produces reports and is a statutory adviser to Government and is independent. In the bill in section 6, the periodic reports are to be prepared by Scottish ministers and laid before Parliament. In your evidence, I think that all of you say something about enhanced reporting and scrutiny to help future parliamentarians, future policy makers assess whether we are on track, as it were, and I think that Craig Ewing had mentioned about reporting that focused on each of the individual drivers. Any brief comments that you have about that—we have you written evidence of them, but any brief comments that you have about that and how important you think that might be would be useful? Very important and very important that the major reviews are done sooner rather than later. In other words, five years from start counting now, basically, or from 2019, so in 2024-29 to reiterate the point about the requirement for interim reports, annual reporting, so that you can keep proper tabs on what is really happening and try and avoid repeating the problem of the previous fuel property strategy, which is that you are always looking back at things getting not really improving very much and it appeared as if not enough that was really effective was being done to alter the direction of travel. I think that it would be beneficial to have a statutory rule for a third party organisation to carry out that monitoring and to produce frequent reports that set out progress on each of the four drivers. I say that each of the four drivers, I mean each of the recognised drivers, because, obviously, they could change over time, but that would give a more robust level of scrutiny, as you say, as with the Committee on Climate Change. I think that there should also be a benefit for ministers to be required to respond to that report in Parliament and to, again, respond on each of the drivers of fuel poverty. I think that that is important to make sure that we are not just focusing on one aspect of fuel poverty, that there is a statutory requirement to at least measure and look at each driver, even if that ends up being the case, that not every driver can be tackled to the same extent that we need to understand why that is and why we need to understand where the sticking points are, so I think that that would be beneficial. The Home Energy Conservation Act, which was introduced in 1995 and 1996, required local authorities to report every two years on progress towards their statutory targets. The reason for that was to allow just that scrutiny of progress and then, if needed, amend the target, give guidance and change. If we are talking about every five years, that seems far too long to allow significant change or guidance to be given within that, because if we do it every five years and then we take a year to publish, that runs into six years, so the information that you have got is already five years behind because of that. The house conditions survey models every year continually now. The house conditions survey used to be every five years models every year and becomes statistically valid every three years, although they put out figures every year, so there is already a precedent in gathering that information and reporting to the Parliament. We have argued that the fuel poverty advisory panel should be established on a statutory basis, so it is independent and goes beyond one administration and can then respond to reports and provide advice to Parliament, but there should be not only annual reporting, shorter reports than a five-yearly annual reporting, but that provides an opportunity to look at should there be any corrective action taken if progress is not sufficient, but also to look at the resource question, is it adequately resourced? It is not just a strategy of ideas and plans, but it is adequately resourced to deliver what it says it is going to do, and that is what is being done with the child poverty bill and also with the climate change bill. Andy Grahame wants to come in and I will come back to you. Thanks, convener. I just want to knit back to the strategy, which is in part 3 of the bill. The committee has been dealing with the planning bill as well. There was an amendment that went through which looked at the national planning framework and said that there should be an enhanced parliamentary scrutiny of that. Do you think that that should also apply to the fuel poverty strategy? In other words, the Parliament should have a greater role in that. It should not just be left to ministers just to publish it and show us it, and then we will move on. Briefness of answers, yes. A ticket there is a unanimity there, yes, right, okay. I wish