Lord Greenhalgh

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That the Bill be now read a second time.

The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)

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My Lords, it is a privilege to open the Second Reading debate of this landmark Bill today. I will never forget the events that led us to this moment, nor the 72 people who lost their lives in the most appalling circumstances in the largest loss of life in a residential fire since the Second World War. The fire at Grenfell Tower in the early hours of 14 June 2017 should never have happened. The legislation we are bringing forward today is part of our wider reform to make sure that something like this tragedy can never happen again.

We cannot bring back those who lost their lives on that terrible day, and nothing can undo the errors that led to their deaths. Yet, if anything is to come from this disaster, it must be the lessons that we have learned from the mistakes that were made. That is why the Government appointed Dame Judith Hackitt to review the current building safety regime and recommend wholesale reform. Her findings were unequivocal and clear. Too often, regulations and guidance were misunderstood or misinterpreted. The drive to do things quickly and cheaply—the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, mentioned the concept of value engineering—meant that concerns were ignored and safety was not prioritised. There was ambiguity around who is actually responsible for the safety of buildings, with insufficient oversight and enforcement.

Dame Judith called for a complete overhaul of the system, and her recommendations underpin the Bill, with a golden thread that will ensure that, henceforth, people remain safe in the homes that we build for them. The Bill is unapologetically ambitious, creating a world-class building safety regulatory regime that holds all to the same high standard. The Fire Safety Act, which we will commence shortly, was the first legislative step towards delivering meaningful change following that dreadful tragedy. The Building Safety Bill represents the next step, delivering significant improvements to both the regulatory framework and industry culture, creating a more accountable system.

The Bill will deliver improvements across the entire built environment. It will strengthen oversight and protections for residents in high-rise buildings and give them a greater say, and will toughen sanctions against those who threaten their safety. Its focus on risk will help owners manage their buildings better, while giving the homebuilding industry the clear, proportionate framework it needs to deliver better, higher-quality homes. It is proportionate and strengthens fire safety requirements in all premises regulated by the fire safety order. It rightly focuses the new, more stringent requirements on those buildings and issues that pose the greatest risk.

To that end, we are strengthening our regulation of high-rise residential buildings which are over 18 metres or above six storeys in height, whichever is reached first; those buildings pose the greatest safety risks in the event of a spreading fire or structural failure. We are including hospitals and care homes that meet the height threshold during their design and construction. We will establish a robust link between safety, design, construction and occupation, with stringent duties to ensure safety throughout the building’s life cycle.

The Bill provides the framework to ensure that, during the design and construction, defined duty holders have clear responsibilities for compliance with building regulations, including fire and structural safety. They will have to clear a series of hard stops, through the new gateway system for in-scope buildings.

In occupation, every building in scope will have an identified accountable person with clear responsibility for safety matters. Their duties include registering the building with a new regulator, building an evidence and risk-based safety case, and the continued evaluation of potential hazards. Importantly, it will be a criminal offence not to carry out these duties effectively, punishable by an unlimited fine and up to two years in prison.

We are giving residents a stronger voice in the system through the Bill, making it easier for them to seek redress and raise concerns. The Bill will require an accountable person for a high-rise residential building to engage with their residents and establish a formal complaints process for residents to raise concerns. Both the accountable person and the responsible person for premises regulated by the fire safety order will be required to provide residents with access to key building safety information.

These measures will be overseen by the new building safety regulator within the Health and Safety Executive. The regulator will be equipped with robust powers to crack down on substandard practices. It will oversee the safety and standards of all buildings and will provide important independent advice to government on building safety and standards. It will support a significant improvement in the performance and competence of industry and building control professionals.

The Bill ensures that the regulator will regulate in line with best practice principles, being proportionate and transparent and targeting activity where action is needed. Crucially, it will act to ensure that proportionality is embedded within its operations and in its work with accountable persons to assess buildings.

I turn now to construction products. The testimony we have heard at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has been shocking to say the least and has exposed a culture of corner-cutting, Spanish practices and disgraceful behaviour by an industry that has compromised building safety. We intend to put a stop to this. Following the Grenfell Tower fire, we banned the use of combustible materials on the external walls of high-rise residential buildings. The Bill creates powers to strengthen regulatory oversight for firms that manufacture and sell construction products and, crucially, powers to remove unsafe construction products from the market and take action against those that break the rules. The Bill will improve the standards of our construction products oversight regime.

The polluter must pay; developers and construction product manufacturers must be held to account. Residents must be protected against substandard materials, workmanship and practices that make homes unsafe. Our new regime will help address these issues for high-rise residential buildings, but we need to expand legal safeguards for residents wherever they live. That is why the Bill retrospectively extends the period during which compensation for defective premises can be claimed by over double the current period—from six to 15 years prospectively and by 30 years retrospectively —to make sure that the failures of the past can be addressed. This is a significant step forward, and we are going further, expanding the scope of the work for which compensation can be claimed to include future renovations.

We are also strengthening redress for people buying a new-build home through provisions for the new homes ombudsman scheme that will provide dispute resolution and resolve complaints involving the buyers of new-build homes and developers.

We also know that we must go further to protect innocent leaseholders, who are the victims, from bearing the financial burden of this crisis. I thank your Lordships, in particular my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Young of Cookham and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. I could not forget the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, as well for being ever so helpful during these debates. I also thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and, of course, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, who has been an inveterate campaigner on behalf of leaseholders. This is a hugely important issue; it is important that we continue to do our best collectively to protect leaseholders.

The Secretary of State in the other place has been unequivocal in his determination that leaseholders living in their own flats in medium and high-rise buildings will not pay a penny to remediate unsafe cladding. We have scrapped proposals for loans and long-term debt for medium-rise leaseholders. We have allocated a further £27 million to help bring the misuse of waking watches to an end, and we are working towards making sure that leaseholders are protected from the risk of forfeiture relating to historical building safety issues, until a new industry-developed system is in place. But we know that more is needed. We will also explore further statutory protections for leaseholders and we will bring forward proposals for this House to consider at the earliest opportunity. I look forward to working with your Lordships on the Opposition Benches, with the Liberal Democrats, with the Cross-Benchers, and even with my own awkward squad, to ensure that this 143-clause Bill perhaps adds the odd extra clause and is the best possible Bill that we can take forward and get on the statute book.

The Government have accepted their share of responsibility and made significant financial provision—over £5 billion—through the ACM remediation programme and the building safety fund. Some developers have already done the right thing and provisioned or are funding remediation works. We are also seeing that among registered providers. But too many others have failed to live up to their responsibilities; in some cases, they are not engaging at all with government. We cannot keep looking to the taxpayer to keep bailing out this failing industry: we must get the polluters to pay.

We have already announced a £2 billion tax on the biggest residential developers through the residential property developer tax and a further levy on developers building tall buildings through the Building Safety Bill, and we are now engaged with industry to ensure that it pays its fair share for fixing cladding problems, rather than the leaseholders. I point out that where both private developers and social housing organisations have developed land, they are equally culpable if they put up unsafe buildings and they must pay. Our expectations are clear: industry and the owners of land, such as registered providers, should fix the buildings they were responsible for. They need to contribute to a wider fund to ensure that remaining buildings are remediated to protect leaseholders.

