By Paul Homewood
h/t Doug Brodie
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Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney lobbied ministers to relax rules on heat pump subsidies to benefit the asset management business he chairs, it has been claimed.
Mr Carney, a Labour adviser who has helped Rachel Reeves with the creation of the National Wealth Fund, raised the idea of changing the cash for heat pump installations scheme with the Chancellor, according to Richard Harpin.
Mr Harpin is the founder and former chief executive of HomeServe, now its chairman. The plumbing and heating company was bought by Brookfield Asset Management, which is chaired by Mr Carney, for £4.1bn in 2022.
Discussions with Ms Reeves are said to have revolved around changes to the Government’s £450m Boiler Upgrade Scheme so that companies could claim taxpayer subsidies to install heat pumps in homes. Such a change would benefit HomeServe, which specialises in home plumbing and heating cover for homes plus boiler installations.
Mr Harpin said: “Mark is working on our behalf in Government and he did have a meeting on this with Rachel Reeves. It was covering some other issues and the role of Brookfield as a trillion-dollar investor in the UK. And so it wasn’t just this issue, but he did mention it.
“We want to make sure that there’s some money allocated to this, that we’ve got a clear direction of travel when the Budget comes out on Oct 30.”
HomeServe sees heat pump installation and management as a huge potential new market – but only if the Treasury can be persuaded to relax the rules around subsidies.
At the moment such grants – typically worth £7,500 each – can only be claimed by householders when they replace boilers with heat pumps or similar low-carbon heating systems. HomeServe wants to introduce a rental model for households who can’t or won’t pay the upfront cost of installing a heat pump.
Mr Harpin said: “We want to offer a heat pump rental model over 15 years.
“The number one hurdle that we’ve got is persuading the Government to change the wording of the legislation around heat pump subsidies.
“That’s the £7,500 available for replacing domestic gas boilers with a heat pump. But the letter of the law says the grant is only available if you own the heat pump, meaning householders, so our rental model wouldn’t work.”
Mr Harpin said Mr Carney had used his access to seek a change in the law and had also co-signed an open letter to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero setting out the proposal and its benefits for the UK’s attempts to reach net zero.
Mark Carney publicly endorsed Rachel Reeves a year ago.
Now we know why.