all the questions had been like that. To find the little question, the boring bits at the end of bills are often the most interesting, so section 13 is on commencement and section 14 tells us what the act is going to be called once it is enacted. The commencement section says that this section, i.e., the commencement section, and section 14 will come into force in the day after royal assent. In other words, when the Queen signs the bill and it becomes an act, all that we have is a name and the fact that that name comes into force on that day, nothing else. Everything else waits for ministers to commence the rest of the bill by then being enacted. I think that some of you have talked about the need to commend section 3. Do you have any views on whether we should strengthen the commencement provisions to have a timetabling for doing this, rather than just leaving it to ministers? If you don't have a view, that doesn't matter. Oh, you'd spoiled it. I was going so well. Mr Alexander, then. Yes, I couldn't agree more. It does need a timetable. I think that many of the responses to the fuel poverty consultation document, rather than submissions to this committee earlier in the year, made that point. We need milestones and we need a much clearer way of understanding what is planned and we need it sooner rather than later. The bill contains the milestones, but the trigger point for starting the clock ticking is not the gift of ministers in terms of commencing virtually the whole of the bill. That is the question that I am asking. Should we be looking at setting some of those dates in the bill, like for a year after Royal Ascent, we shall trigger it? The word is out of my mouth. We were suggesting 12 months from the date of the Royal Ascent. We think that that would be reasonable as we have a draft strategy already in our hands, and so a 12-month timetable would ensure that it doesn't languish. I don't think that the Scottish Government in any way intends to do that, but it would give assurance that the momentum will be maintained. Thank you. Graham, you wanted to come on with one last point. Well, for its final question, convener, the bill is an incredibly flimsy document. If we didn't have it, would anyone lose out? Yes. That is the simple answer to that, because we then have nothing to say what we would like to do. We have an energy efficiency programme that will trundle on to no end. We will simply continue to provide some help to people. We will not know how effective it is. I think that the bill helps to bring that into focus. We can all, on this side of the table, disagree with the 2040 date, but it does lay out what it intends to achieve. If we don't have that, then there is no focus for future work or programmes. On that note, unless anybody has got any last comments, they would like to ask Llynde. I just wanted to say that I prepared two case studies that I will leave with you. The point in preparing them was to give two different examples of people in fuel poverty, one of which we worked very closely with to bring her out of fuel poverty. She was in a local authority property and had plenty of options. The other case study is for a lady who has worked very, very hard to be any energy efficient. She is engaged with two separate programmes, Wyrmawr, Scotland for Ex-NOL Insolation and, historically, the Green Deal, which I know is reserved to Westminster. She is now in fuel poverty despite that work. I have no strategies left to pull her out of it other than time and I hope for a change of circumstances. The point of including that was to show for the 5 per cent target that there will still be some people who just can't move out of that, so I will leave them here for your perusal, if you don't mind. I will pick up on the question of whether it makes any difference. We welcome it, although we have said that it needs a lot more in it. It is only that we have used the term half a bill. We have given a list, if you like, of a starter list of additional amendments that could be made or areas for amendment where it could be supplemented so that we are actually putting in place the relevant powers or the commitments that would mean that we are moving on from where we are. We are removing the barriers and creating the opportunities to be more ambitious on eradicating fuel poverty across all the drivers. I say that it is not a complete list, but it gives some examples of where this bill could make a difference if it is amended. Thank you very much. On that note, I would like to thank you for your time and your very useful answers today. I am going to suspend the meeting briefly to allow you to leave the table.