In a round table held with the Secretary of State, senior executives from the country’s biggest developers agreed that leaseholders should not pay. We continue to engage with them on how they will deliver a fully funded action plan by early March. We are also acting directly to make sure that those who manufactured dangerous products, built unsafe buildings and knowingly put lives at risk are also properly held to account. We have had a similar meeting with construction products manufacturers. I was shocked that Arconic, one of the manufacturers of the material used on Grenfell, did not show up; that is completely unacceptable. We have been clear in our intent: industry needs to develop real proposals to fund this crisis. If it does not agree a solution soon, we will, if necessary, impose one in law.

The Bill represents the most radical revision of our building safety regime in generations. It is a complete overhaul of safety management, putting residents’ safety at the absolute heart of our reform. I commend the Bill to the House.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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My Lords, I really enjoy the tutorials I get from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I shall do my best to start at a high level because this is a serious debate. There have been a lot of expert contributions and I have, as noble Lords will know, listened carefully to them all. I should start by saying that when I joined the Government I was told that I could have any job I wanted and was then assigned building safety and fire. The offer changes as one goes through the process.

It means that I have spent some time thinking about the root causes of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. I like to think about things and today we are addressing two of the fundamental root causes. That is why the Bill has the support of this House. We saw a corrosive construction industry culture that needs addressing and the Building Safety Bill seeks to do that. That is why it is so important. We also have, as admitted by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in the other place, a building safety regulatory system that is, frankly, broken. That is why we need the Bill and we are all keen to make sure that it gets on to the statute book. That is important.

I also want to respond as Fire Minister to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, about the ordinary firefighter and the Fire Brigades Union. I engage; I met Andy Dark and Matt Wrack last week and will engage with them again. However, it is important to reflect that, as regards the Manchester Arena attack and the night of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, there are lessons to be learned for fire and rescue services. We must not mistake the need for reform, which should get widespread support from this House. As Fire Minister, I am about to publish a White Paper that will seek to reform professionalism and ensure that we get better people into the fire and rescue service. The paper will also look to improve governance. It should not prove particularly controversial and will, I hope, have widespread support. However, the reform agenda does not take away from the fact that the ordinary firefighter goes forward into danger, rescuing people’s lives. They certainly have my support and, I am sure, the support of everybody in this House.

It is virtually impossible to respond to the contributions of 32 speeches in the time available. We are then going on to Committee, where the Bill will be debated in depth in the unfortunately slightly less well-lit Moses Room—although it is now dark in here without natural light. We will, however, have an opportunity to debate these matters at length during the passage of the Bill.

First and foremost, we need to understand the issues around scope. This Bill affects the whole built environment. The new building safety regulator will be responsible for building regulations, looking at standards and competence and working with the British Standards Institution to set the competence of the professionals involved in the development of all the built environment.

I want noble Lords to realise that it is important to set the high-risk regime at an appropriate level. If we say we want everything in the high-risk regime then, frankly, the building safety regulator will fail. There are 12,500 high-rise and 77,000 medium-rise buildings—the lower one goes, the more buildings there are. It is very important to have an appropriate scope for the high-risk regime and not ask too much of a new fledgling regulator who exists in shadow form. I hope noble Lords will be patient about scope. This does not mean that it will not widen over time, but we need to start in the right place.

I really enjoyed the valedictory speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester. I do not think I have heard the right reverend Prelate speak before, but I listened to almost every word. While I do not think the Palace of Westminster is an example of remediation at pace, I completely agree that “caring for building safety is caring for the health of our nation.” That is absolutely right. It is one of the reasons why I am passionate about this ministerial brief. It is very important that we get this right, and I thank the right reverend Prelate for raising it in that way.

As someone who loves history, I recognise that the Victorians did not get everything right, but they got the built environment right. They worked off pattern books. They built some of the finest homes that—like the Romans’—will probably last for a thousand years. We must get back to those principles of quality that the Victorians pioneered and that the Edwardians followed. Somewhere along the way, we lost the culture of building quality in this country.

I also single out my noble friend Lady Fox of Buckley—although she is not my noble friend because she is not on these Benches. She raised a very important point. The proportionality needs to be right in both council homes and social housing, as well as in private housing. There are people who profiteer from this stuff; they create a disproportionate approach and people pay for that. I was approached, not about a council home, but about Saxon House—a home in Sutton—where, essentially a cowboy did an EWS1 form and failed it. This caused untold stress and misery. A young man, called George Martin, managed to challenge it. It is important that we stop in their tracks those who are not acting properly. I involved the police in that case and supported the leaseholders in Saxon House. It is important to have a greater sense of proportion when approaching this crisis. We must remember that some people simply want to profiteer from a problem that has effectively been built up over 30 years. It is shameful to see such instances.

I was given a list of everyone who referenced protecting leaseholders and the polluter pays principle. I could spend the next 40 minutes reading out everybody’s names. In trying to answer all the questions, I will pick out those from my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Young. In essence, we have made a commitment to protect leaseholders and make the polluter pay. Voluntary contributions can go so far, but we want this in law. From my noble friend Lord Blencathra I have learned about a framework—a toolkit in my language—for protecting leaseholders and getting the polluter to pay. The Government will bring forward amendments—I think the deadline for Committee is Valentine’s Day, 14 February. We will be ready to debate many of these amendments at the next stage of this Bill, although some may not be ready. Some are not government amendments. I have been working very hard and listening very carefully to Steve Day, whom the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has been championing. I have put him in touch with lawyers with real expertise. Professor Susan Bright of Oxford, a land lawyer of the highest quality, has been helping to draft an amendment —now known as the Bright-Day amendment, which is better than the dark night amendment. I hope that this will be ready for noble Lords to consider, although it has not yet gone through government processes. We want every tool in the toolbox to make sure that we protect leaseholders and make the polluter pay.

The comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, were very interesting. I want to find out more about the statistic she quoted. It is staggering to think that many registered providers put £6 billion towards remediating their own housing stock. The leading developers have made provision of no more than £1 billion for their share of this crisis. I therefore pay tribute to the registered providers who are doing the right thing and making their buildings safe and not relying entirely on the probably £300 million or £400 million of taxpayers’ money that has gone towards remediation. However, that is a small fraction of the amount of money that the noble Baroness referred to. That is a very useful contribution toward resolving this crisis, because of the balance sheets of the G15, whose shoulders are considerably broader than the average leaseholder and shared owners who live in their homes. That is a tribute, and I look forward to having a summit with the National Housing Federation and leading registered providers to see how we can move forward in that vein.

I was a little disappointed when I saw a tweet that a small number of registered social landlords were effectively engaging a lobbying agency to try to promote ways to stop leaseholders being able to pursue claims. That is not the way to go. We have to recognise that there are people who are doing the wrong thing, and we have to encourage them—whether they are developers or registered providers—to do the right thing by leaseholders.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for sharing her speech, but it got to me quite late; it really struck me, and stopped me in my tracks. I got to know some disabled leaseholders who are leading the campaign, Claddag. Sarah Rennie and Georgie Hulme are incredible people, and I want to be pointed to some other examples. When it comes to public procurement —I declare my interest as someone who has been in local government for 20-odd years, although I never became a vice-president of the LGA; I do not know what I did wrong—it is important that we look at that. However, public procurement has the potential for litigation and there are all kinds of things that, as a Minister, I cannot do. I hear what the noble Baroness says, and there is an intention to do all we can to help disabled people to live safely in their home, whether in high-rises or medium-rises. I want to give her that assurance as the Minister responsible.

