Time to put Scotland's houses in order

As the Scottish Budget reaches its final stage in parliament today, MSPs have a chance to make Scotland's homes low carbon and at the same time reduce levels of fuel poverty. Our homes account for nearly one-third of our climate emissions and must play a pivotal role in helping us meet our emissions reduction target. At the same time, it is estimated that fuel poverty has risen to nearly one in three households.

We can help tackle both these problems through a major, Scotland-wide home energy efficiency programme – the only way to reach everyone who needs assistance is to work street by street, house by house, offering free loft and cavity wall insulation to all and attractive financing, with grants for those less able to pay, for more expensive measures. This work must be undertaken by trusted installers, so re-skilling local tradespeople in order that they can offer advice and services is essential. At the same time, the Energy Assistance Package must be able to respond to fuel poverty needs on a national basis. We know these schemes work – they are cost-effective, lead to higher take-up, and create and maintain jobs. We now need to secure a Scottish Budget which funds such a scheme by radically expanding the Home Insulation Scheme and Energy Assistance Package.

CHAS BOOTH

Association for the Conservation of Energy

RICHARD DIXON

WWF Scotland

DUNCAN MacLAREN Friends of the Earth Scotland

The Scottish Housebuilding Federation and Shelter are ganging up on the taxpayer to demand more council house-building (Platform, 2 February). Notably, they demand a redistribution from other public purposes to achieve this but do not mention the other programmes for the public good that are therefore to be axed.

Council houses are, in effect, highly expensive, subsided, inflexible leases of assets worth up to 100,000 held by lucky individuals who pay little or nothing to live in them, and hold on to tenure accordingly, meaning subsequent availability for the homeless is poor. They have little to do with economic growth (the subsidy implicitly destroys wealth elsewhere). It is private sector assured tenancies that are the source of housing for productive, mobile workers, not council houses, and, as the Fife councillor Donald MacGregor implied in (Letters, 19 January) council houses are essentially a socialist concept. Shelter is surely a charity, not a political pressure group?

The construction industry for ten years after 1997 drove up building prices by 81 per cent, yet kept little back in that boom for the tough times and now want subsidy from a nation that is heading to bankruptcy. The current response is an illustration of the observation of 19th-century French philosopher Frederic Bastiat that "the State is the means by which everyone tries to live off everyone else".

PETER SMAILL

Currie Mains

Borthwick, Midlothian