Moving your classes online, nothing will be the same again. My name is Tracy Tocca, I'm a professor at the Harvard University Extension School. And about a month back, I recorded a podcast on taking your courses online, in which I highlighted a bunch of benefits about remote learning. And today, I want to extend this moving metaphor to call attention to the ways that the coronavirus has catalyzed some important changes in education. And that's education with a capital E. The information from this podcast can be found on a blog at thelearningsciences.com and hyperlinks to all of the references are indicated there. So something that you might not know about me is that I'm very to a diplomat, which has meant we've spent a lot of time moving around. We spent some time in Japan and in Switzerland and in Peru. We went back in the United States for a little while in Ecuador. So moving is something I'm pretty familiar with. And what I can tell you, and I'm sure most of you can empathize with this because you've probably gone through this as well, is that moving can be a stressful time in your life. You have to decide what's really important and assign values to different parts of your life. And things that you might have taken for granted now have to be evaluated. Like, do I bring grandma's gravy bowl, which I never use, and do I carry it and risk breaking it, or do I leave it in storage, or do I give away the kids' baby clothes, or do they come with us, or does the dining room table I love even fit into the new place? So both scaling up to a bigger place and scaling down to a smaller place create challenges. And even after you decide, then you need to negotiate this with the people who you're going to live with. And so in short, you have to return to your roots and really prioritize what is needed. What do I keep? What do I throw away? What do I give away? What do I store? What do I replace? But moving can also be an exciting time, right? It can be an opportunity to prioritize and return to your core and to dust off old but maybe important things of value, and to decide what really matters and to save spaces for those things and give it prominence in the new home. So we are moving to online education. And we have to make many of these same choices as in a physical move. What do we keep? What do we throw away? What do we give away? What do we put into storage? What do we replace? Yesterday I spoke with a friend and colleague about the opportunities created by our current situation. And he said, no amount of professional development money could have thrust such a change on us. And I gotta agree, there is no amount of money or of lobbying that could have slammed the inadequacies of one size fits all testing or called attention to the inequities of access to good teachers and neighborhoods with internet or to the importance of social emotional learning. And no amount of advertising could have brought attention to the myriad of options that are available. Some of them for free to help us reach learning objectives. But thanks to this awful, awful virus, we also have attention being pulled towards the mindless way curriculum is sort of shortchanged so many topics in education including indigenous knowledge and how low tech solutions to teach core concepts and math and science could be employed. So for example, like how stargazing and leaf counting could replace those unauthentic textbooks or the amazing amount of resources that are available to help our kids achieve for free beginning at their starting points not where the school counter says they should be. And maybe even more important to the vital role that teachers play in society beyond just educating in school subjects but also as models of values and as patient and loving caregivers. As the coronavirus makes this change inevitable we hear people begin to chant nothing will ever be the same again. And that's okay. Change is good so long as it's planned like a good move. So as we move to a new kind of education we should plan. We should ask what do I keep? What do I throw away? What do I give away? What do I store? What do I replace? So what do we keep? We should keep the humanity and personalization that many of our teachers use to lift up all of our students and to motivate them. And we should keep detailed formative feedback that develops metacognitive skills and guides kids in learning how to learn. And we should keep the deep rich vocabulary abundant exchanges and as many languages as possible with as many people as possible for as long as possible in as many contexts as possible. And what do we throw away? Well, I think we need to throw away this kind of twisted evaluation system that teaches to the test. We should throw away timed exams except for those things that depend on time like for example learning to do CPR to save a life. And we should throw away self and societal perceptions that teachers are low on the totem pole of prestige in a community. And what do we give away? Well, I say we give away the rows of chairs and we send them to places of worship. Education is an exchange. It's not a dictation. And we should give away budget driven decisions to businesses whose focus is on the bottom line not on people. And what do we put in storage? I say we store away the textbooks which will someday be studied by historians as a testament to what publishers valued in 2020. And finally, what do we replace? Well, in terms of evaluation, I'd say we replace summative evaluation systems for formative ones. We replace performance-based grading for mastery. We replace age-related cutoffs for achievement for experienced-based milestones. As far as the curriculum is concerned, I suggest that we replace curriculum based on subject matters for real world and inter and transdisciplinary thinking. That we replace the K-12 curriculum for a transgenerational lifelong learning. That we replace Western-centric topics to world gifts including indigenous teachings. And that we replace lip service to social-emotional learning for development of the whole child. In terms of resources, I think that we should replace textbooks for bundles of individually curated free and open resources on each topic. And in terms of pedagogy, that we replace busy work with time for reflection. And related to actors, I think we should replace teacher-student dependency to community-dependent upbringings. And that we replace decisions by politicians with decisions by all of the stakeholders in education including students, parents, civil society, entrepreneurs. In terms of environments, I think we should replace the face-to-face alone structure with multi-modalities including the internet and radio and television. And as far as a vision for education is concerned, I think we should replace the idea that education is a privilege with the idea that education is a right and that it can be delivered in a cookie cutter fashion with the idea that it should be differentiated to meet each student at their starting point. So in summary, nothing will be the same again. And after you move, nothing is the same again, right? And that's all right. Moving is a little like death, except where you get to plan. To deal with death, you have to traverse many stages of grief, right? Denial, isolation, anger, then you bargain and you get depressed. And then finally you accept it, right? But once we reach acceptance, we have a choice. We can be resigned or we can be empowered. We can try to return to the old ways or we can seize an opportunity. So as educators, now is the time to ask ourselves, what do we keep? What do we throw away? What do we give away? What do we store? And what do we replace? Thanks for listening.