I have known the noble Lord, Lord Best, for a long, long time. He asked around 15 questions about the new homes ombudsman. I spent the weekend talking to my honourable friend Natalie Elphicke, who is interim chair of the New Homes Quality Board. She assured me that the governance is clear—although they seek contributions from developers to pay for this scheme, they have no say in how it is run. I was reassured by her clear explanation. While the detail of the scheme is going to follow this legislation, I can confirm that the Bill explicitly allows the new homes ombudsman scheme to expel members—that is one assurance that I can give. The scheme must also include provision about the enforcement of determinations made by the ombudsman that may include expulsion from the scheme, alongside setting out the circumstances in which an expelled member would be able to rejoin the scheme. I hope that gives some assurance.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, wanted to know about information for residents. Existing leaseholders and landlord-owners of flats will be able to request building safety information from the accountable person and to share this with prospective purchasers and tenants. Transparency is an essential way of getting this new system to work.

I have not had the benefit of the British Woodworking Federation information about fire doors, but I am pretty shocked by the numbers that have been quoted in this debate. I am aware, of course, that some of the newer fire doors perform far less well than some of the older ones. In many cases, the older the fire door, the better it performed. There is a real fundamental issue with the construction products testing regime carried out by the BRE or the BBA—we have to recognise that it is broken. That is why the previous Secretary of State asked for a construction products testing review. We are not that far away from having the report. We have a draft; I do not know how long it will be, but it is not miles away from being made public. We are looking at it very closely in draft form, but the usual phrase is “in due course”.

I was very struck by the speech of my noble friend Lady Sanderson, someone who has been a community adviser to the Grenfell bereaved and survivors and lived this since the night of Grenfell, along with Nick Hurd, the Prime Minister’s adviser on Grenfell; it is a fantastic way of staying connected with the community. It was a buck-passing culture and a pass-the-parcel approach that led to a lot of the tragedies we have seen. No one takes ownership or responsibility; frankly, that is why we need this Bill. My noble friend rightly questioned whether we should continue to build high-rises with a single staircase. That is a very important point that we need to look at and find out how to address.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I have one thing in common: we were at Procter & Gamble. I was there in the 1980s and 1990s, but he was probably there in the 1960s.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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I am only joking; that is not fair.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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The 1970s, okay. One of the things it taught you was to really distil your arguments down and to learn things over time. The noble Lord specifically asked whether we could review this on an ongoing basis. I take that suggestion as a very sensible one. Any Government—this Government in particular—need to do things and then see whether they work, review and reflect, and try to take that on board. I do not know whether I have overstepped the mark as a Minister, but I think that is a very sensible suggestion.

We will ensure that we improve competence. One of the things we must recognise is that, to improve competence, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, you need to establish what competence is. That is one of the things we are doing very carefully; it is being done by officials and the shadow building safety regulator. You then have to find out how the accreditation will work, and I know that UKAS and others want to step forward and do that. That will all happen as a result of this Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, gave a really thoughtful speech on something that was new to me, so I appreciate his contribution on cash retention. The Government continue to work with industry on the future of retention payments in the construction industry. However, I am told that there is not a clear consensus as to what may replace the practice, so there is more work to be done. I thank the noble Lord for raising an important issue.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, raised Part 5 and the duty on landlords, and asked whether we were going to cause litigation by setting unreasonable demands on landlords. He also came up with a solution. I really appreciate him raising that issue; leaseholders need as much protection as possible. We are requiring landlords to seek claims only where reasonable, but we note the noble and learned Lord’s suggestions for the guidance, and we will take them on board as we continue with the passage of the Bill.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Jolly and Lady Young of Old Scone, the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, and my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Naseby all mentioned the Safer Stairs campaign. As someone who has an elderly father—sadly, my mother did not survive the first wave of Covid—I worry. The thing I worry most about, as someone gets frailer, is staircases. I almost have to declare a personal interest. It is important that we look at staircase standards and recognise how best to achieve that end point, so that new builds have the right level of minimum standard. That does not mean it has to be enshrined as a maximum standard, but we have to work out what we would be proud of as a minimum standard in regulations. I thank noble Lords for raising this issue.

I think it is ironic that one of the sponsors of this campaign is Berkeley homes, because Richmond House, which someone mentioned, is of course a Berkeley build, as is Worcester Park, which really was a shoddy building, although luckily there was no loss of life there. Some developers who normally build good stuff have built things that they should be ashamed of. It is ironic that Berkeley is sponsoring what is a very noble campaign—none the less, I support it.

The noble Lord, Lord Foster, raised electrical safety. I am sure we will work through some of his suggestions—along with pretty much everything else he is interested in—in Committee. I have the briefing and I understand the issue; it is something that we have debated many times.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, raised building safety managers, and I have the note that was prepared by ARMA and IRPM on this. I hear the concerns about cost, and we take those concerns extremely seriously. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and if you are not prescribing how you do it, we do not see why you cannot have a property manager continue to discharge the functions of a building safety manager, going to the expertise only when it is needed. Think of the equivalent in healthcare: you typically go to a GP but see the specialist only when required. I have some sympathy with the issue, but I think that we are not being prescriptive about it, and so it should not be used as an excuse by managing agents to whack up the prices for leaseholders.

I welcome the clear cross-party support from so many noble Lords. There is broad support for the principles set out in a Statement by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in the other place, on 10 January. We will continue to work with your Lordships —even the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—and by working together we will ensure that homes are safe for future generations. It is a worthy ambition. I commend the Bill to the House.

The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)

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My Lords, I was not expecting to be in what the Romans called a frigidarium for this stage of the Bill. It is positively bracing. I am sure that as the week wears on we will get a slightly more normal temperature. It is already slightly better, so it clearly just takes a bit of time.

I will try to capture each group of amendments in three words or fewer. I am going to call this group the “widening the scope” group of amendments—that is three words. I will go through each amendment in turn. In practice, I have sympathy with every idea that has been put forward. However, I would like noble Lords to consider that the more we widen the scope, the greater the risk that we will actually fail in the first duty of any Government, which is to keep people safe. Our focus has to be based on what it is reasonable to expect from a new regulator in the Health and Safety Executive. So, although I have sympathy, I will resist this group of amendments, because, when we talk about high risk, the scope has to be necessarily tight in order to give the HSE the chance to grow as a regulator and to implement this regime properly.

However, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this first group of amendments. I believe that this is a landmark piece of legislation and a necessary one. I can feel the broad support that it has from all sides of the House, and I look forward to further debates in Committee. There has already been good discussion in this grouping, and I am grateful for the commitment from all noble Lords to improve the Bill and to reform building safety more generally. I have listened to the concerns raised by noble Lords and I thank them for their helpful contributions. As I said, I will respond to them all in turn.

I start by talking about the fire which the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, mentioned. It is true that it was a staggeringly awful fire, even though there was no loss of life, and the noble Lord captured that very well in his speech. I have spent quite a bit of time trying to learn the lessons of the near misses, if you like, so I have met Geeta Nanda, chair of the G15, who I have known for some time. She is also the chief executive of the Metropolitan Thames Valley housing association, which manages Richmond House within Worcester Park, which consists of 23 households of shared owners. I have also met Dean Summers—on Zoom; I have not met him in person—who took over from Sean Ellis, and I had a meeting with him as the new managing director of St James.

