I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise the issue of home energy efficiency and fuel poverty. When I applied for the debate, there were a few key issues that I wanted to bring to the Chamber's attention and to press the Government on, but I was inundated with a huge variety of information and lobbying from a great diversity of sources. I must apologise to some of those people who brought such issues to my attention because I cannot address them all, but perhaps other Members will. I shall concentrate on a few areas in which I have a particular interest or concern.

On the basic issue of fuel poverty, we should recognise that we are almost back to where we started from 10 years ago. We saw a dip in fuel poverty, but it has risen sharply and it is estimated that between 4.5 million and 5 million households across the United Kingdom are in fuel poverty, which is back to the same levels that we experienced 10 years ago. Being a Member of Parliament for a Scottish constituency, I must emphasise that the proportion of people in fuel poverty or suffering from the problems of high-cost heating is much higher. Statistics compiled by the House Condition Survey in Scotland show that 618,000 households in Scotland-27 per cent. of the total-are in fuel poverty, which is up 47 per cent. over the past five years. A third of those are in extreme fuel poverty, by which I mean that they spend more than 20 per cent. of their income on fuel.

Energy Action Scotland believes that even those figures are an understatement and that as many as 750,000 households could be in some degree of fuel poverty. Such statistics are central to the debate, but for every household in fuel poverty, there are others who are not technically in poverty but have real problems with heating their home and paying their bill, and they are equally interested in what the Government can do to deal with the situation.

I shall raise a few aspects of home energy efficiency and fuel poverty, and await the Minister's reply with interest. Let me start with hard-to-treat homes. It is astonishing to discover what proportion of the UK housing stock is classified as hard to treat. Some 43 per cent. of households in England and more than 50 per cent. of households in Scotland are, in one form or another, hard to treat. They are mostly houses with solid walls or the early timber-framed houses, and flats and homes in multiple occupancy.

Under the carbon emissions reductions target, energy companies are required to promote insulation and efficiency, but evidence suggests that they tend to take the easy way out by, for example, issuing low-energy light bulbs rather than investing in significant insulation or alternative forms of heating. Hard-to-treat houses have pretty well been ignored by the energy companies. For many, the main way to tackle the problem is through external wall insulation, or external cladding, or, in some cases, internal cladding. By definition, such houses are hard to treat. Cavity wall insulation or loft insulation does not do the job. In addition, they need lower cost, carbon-free, low-tariff fuel systems, and for many, the packages are simply not available.

It is worth recording the fact that the social housing sector faces huge bills to tackle the problem. Dealing with the existing housing stock reduces the pool of funds available for providing new houses. A couple of examples have been brought to my attention. Aberdeen city council, which has been considering its high proportion of hard-to-treat houses, has recently upgraded 4,505 dwellings in multi-storey flats through a combination of cladding and combined heat and power district heating systems. The cost of the cladding was such that the council concluded that it could not clad them all. Effectively, it ended up installing more efficient heating systems, which heated the air as much as the buildings. Therefore, although such a system was beneficial to the tenants in that they could afford the heating, it did not solve the entire problem of the waste of energy.

Orkney council has also instigated a pilot scheme and spent £3.5 million on external cladding on a number of its houses. All over the country, local authorities and housing associations are independently tackling the problems without any real exchange of information or co-ordination, which is not the most efficient way to deal with the matter.