Thank you, Joe, and thanks for inviting me to the conference. I want to thank Roger for being my straight man. He mentioned the paucity of women at the Colorado School of Mines. And it was nothing compared to the paucity of women at the South Royalton event. And in fact, there was really only one eligible woman at that event. Ida Walters, who's now my wife. I don't usually find myself the most competitive in these things in a large group of people. So I really regard it as one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. So in terms of what I have to say beyond that, which by the way, also when I was chatting with Ida at the time, she said, are you going to be in New York soon? And like Roger, I found a reason to go to New York soon. Which fortunately, I saw Murray at the same time. So what I want to do is just really two things. One of them is just a few recollections of the conference. And then I want to talk about sort of what happened intellectually to me after that conference. Everyone else has talked about before. And I started reading Anne Rand in the ninth grade. It was reading human action in high school. So it's another thing that makes it surprising. I was able to track Ida or any other female being that nerdy, you know, but. So anyway, I want to talk about what happened afterwards because I went in a lot different direction. And I think where I ended up, there's opportunity for Austrians and lessons. So first of all, I want to remind everybody that the people who paid for the conference to the best of my understanding are the Koch brothers. And I guess their ability to leverage money is exemplified by the fact they didn't have to spend a lot on accommodations and look at the result they got, right? So, you know, I'm understanding why the left is so terrified of the Koch brothers when they can get so much for so little in terms of their investment in the early days of Austrian economics. And obviously I applaud them for that. And I'm a great admirers of them. So the next sort of humorous things, you know, my wife is of course very charming. And the most charming people at the conference other than Murray, you know, were the Haslots. Francis and Henry Haslot, who were just utterly delightful people. And I just spent quite a bit of time with the two of them. And the first story, which, you know, it all begins with Anne Rand, right? The first story is that Francis actually worked in Hollywood with Anne Rand at the studios. So I had a great time hearing all of Francis' stories about the early days with Anne Rand and Hollywood, which I thought was rather interesting. And I actually knew Anne Rand as well at that point in time. So that created more interest for him. And then the second thing goes to Friedman's visit. As you know, he kind of hijacked the conference to a certain extent. He was famous. And when he showed up, everybody kind of went out and listened to Milton. And Milton, as he often was, was extremely rude in his discussions, which we've heard what he had to say. And Ida was sitting next to Francis. And Francis' comment was, I suppose he doesn't think there's a Chicago school. Which not only it was quite trenchant at the time, but as you probably realize today, the Chicago school's almost gone. So today there's hardly a Chicago school in the sense that there used to be for better or for worse. Well, anyway, so that's kind of my recollect. One more thing I would wanna add. Everyone talks about how horrible it was.  And so having grown up in Northern Ontario in my summers, and of course that was back in the days when Canada was more socialistic than the United States, which, you know, I made the wrong immigration move because now that's reversed, right? But so it was much poorer as you'd expect of a socialist country. To me, this was just like a normal Northern Ontario resort. I never, this is the first I've discovered it was a pest hole, you know? Now I will tell you that I've now become for the rest, for much of my life an entrepreneur. So I'm the subject of, which I hadn't realized that Austrian economics had become so interested in entrepreneurs, obviously a major part of this conference. So I'm becoming the subject of the study instead of the studier. But I haven't been working on a deal in New Hampshire, 25 miles from South Royal, which I was there last week. I'm going back there this week and I drove over there and I can't find a trace of the hotel, so time has eliminated it. Well, anyway, how did I get there? I was at UCLA and, you know, UCLA at the time was a very different school. It was the most libertarian school in the country. It was a school that, you know, wasn't sold on the neoclassical model. We taught it, we learned it because, you know, we had to hopefully survive if we graduated and when we graduated and obviously many of the graduates really haven't survived. Very few of us are a tenured faculty anymore. Almost all of us went into business or other things. I think the training there was great for that, not necessarily for being an academic. But, you know, the whole idea of how you get to equilibrium, how you use information, we had the Austrians as