It is fair to say that Richmond House, which was built in 2011 by the Berkeley Group—St James is part of the Berkeley Group—was built in a shockingly bad way. It was built without internal compartmentalisation and certainly would never have passed the building regulations at the time. There was also inadequate fire-stopping, which is one of the reasons why the fire spread so quickly. Candidly, it is absolutely right that the Berkeley Group pays for its replacement and addresses all the losses suffered by the shared owners. I am very interested in that, and I have asked for a report from the housing association and Berkeley on progress on doing precisely that. The building was not built in line with building regulations, so it should not have happened. It is a four-storey building and is under 11 metres, which, according to the building regulations, should not have been able to happen, so we have an example of someone having signed off a building that should never have been signed off. That is the lesson of Richmond House.

Sometimes regulation does not work. That, for me, is the lesson. The other lesson is that fire is a tragedy, not just when you lose lives but in the opportunities lost. This Bill does a lot to make housing overall safer, and we will have much better housing stock over the next 30 years than we have had in the previous 30 years.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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I think we need to ensure the competence of enforcement and that it works, and the competence of the people who assess buildings and sign them off as fit for human habitation. In the same way with crime where we want an absence of crime, we want an absence of these problems. Yes, we need to improve enforcement and there needs to be the strong arm of the law. That is why we want to have a strong regulator in this new regulator under the HSE. We have Housing Act powers for local authorities to intervene. The fire service has powers under the fire safety order. There are lots of powers and lots of regulators that can step in and do something about it. In this case, they all failed. Yes, we need to strengthen them. We understand a lot more about the inadequacies of some of the built environment, but my noble friend is right that we also need to strengthen enforcement.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for his amendments. On Amendment 1, I hope noble Lords will agree that the regulator should exercise its functions in line with its first objective: to secure the safety of people in and around buildings. I am concerned that adding additional objectives for the new building safety regulator could distract from this mission. The Bill provides the regulator with a broader objective to improve the standard of buildings. Achieving this could involve the regulator improving regulatory standards relevant to property protection, such as security, resilience and fire safety, so the regulator’s remit already extends to considering these issues.

Adding a specific objective for property protection would have two main downsides. First, it would put property protection on a par with resident safety as a priority for the regulator. The Government believe that the regulator should prioritise residents’ safety and do not want the regulator to be distracted from that. There is a risk that a specific requirement always to consider property protection would result in the regulator favouring solutions that go beyond what is required for residents’ safety. The second downside is that this amendment risks skewing the building safety regulator’s oversight function. The Government intend the regulator to use evidence to identify emerging issues with the safety and performance of buildings and to make recommendations to Ministers on regulatory changes where needed. A property protection objective would distract the regulator from using evidence to identify and rectify the most pressing issues, which might, for example, relate to net zero and sustainability rather than property protection.

The pre-legislative scrutiny committee considered property protection but found that the existing objectives are a sensible starting point—I emphasise “starting point”. The committee suggested that the Government keep this under review. We are committed to doing this through the provision in Clause 135 for a regular independent review of the effectiveness of the regulator and the wider regulatory system.

Turning to Amendment 12, there are already powers for building regulations to cover specific aspects of building resilience. We believe that it is better that building regulations are targeted on specific issues rather than open-ended requirements. However, we recognise that, for residential buildings, further research into property protection is warranted. The impact of the loss of a home is significant, so we are taking this forward as part of the technical review of approved document B on fire safety. I thank the noble Lord for suggesting these amendments and respectfully ask him to withdraw Amendment 1.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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I am the Minister with responsibility for fire as well as for building safety, and I will ensure that it is published in weeks and not months or years. Noble Lords will know that we have consulted twice now on PEEPs. I am pretty clear about the way forward, and it is about time that we as a Government came forward with a response. I recognise the pressure to do so sooner rather than later, and thank the Committee for raising the issue.

I recognise the concerns that have led to noble Lords laying these amendments and assure them that the Bill makes provision for the building safety regulator to consider a wide range of factors that influence the level of risk in categories of building before making recommendations or providing advice as to which categories of buildings should be considered higher risk.

I thank noble Lords for their contributions, and I hope I have given reassurance to enable them to withdraw and not press their amendments.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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My Lords, I think I should start by dealing with something that probably relates to the previous group. I am sorry that so many noble Lords have had such arduous journeys to get to the Moses Room today and then, having journeyed so far and so slowly, come to a Room that is so positively chilling. It is quite arduous at the best of times.

Just for clarification, in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, the high-risk regime includes hospitals and those care homes of six storeys and above. Essentially, it is those around 18 metres—there or thereabouts—but not in occupation, because different regimes apply to them, although the fire safety order applies to the whole built environment. I hope that gives clarity on the current scope.

I set myself the task of trying to encapsulate quite a varied set of amendments in each group in three words or fewer. I have called this the “strengthening building regulations” group: I will try and get three words down to two the next time I have to do this. I thank noble Lords for their contributions to what has been an interesting debate. I will respond to each amendment in turn.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, for his amendment giving the building safety regulator the power to make building regulations under paragraphs 4A and 4B of Schedule 1 to the Building Act 1984, as inserted by the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004. However, I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept this amendment as his intention has already been met in the Bill. We are introducing a more stringent regulatory regime in design and construction for higher-risk buildings, as defined in Part 3. The higher-risk regime will be the responsibility of the building safety regulator. We are also making wider changes to the Building Act 1984 that will apply to all buildings.

I point out to your Lordships that Sections 8 and 9 of the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004, referred to in the amendment, insert paragraphs 4A, under “Certification of work”, and 4B, under “Appointed person and management of works” into Schedule 1 to the Building Act 1984. As part of our improvements to the 1984 Act, the Bill repeals those paragraphs and replaces them with more effective powers via Clauses 32 and 33. These are more effective, stronger and wide-ranging powers. Clauses 32 and 33 provide powers for building regulations to set procedural requirements relating to building control, the issue of notices and certificates and requirements regarding appointments. They include setting out duties to be imposed on relevant persons in relation to building work. We also consider that the power to make building regulations should remain with the Secretary of State. This will ensure a consistent approach to all buildings; the Bill already provides that the building safety regulator will be able to advise the Secretary of State should it consider changes to the building regulations to be necessary. I thank the noble Lord for suggesting these amendments and respectfully ask him not to press them.

I always get worried—this is a new combination, as they say—when an amendment brings the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Pinnock, together. On Amendment 11, it is the Workington warrior and the Yorkshire terrier combined. I am trembling in my boots at the thought of Amendment 11 but let us look at it carefully. I thank the noble Baronesses for raising this important matter but I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept this amendment. The Bill takes a proportionate approach to building control. In the new system, all building inspectors, regardless of whether they work for local authorities, the building safety regulator or registered building control approvers, will need to register with the building safety regulator. As part of the registration process, they will have to demonstrate their competence by meeting certain criteria.