part of our reading lists, you know, Demsets and Alchin were big fans of everybody really except Murray. You know, Murray was kind of like Friedman. I mean, both of them could be charming but they could be pretty abrasive too and they'd run into that side of Murray, which is unfortunate because he's an extraordinarily brilliant guy and I think if he'd been a little more accommodating to those guys he might have had great common cause with them. So, you know, we went, David Henderson and myself, another Canadian, we went down to UCLA together, we went to South Royalton together, which by the way another reason South Royalton didn't seem so bad is at the time Roy Childs was living with us in LA and I don't know who remembers Roy Childs. So having Roy Childs in your home is, you know, the definition of entropy. So, you know, anywhere else we went was an upgrade as I did will attest. Of course Roy was incredibly brilliant and incredibly charming. Anyway, so we went to South Royalton, you know, as fans of Austrian economics but people also who are very fascinated with the new institutionalism at UCLA.  There was only one monetarist there.  And so, you know, we had a whole different view from people coming from a more conventional background and felt, you know, really at home in South Royalton and a lot of things that we were interested in. Now for me, I was kind of dismayed at the whole hostility between the monetarist and the Austrians. And here's where I'll probably get myself in trouble but what the heck, you know, I'm not an academic anymore so you can discount whatever I say, right? Well to me, if I looked at the Austrian theory of the business cycle that depends on the government manipulating interest rates and then wrong investment decisions of various sorts which is an oversimplification but I think directionally correct and you look at the business cycle theory of Friedman that you have the government inflating or deflating and people get the wrong signals about price. First of all, I never could understand why they were mutually exclusive. They're both about expectations, right? So it seemed to me that, you know, they should be getting along with each other but they weren't. Anyway, so I left UCLA, went to University of Chicago thinking about expectations. At Chicago, I got heavily involved in finance and to cut to the chase, the thing that probably had the biggest implications for my thinking was Maurice Kendall's discovery in circa 1950 that the security markets were a random walk. To me, I think that's the most important empirical fact in economics. And of course, ultimately it became evident through Mert Miller and many others that that implied efficient capital markets which, you know, we don't need to go into the detail on that and ultimately that led to Lucas. So when I got to Chicago in 76, Lucas had published his first and most important article on rational expectations and really the monitors were already dead at Chicago. They were gone and rational expectations had really replaced them and, you know, the monitors survived in schools like UCLA where Michael Darby was for a number of years but had no really further influence, okay? So, you know, if I go do the two key things of rational expectations that I think are important for us to think about and incorporate into Austrian economics, the first one was that to the extent things are anticipated in terms of government, whether it's interest rate manipulations or specifically the money supply, it doesn't have an effect on the economy. It's only the surprises that affect the economy. And the second thing is that econometric studies can't forecast the economy. Both those things, and particularly the second thing, is should be bread and butter to Austrian economics. I mean, we're all saying that the government can't run the economy and here is, you know, now there's what, a number of Nobel Prizes, Lucas, Sargent, these people are libertarians, Lucas is, Sargent's pretty much one. And they basically have refuted the government's power to really manage proactively the economy.   So, to me, you know, the core Austrian idea of how you get to equilibrium and how markets react is really manifest in rational expectations and I'd like to see a lot more connections between the two. And I'll close with saying that you always have to promote yourself, of course. First of all, a lot more detail than what I've had to say. Ida and I wrote, excuse me, in the July 97 Liberty Magazine, so you can take a look and sort of ties all together. I think it's one of the few places where you'll see the rational expectations as a logical outcome of efficient markets, the finance and the macroeconomics. And then the other thing, if you think that math is required, you know, the two books by Merton Miller, Miller on Derivatives and then Miller on Financial Innovations, we edited both those books. I help with it to some extent. They're published in the 90s, 91 when he won the first prize, the Nobel Prize and 95. Those are great books, they're accessible, they're not mathematical. It seems to me they'd be highly congenial to Austria in seeking to understand these things.


Hello Earth citizens. In this video I will show you a 10 minute routine to do for something called toe tapping. Toe tapping is an exercise that's unique to brain education and the biggest benefit to toe tapping is to quiet mental chatter. So if you're someone who is prone to thinking a lot and you're always in your head and you can't quiet your thoughts, in energy practice we say that that's because all of your energy that should be in your core to ground you has floated up to your head and is causing a lot of activity up here. So people who have a lot of thoughts, they have trouble sleeping, they can have brain fog, they can have anxiety because too much activity in the head when it should be here in the core. So toe tapping exercise is to kind of balance that out. So if you're really head heavy, you activate your lower half of your body to balance the scale this way so that the amount of stimulation that is in your body is equal instead of like this. So I'll show you how to do toe tapping to bring the activity, bring overheated activity from your head down to your feet to balance the scale of energy distribution inside of your body. Alright so to do this exercise you need a mat because we're going to be lying down and also you don't need this today but when you practice this at home make sure you have your phone so you can keep time because we're going to do repeated sets of one minute rest one minute rest ten times. Alright okay so lie down on the floor make sure you're lying down on carpet or a yoga mat please don't lie down on plain hard floor or tile because it's kind of cold and bad for your back. Alright so lie down with your palms facing up relax your legs and let's take a few breaths inside inhale in through your nose all the way to your abdomen exhale out through your mouth two more times breathe in exhale out one more time breathe in exhale out bring your legs together and the key to toe tapping it's very simple you just tap your big toes together but the important part is you move your entire leg you see how all the way up to my hip joints my leg is moving so you're shaking from your hips down to your toes open so please don't tap like this you see how stiff my legs look my hips are locked my knees are locked but my toes are tapping this is not how you should do it like this like that yeah and you might feel some pain when you do it depending on how much blockage you have in your legs but when you feel pain don't stop exhale out we'll do repeated sets of one minute ten times alright so I'll count time on my phone all you have to do is tap your toes together and feel your body alright this is set number one are you ready okay start make sure you're moving all the way up to your hip joints if you can try to tap at the speed that I am not too fast not too slow but enough that you can feel your hip joints thighs knees ankles feet shaking open as you tap relax your entire body breathe if you have a lot of blockage in your hips you will feel pain okay feel your body you will start to feel some tingling sensation maybe at your toes maybe at your thighs whatever it is that you feel feel the energy flowing relax your body breathe in exhale as you exhale imagine you are putting down releasing all heavy thoughts heavy emotions heavy energy two more times we then exhale last one we then and exhale okay one minute again ready start make sure you are really tapping your toes together how this works is you're causing stimulation at the bottom half of your body so that it balances all this activity that's going on in your head so by tapping your toes together you're bringing stimulation to your feet so that more energy will go there keep relaxing keep breathing you're doing great make sure you can feel all the way to your hip joints that's very very important okay stop feel your body take a deep breath in exhale as you breathe out release heaviness from your body again breathe in as you exhale imagine you are pushing out heavy energy through your pores last one good job tapping again one minute as your legs start to open you might feel moving your legs back and forth like this gets a little bit easier even though you feel pain try to relax your legs as much as you can exhale your body you'll feel the tingling sensation has become bigger and if you're very sensitive to energy you can feel the tingling sensation has become deeper good stay connected to the sense of energy flowing inside tingling warm coldness magnetism those are all energy sensations so stay with that feeling and let's do set number four ready start the key here is relaxing your whole body even your hips shoulders chest neck head knees ankles feet thighs everything should be relaxed if you feel too much pain smile and breathe okay stop relax your body take a deep breath in expanding your abdomen exhale out as you