A new framework of operational standards rules will define the minimum performance standards that building control bodies must meet, and the building safety regulator will monitor and analyse the performance of building control bodies to drive up standards across the sector. Registered building control approvers and building control authorities will need to obtain and consider the advice of a registered building inspector before carrying out certain building control functions and use a registered building inspector to undertake certain activities. This greater scrutiny and accountability will provide greater incentive to ensure all buildings, including non-higher-risk buildings, are safe. With that explanation, I respectfully ask the noble Baronesses not to press their amendment.

I turn to Amendment 43. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for raising this important matter. I am afraid the Government will not be able to accept the amendment, as our assessment is that it would not achieve its intended effect. I assure the noble Baroness that paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 to the Building Act 1984 already allows for the making of provision in the building regulations for all categories of buildings, as do the new powers that we are taking in Clause 32.

We are introducing a more stringent regulatory regime in design and construction, led by the building safety regulator, for high-rise residential buildings, care homes and hospitals that are 18 metres or more in height, or at least seven storeys, known in the Bill as “higher-risk” buildings. Those buildings to which this more stringent regime applies have been chosen to ensure that the regulation is proportionate to the level of risk, should a spreading fire or structural failure occur. We do not think it appropriate to apply the entire regime to all buildings. However, where appropriate, we intend to make elements applicable to all buildings, such as the duty-holder and competence requirements, which will apply to all building work where building regulations apply.

I turn to Amendment 127. I again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for raising matters relating to flood resilience. I appreciate the passion with which she outlined her desire to get this issue addressed, particularly in new homes, but I am afraid the Government will not be able to accept this amendment. I assure her that there is already a well-established regulatory system in place to ensure new homes have necessary flood-mitigation measures in place. The National Planning Policy Framework is clear that inappropriate development in areas at risk of flooding should be avoided. Where development is necessary, it should be made safe and resilient without increasing flood risk elsewhere. Policies in that framework must be taken into account in preparing the local authority’s development plan and are a material consideration in planning decisions.

The new clause that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has proposed would require flood resilience measures to be introduced into the building regulations. Statutory guidance to the building regulations, in approved document C, already promotes the use of flood-resilient and resistant construction in flood-prone areas. Part H of the regulations also sets requirements for the rainwater and surface water drainage of individual buildings. The main sewerage system for a development is governed by the sewerage undertaker for the area—for example, Thames Water. The sewerage undertaker has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that drainage systems for new developments are built to a resilient standard that minimises flooding, and these duties sit outside the building regulations system.

I thank the noble Baroness for suggesting the amendment. I hope I have reassured the Committee that the Government already have well-established means of making sure that consideration of flood risk and flood mitigation is thoroughly accounted for in the planning system, and that approved document C already promotes flood-resistant and resilient construction. For these reasons, we believe that introducing new requirements into the building regulations is not necessary.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for reminding me that I should probably declare my commercial and residential property interests—none of which has any cladding issues—as set out in the register, specifically on the amendment around permitted development rights because I have benefited from those in the past, though probably will not do so in the future. I recognise the risk that he has outlined and that is why I thought I should declare those interests.

Amendment 135 seeks to ensure that homes delivered under permitted development rights—PDR—for change of use to residential meet the provisions of this Bill. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for raising this important matter, but I am afraid the Government will not be able to accept this amendment. This is getting quite repetitive, really, is it not? However, the noble Lord is raising an important point and I assure him that planning permission, whether granted by a permitted development right or following an application to the local planning authority, does not remove the need to comply with other legal requirements. That means all new homes and buildings must meet, for example, the relevant building regulations and fire safety requirements, as well as any other legal requirements required under other legislation, regardless of whether they are permitted through a permitted development right or following an application for planning permission.

We introduced a number of new requirements into the planning system, called planning gateway 1, from 1 August 2021. These ensure that fire safety matters as they relate to land-use planning are incorporated at the planning stage for schemes involving a relevant high-rise residential building. For schemes that use permitted development rights, a similar requirement has been introduced. Through new prior approval processes, proposals to create a relevant high-rise residential building under the rights require submission of a statement about the fire safety design principles, concepts and standards that have been applied to the development. Consultation by the local planning authority with the Health and Safety Executive is required for residential buildings of 18 metres or more in height or seven or more storeys, whichever is reached first.

Once again, I thank noble Lords for this interesting debate. I hope that I have given some reassurance on each amendment, and that noble Lords will now withdraw or not press their respective amendments.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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I thank the noble Lord for giving me that get-out. He is absolutely right that this is a complicated matter. You often have an old office building from which you create a new residential dwelling. We will check whether that is included in the purview of this Bill, and I will write to the noble Lord on that matter.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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I will combine the letter for the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. Essentially, they want an answer to this question: “If you take a non-residential building, whether it is an office block or a Yorkshire mill, and you create a residential dwelling, will that be in scope when it comes to a new build?” The start point does not matter—it is non-residential—so is it included? I will answer both noble Lords in writing and lay a copy in the Library.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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My Lords, we come to the—I am sorry, it is the turn of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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My Lords, I am getting used to the free-wheeling nature of these debates. I apologise that I stood up before the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, had her say.

There is no doubt that a large part of this is focused on high-risk, high-rise residential buildings, not least because of the tragedy of Grenfell, which followed the tragedies in Lakanal House and Garnett Court. We have also had near misses, such as the Bolton Cube, which was just under 17 metres and is one of the reasons why we talk about the cut-off being six storeys or more as it was a very big near miss.

There is that focus but, equally, it is fair to say that the Building Safety Bill also encapsulates building regulations for the entire built environment and makes a contribution to increasing competence among key actors, such as approved inspectors, duty holders, the accountable person and the building safety manager, to ensure that buildings in occupation remain safe. There are contributions around competence that will have wider benefit but what the noble Baroness said is right: this is very much part of our response to a broken regulatory system that we need to fix. I think that we recognise the need to do precisely that collectively in this Committee.

I thank noble Lords for a lively debate. This group of amendments is essentially around new reporting requirements. I shall respond to each amendment in turn.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, opened this short debate with Amendment 6 and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, spoke on it. I thank them for raising this important matter but I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept the amendment. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe with her background as a civil servant who took that expertise to play a leading role in a supermarket. She did not mention which one but I know it was Tesco—every little helps—because I remember when she was in that position. It is important to reflect on when we can hold the Civil Service to account, as she put it. I understand where my noble friend is coming from, even if I do not accept it on this occasion.

Our assessment is that this amendment would unnecessarily prescribe issues to which the regulator must attend. I must also point out the unintended effect that this amendment would have in effectively restricting the regulator’s work to a limited list of subjects. Such prescription could unwittingly narrow the scope of the regulator’s focus and efforts. Furthermore, the imposition of a time limit could have the perverse effect of constraining the assessments being sought only to factors that can be determined within the timescales afforded.

I assure the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that their intention to ensure that major safety issues are reviewed and assessed by the regulator has been met through the measures in the Bill. The building safety regulator will have a duty to keep the safety and standard of buildings under review and to be transparent about its work, reporting annually on the delivery of its functions under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, and Clause 3 stipulates that it must be transparent.

I can also assure your Lordships that the specific areas of building safety identified in the proposed amendment are actively being considered by the Government under research projects being undertaken with the help of academia and stakeholders. These projects include the technical review of approved document B, which includes research on means of escape in blocks of flats, including stairways and ramps, and means of escape provisions for people with disabilities. As I am sure the noble Lord and the noble Baroness are aware, the Government have already conducted an assessment of the effectiveness of sprinklers as a means of fire suppression and, in 2020, we changed the statutory guidance so that sprinklers should be provided in all new residential buildings more than 11 metres in height, as opposed to the previous 30-metre threshold. I want to thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for raising this important matter and hope that I have been able to assure them that all aspects of building safety are of importance for the Government.

Before turning to Amendment 89, I pay tribute to Alison Hills and Steve Day, who were mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. I got to know Steve Day in particular, but also Alison Hills. They worked very hard on constructive amendments which will help the thinking around getting the polluter to pay, because they are victims. In the case of Steve Day, it is a sign of triumph, because he is part of a group of people who, in their spare time, without pay, essentially fought a big developer to get it to pay for the remediation of their building, bit by bit. We need to pay tribute to these heroes who work tirelessly on behalf of their fellow residents to get the polluter to pay; they are people for whom I have huge fondness and regard. It is right that some people have shelled out huge costs and have not been able to get the polluter to pay, and there are many orphaned buildings—if you like—for which we cannot easily find out who is liable to pay. The question is, how do we deal with that? That is something that we as a Government recognise that we need to have an answer to, but let us leave that until a later part of this Committee stage. I am sure we will return to it on Report.

Turning to Amendment 89, on which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, spoke, I thank her for raising this important matter, but I am afraid that, again, the Government will not be able to accept this amendment. The Government remain committed to ensuring that those responsible are held to account to protect leaseholders from unaffordable costs, but our assessment is that the amendment would not constitute an appropriate use of the Government’s time and resources. The amendment would require the Secretary of State to quantify the impacts for any leaseholders who may have carried out remediation of cladding and fire safety defects over the past 10 years, regardless of the nature and scale of the works.

I draw the attention of the noble Baroness to the amendments tabled on 14 February, which make clear that freeholders with links to developers and those with the resources to fund remediation in full must do so. In other cases, the contributions of leaseholders will be subject to a legal cap. The new schedule to be inserted before Schedule 9, tabled on 14 February, also provides the Secretary of State with the power to make regulations providing for the recovery of sums due that have not been paid. These amendments ensure that leaseholders will no longer be susceptible to large costs. The supplementary requirements that would be introduced by Amendment 89 would therefore present an unnecessarily onerous task that would increase costs and burden to the Government, where resources could be better employed. I thank the noble Baroness for raising this important matter and assure her that this Government are committed to ensuring that those responsible are held to account to protect leaseholders from unaffordable costs.

Turning to Amendment 126, I again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for raising this important matter. Unfortunately, the amendment would have the effect of unacceptably increasing the burden on the Government at a time when we are concentrating on our programme of reform and raising standards in rented homes.

The 2018 Act built on the existing regulatory framework and empowered tenants, for the first time, to take action in the courts for breach of contract if their home was unfit to live in. That is why we supported it. It is right that this is in addition to, but separate from, enforcement of standards by local authorities, which we also strengthened in 2016. There is therefore limited benefit in requiring officials to spend time interrogating court records when we are, at the same time, concentrating on building on the 2018 Act and further raising the standard of rented homes, higher even than the requirement introduced by the Act. We will do this by consulting on introducing a legally binding decent homes standard in the private rented sector and by reviewing the decent homes standard itself, and we will provide more detail in due course.

I now turn to Amendment 129. I wish the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, had provided my speaking notes as he has such command of detail. It is quite incredible and testament to his long-term passion, commitment and interest in the subject. I certainly learned a lot about the almost dystopian future that certainly my children—probably not me—will to have to deal with. It is probably why school-age kids are so nervous about this. It is horrendous. Amendment 129 raises a very important issue and while the Government will not be able to accept this amendment, I hope to reassure the Committee that Clause 5 already makes appropriate provision for this and that risks to buildings as a result of climate change are already being dealt with through existing locally driven action.

Clause 5 places a duty on the building safety regulator to keep under review the safety and standards of all buildings. This would include advising industry and government on research into new or emerging risks, such as those presented by climate change. The regulator will also advise on and prepare proposals for changes to building regulations. Climate change mitigation and adaptation are intrinsic components of the building regulations and will remain so. We also recognise the importance of ensuring local authorities work with their communities to understand the risks buildings may face as a result of climate change. However, the amendment would duplicate existing locally driven action; for example, the requirement on lead local flood authorities to assess flood risks across their area through the local flood risk management strategy or the requirement for local authorities to develop the best approaches to managing the risk of coastal erosion and flooding through shoreline management plans and local planning policies.

I turn now to Amendment 134 and will respond to Amendment 149 at the same time. I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baronesses for raising how we monitor the effectiveness of the Bill and hope to reassure them that the Bill makes appropriate provision for monitoring. Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent review recommended that we ensure that the new system works through regular independent reviews. Clause 135 requires that these reviews happen at least every five years and that the resulting report must be published. In addition, the building safety regulator must report annually on the performance of its functions under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Clause 3 further stipulates that the regulator must be transparent and accountable. The Government intend that the regulator’s published strategic plan, required by Clause 17, will set out further detail on what it must report on.

Finally, the Bill ensures that crucial aspects of the new system are included in the regulator’s annual reporting, notably engagement with residents under Clause 19 and mandatory occurrence reports, which can help industry track safety issues, under Clause 20. Further reporting requirements risk duplication, complexity and additional bureaucracy. Amendment 149 would also require the Government to report on the exact number of certified building safety managers and fire risk assessors when certification is not a function of government under the Bill. In light of the strong existing provisions, I hope that I have provided sufficient reassurance and that your Lordships will be content that the Government have fully addressed the concerns raised in the amendments.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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My Lords, I have some experience of this, having led the council that includes Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith and Fulham for six years. Even in that time, there were significant incidents of flooding in basements and quite serious concerns. It did not just happen in Shepherd’s Bush, but from Hammersmith and Fulham right up to Old Oak, and it is the same for many inner London boroughs that have basements as well. It was a very significant issue for local authorities, but I think it is quite proper that the mayor, as the first port of call, should have strategic oversight of how we develop the built environment in our capital city. I expect the mayor to take a lead role on this, if I were to pick any level of government. At a national level, I am the Resilience Minister and am happy to take away anything else we need to do to address the specific concerns the noble Baroness has raised, because it is important we recognise that this is a real risk to our built environment, which will get worse in the coming years.

The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)

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Sorry, my Lords, I am just learning as we go, as they say. I really admire this House because, obviously, this is the day following the night when Ukraine, a sovereign state, was invaded by Russia, and yet the serious business of government continues, as we consider this group of amendments. I always distil groups of amendments into three words or fewer, and I can do this one in two: these are “technical amendments”—it is not that hard really.

Before introducing the government amendments, let me start by saying that I have listened to speeches from two of my favourite speakers—everyone should have favourites. I have known the noble Lord, Lord Best, for some time; let us say that I was in my prime when we first met—a young man, with a future ahead of me—and we went off for a retreat in Windsor Castle, where Richard—the noble Lord—and I thought about big thoughts. I have a lot of sympathy for what the noble Lord said, but I shall read out my speech. However, the bottom line is that he has raised important points about how we can strengthen the new homes ombudsman—indeed, we need to make sure that the complaints process works across all types of housing and all type of tenures.