do imagine have the energy being pushed out of your body through your poor it's ready starts notice how with each set your body feels a little bit different maybe the energy sensation feels a little bit deeper wider maybe your hip joints feel a little looser or maybe you have some more pain in your knees whatever it is become aware of what your body is feeling each and every set and notice how it progresses and as you do each set don't forget to breathe you know the tingling by this time you can feel strong tingling sensations in your legs as the tingling sensations get stronger notice your brain your mind getting quieter maybe even sleepy all of the energy that was centered in your head is now slowly starting to move down to your feet to balance the energy flow inside breathe breathe and relax now one more minute set number six starts focus on the feeling of the toes tapping together leg shaking you don't need to think about anything just feel your body whatever it is that you feel just feel you're doing great if you want to make your movements a little wider please feel free to do so whatever feels good whatever feels opening for you the tingling sensation in your body goes deeper from your skin now into your muscles like a electric sensation flowing throughout your whole body energy is being activated and as it does it starts to quiet your mind relax your body take a deep breath in exhale out any heavy energy you feel so tapping again this is set number seven starts just feel no need to think just feel you will definitely start to feel your mind getting quieter less thoughts more feeling okay and breathe you will start to feel a deep sense of relaxation coming over your body just enjoy keep feeling and breathing as you breathe out imagine heavy energy toxic energy stagnant energy being pushed out of your body through your exhale great job now number eight start if you can feel your body's relaxed try to relax other parts of your body that are still a little tight maybe you feel a little tightness in your chest or shoulders consciously try to drop relax your chest relax those areas those few remaining areas that are still a little tight your body take a deep breath in exhale all of your heaviness toxins are leaving your body through your exhale you can deeply feel relaxation coming over your body as more and more energy moves from your head down to your feet great job now number nine start keep going focus on the stimulation the feeling the vibration the warmth of coldness these are all energy sensation so you can feel your body relaxing even more your mind becoming even quieter maybe to the point where you feel sleepy tension is being released from your body deep breath exhale our last one start notice all the changes that you felt through each and every sense can you feel your body and mind becoming quieter after each set and you feel your body relaxing more with each sense completely relax your body all the way from your head to your shoulders neck chest arms abdomen hips thighs knees calves all the way to your feet and toes take a deep breath in through your whole body as if your body's like a sponge absorbing water breathe in exhale out squeeze from your pores like a sponge squeezing out heavy energy dark energy stagnant energy out of your body great job feel your body here now can you feel your mind is very quiet can you feel that the tingling sensation electric sensation in your body is very strong in your legs feet hands and if you're very sensitive to energy it might feel like your body is stuck to the floor you did a great job now slowly turn your body to the left side and sit up please how do you feel can you feel that by doing this all this activity that was in your mind became quiet more centered like there's a balance of energy in your body now yeah so if you have racing thoughts if you can't sleep at night it's because all the energy that should be in your core to balance you out on a scale it floated up to your head because we think a lot we get stimulated a lot by our brains so that's okay there's nothing wrong with being stimulated in the mind just we need to find some ways to balance out the stimulation inside so we do toe tapping to balance the weight the weight distribution of energy too much in the head not enough in the feet then what do you do cost stimulation here so the scales tip like this yeah and actually an energy practice the more energy that's in your lower half of the body the more grounded centered and peaceful you will feel I suggest repeating this exercise every day before you go to sleep especially if you're somebody who has trouble sleeping at night and especially if you know that you're in your head a lot you did a great job to experience a full one-hour brain education based class please visit a local body and brain yoga studio near you