I should say to the noble Lord that we are probably going to look at this in a different way, so if I come across in any way negative, it is not because I do not agree with him, but we need to find the right vehicle to do this, which is probably, as I said before, through improved warranties. It is an absolute shocker that the warranty system for housing, which is the single biggest expenditure for an individual, is so poor—a point that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has brought up on a number of occasions—and I have met with the warranty providers. We need to ensure that we extend the period of coverage that is available when you buy your own home. The period is slightly longer for public or social housing, where it is 12 years, but it is 10 years for private housing—and that in itself is odd, as these are still homes, whether they are social homes or private homes. So I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his thinking.

My absolute favourite rhetorical speaker is my noble friend Lord Blencathra. To be honest, I always remember to declare my interests because he always starts off by declaring his interests, so I declare all my interests—residential and commercial property interests—as set out in the register. I follow my noble friend in doing that. Also, I love the passion with which he says that, actually, it is important that people who break the law are penalised. Effectively, he is saying that what they have done is a crime and they should pay a lot of money for it, and I completely agree with those sentiments. If I in any way seem to be resisting in my speech, he will know—he has been in government and understands these things—that I am with him in spirit.

I will now speak to my amendments, which are government Amendments 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 27 and 29. These technical amendments make changes to Clause 41 and Schedule 5, to create an information sharing gateway between the regulatory authorities of the building control profession in England and Wales. The information sharing gateway also extends to a person to whom the regulatory authority has delegated registration functions under new Section 58Y.

Some registered building control approvers and building inspectors will operate in both England and Wales. These amendments will ensure that, if the regulatory authority in one nation identifies that a cross-border registered building control approver or building inspector has breached professional conduct or operational standards rules, it can share this information with the regulatory authority of the other nation, if appropriate. The regulatory authority of the other nation may then wish to take investigatory action to discern whether similar breaches are taking place by the same registered building control approver or building inspector in their jurisdiction. These amendments will therefore ensure that regulatory bodies can share information with one another to effectively regulate the building control profession.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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I am sorry; I will slow down. Amendment 23 is a drafting change to Clause 52 and should be read alongside Amendment 26, which amends the same section of the Building Act 1984. Amendment 26 is a tidying-up amendment and is consequential on the repeal of Section 16 of the Building Act 1984, provided for by paragraph 20 of Schedule 5.

Amendment 133, to Clause 135, relates to the requirement for a regular, independent review of the building and construction products regulatory system, which must cover the effectiveness of the building safety regulator. This minor amendment defines the regulator’s functions to be covered by this review, using the same definition of those functions as in Part 2 of the Bill.

I turn to government Amendments 21, 25, 30, 41, 42, 61, 138 and 146. They do three things. First, they extend the application of the Building Act and building regulations to work on Crown buildings and by Crown bodies. The Government believe that the ownership of a building should not determine whether the new building safety regime, or building regulations requirements, should apply. There should be a consistent approach in how building safety legislation operates across the whole life cycle of a building.

Parts 2 and 4 of the Building Safety Bill apply to the Crown by virtue of Clause 137. The arrangements during the design and construction stages are being implemented by way of changes to the Building Act and, in due course, through building regulations. To apply the requirements for gateways and the golden thread to Crown buildings, the Building Act and the building regulations will need to be applied to work on Crown buildings. This new clause does that.

There is an uncommenced provision in Section 44 of the Building Act which would allow the substantive requirements of building regulations to be applied to the Crown. The drafting of that section has limitations, however, so we consider it better to start afresh by repealing and replacing Section 44. There are also some necessary exclusions to reflect that the Crown cannot be subject to criminal sanctions.

Secondly, the amendments make provision about the application of the Building Act and building regulations to work on the Palace of Westminster and other buildings on the Parliamentary Estate. At Second Reading, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester asked in his valedictory speech that the building regulations should apply to the restoration of the Palace of Westminster. This change to the Building Act will ensure that happens.

Finally, this new clause provides that if, in future, a building on the Parliamentary Estate came within scope of Part 4 of the Bill, that part would apply, subject to equivalent exclusions to those which affect how the Building Act and building regulations are being applied to the Crown and Parliament. These new sections of the Building Act and the Bill therefore ensure a consistent approach to building safety for Crown and parliamentary buildings.

Finally, I turn to government Amendments 90, 91, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 142 and 143, which relate to the new homes ombudsman provisions and expand them to Northern Ireland. These provisions have already been expanded to Scotland and Wales, so this ensures that new-build home buyers will have improved protection when things go wrong, no matter where they live in the UK.

Amendments 97 and 98 enable the provisions to work practically in Northern Ireland as a consequence of extending the scope of the provisions. Amendments 90, 91, 100, 103, 104, 105 and 106, include consultation requirements so that the Secretary of State must consult the relevant department in Northern Ireland designated by the First Minister or Deputy First Minister acting jointly before exercising powers concerning the scheme, or consult the Executive Office in Northern Ireland when a department has not been designated. The Secretary of State must consult the Northern Ireland Executive before making arrangements for the scheme, before making regulations requiring membership of the scheme, and arranging for that requirement to be enforced, and before a developers’ code of practice is issued, revised or replaced, either by the UK Government or by a third-party scheme provider with the Secretary of State’s approval.

Amendment 99 confers a power on the relevant national authority in Northern Ireland to add to the meaning of the term “developer” in the new homes ombudsman provisions in relation to homes in Northern Ireland, through regulations as appropriate, and following consultation with the other relevant national authorities. Amendments 95 and 96 include provision so that any externally run new homes ombudsman scheme involves the provision of information to the department in Northern Ireland designated by the First Minister and Deputy First Minister acting jointly.

I hope that your Lordships will be pleased that the government amendments in my name today will help to deliver the effective implementation of the new regulatory regime, as well as providing redress for homeowners across the union.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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My Lords, I had not thought that this debate would take quite so long, but it has been worth listening to every second of every minute. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, for that late intervention because we have unlearned a lot of the practices that led to a higher quality of build. We would not be in the mess we were in if we had not unlearned some of the things that we did so well during the Victorian period, when there was a way of building using pattern books. Everything was essentially a process, which the Edwardians developed further. Somewhere along the line we have lost that desire to build quality. Just imagine if the Romans came back from the dead to look at what we were building over the past 30 years in the 90s, the noughties and the 10s. They would be absolutely appalled at the standard of build. They did not build their temples to last 10 or 15 years but centuries. We have got to learn that quality of our built environment matters. I thank noble Lords for raising some of their points.

One of the objectives of the Bill is not just to create a regulatory system that works but to raise the competence of an industry that has cut corners and, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said, effectively gamed the system. We have to get back to the culture around quality, competence and professionalism. That will take not just legislation but an attitude of mind.

I start by responding directly to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, around impact assessments. He is absolutely right. The government amendments came thick and fast. My entire weekends have been ruined since the beginning of the year, working at pace as we approved a plethora of amendments. It is fair to say that the sheer pace of this has meant that it has not been possible to look entirely at the impact. We just know that they are the right lines, and the impacts will be looked at in due course—my response says, “We are looking at the impact of the government amendments and will publish an assessment in due course.” We have been working very fast to get this right in the time we have, and we thought it was very important that we were ready to have these discussions in Committee of government amendments before we get to the even more serious business of Report.

I shall respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, about Clause 126 and intruding on the powers of the Senedd. We have worked closely with the Welsh Government across all areas of the Bill to develop and agree measures that work for England and Wales. The Welsh Government have agreed the measures applying to Wales and we expect legislative consent in due course.

I have had a number of ministerial meetings with my counterparts in the devolved Administrations, and there are lessons to be learned from the Welsh approach to the building safety crisis—and, indeed, from my Scottish and Northern Ireland colleagues—on this issue. It affects all our nations in this great United Kingdom, and we have a constant dialogue as we grapple with it, but it is fair to say that the lion’s share of the problem lies in our big cities here in England. That is not to say that we are not learning from the Welsh and others, and of course we will not ride roughshod over them. I hope that gives the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Hayman of Ullock, some reassurance.

I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for bringing forward his amendments, which are clearly aimed to impose greater punishment on those who breach building regulations. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for mentioning a breach of the regulations, probably around the time when my noble friend Lord Young was the Housing Minister. I do not know whether he was responsible for the 1984 building regulations—he was. We have the living history in the Room, in the person who brought them forward. Do you know what I was doing in 1984? I was doing my A-levels, and here we have the Minister who brought forward the building regulations in 1984. That is the kind of place we have: people with decades of understanding of these issues.

It is a crime to breach building regulations. If you commit a crime in this country, there is no statute of limitations—I know that from being Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime—so people can go after you after any period. I have huge sympathy for the intent behind there not being a short period of time, and it is important that we recognise that breaches of building regulations are criminal; that cannot be said often enough. I thank the noble Baroness for raising that again, and the Government have sympathy, but I fear we are unable to accept my noble friend’s proposals, as I intimated in my opening speech.

Looking first at Amendment 13, we consider that the changes are unnecessary for a couple of reasons. First, for some years now, the magistrates’ courts have had the power to impose unlimited fines—and fines are, of course, the principal punishment available in respect of corporate bodies, which are most likely to be in a position to commit the offence of breaching building regulations.

Secondly, it will not have escaped your Lordships’ notice that significant backlogs have developed in the Crown Court over the past two years as Covid protocols have been introduced. The costs to the courts service, the prosecution and the defence are also far higher in the Crown Court.

As was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, it is quite possible for the building regulations to be breached in a relatively minor way. In such cases, it would be entirely appropriate for the case to be dealt with by the magistrates. It is, of course, also possible for breaches to be extremely serious, which is why the Bill for the first time allows cases to be dealt with in the Crown Court, in the same way as crimes are dealt with: sometimes in the magistrates’ court, sometimes in the Crown Court. However, we do not consider that it would be sensible to require all breaches of the building regulations to be dealt with in the Crown Court.

Turning to Amendment 14, I say to my noble friend that I agree with increasing the daily rate of fine for ongoing offences. Indeed, the Bill already increases the daily rate from £50—where it has been since 1984, when I am sure it was set by my noble friend Lord Young, when £50 was a considerably greater sum of money than it is today—to £200, which is the current rate for a level 1 fine. However, we consider that increasing it further to £2,500, as my noble friend proposes, “would be disproportionate”—that is what it says here, anyway.

The principal aim of the prosecution must be to impose an initial fine commensurate to that particular offence; any further fine should merely encourage work to be put right, rather than imposing huge additional punishment. We consider the potential maximum of £5,600 for the month of February is likely to be significantly more proportionate on top of the fine imposed on conviction, rather than the £70,000 proposed by my noble friend.

On Amendment 15, imposing a sentence according to a mathematical formula raises a number of issues. First, the cost of the work done will not always be clear; there may be disputes about the cost in the invoice or the value of the work actually done, and resolving this would take up the court’s valuable time. Secondly, the court might consider that, in a particularly egregious case, a significantly higher fine is required than one that would be arrived at from the calculation. The amendment would preclude the court from imposing that higher fine. Finally, the provision in the amendment to enable the court to impose rapidly escalating further fines, if the breach remains unresolved, has the potential to lead to significant unfairness—as, for example, a £10,000 initial fine could total up to £70,000 if a breach remained unresolved for just two months after conviction.

As I said at the start of my remarks, while I am supportive of my noble friend’s amendments, I hope that with this explanation he will be content not to press them. I reiterate that I absolutely sympathise, and want to go with the nature of this—but that is the response to the amendments as tabled today. I thank my noble friend for laying the amendments for us to think them through and debate them extensively.

Before turning to the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Best, about strengthening the teeth of the new homes ombudsman, it is important to reflect that there has to be a little bit of work done to tidy up the whole approach to the ombudsman’s service for people in housing. I asked my colleagues behind me to list the number of people who provide a complaints service for people in different types of homes and tenures. We have the new homes ombudsman, which will be unleashed for new build, but we also, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, will know, have the Regulator of Social Housing and—my old colleague at City Hall, Rick Blakeway—the Housing Ombudsman Service, and we have the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. Homes are homes, and we need to think about how we get a complaints service that works for homes in the round. I know that we can categorise social housing as being over here, and people in private renting over there, but these are people’s homes. We need to recognise that, at the moment, it is a patchwork quilt of services that provide that whole ombudsman service, and that is not ideal. I wanted to put that forward—that, when discussing this subject, we are talking about new-build private homes and not housing in the round.

I turn to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I thank him for raising this important matter, but I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept these amendments, as the intention can be achieved elsewhere. The Bill sets out requirements for the ombudsman scheme to include provision about what home buyers can complain to the ombudsman about in individual cases, and making improvement recommendations about scheme members’ quality of work and conduct in general. The developers’ code of practice allows the standards of conduct and standards of quality of work expected of members of the scheme to be set out.

The noble Lord’s amendments would provide the ombudsman with powers to make general requirements of the scheme’s members, duplicating provisions already in the Bill. It is unclear how they could be enforced or appealed against, and we must be careful that the ombudsman does not duplicate the role of regulators, the scheme provider or Parliament. The Bill includes provision for complaints to the ombudsman within two years of the first acquisition of the new-build property, which aligns with the developer liability period under most new-build warranties. I was shocked to find out that within a warranty it is for the first two years that developer liability is covered; the rest is covered through some form of warranty or insurance scheme to 10 years in private housing or 12 years in social or public housing. It is in this period that issues are much more likely to be raised in relation to snagging or the home-buying process. We believe that the proposal to extend this to six years would be unnecessary and would introduce a new unknown burden on members of the scheme. But I assure noble Lords that home buyers will retain their existing rights to seek redress in law and elsewhere in this Bill. With this reassurance, I hope that the noble Lord will be content not to press his amendments, and the Government will continue to consider how and where practices in this area could be improved.

I did say—if I may go a little bit further on that note —that we need to think about warranties, but we should also remember the Defective Premises Act, which has a statute of limitations of only six years. We are proposing to extend that prospectively to 15 years, hoping that there will be a culture change and a stronger regulatory environment, and 15 years is a reasonable timeframe to expect to seek redress—and then, retrospectively, 30 years. I am having those discussions and debates with my colleagues and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, because I consider breaches of regulations, even going back 25 or 28 years, as a crime. It is a crime to breach building regulations, and there should be no statute of limitations for some of the crimes that we have seen, where we are putting flammable materials on the outside of the buildings, not having compartmentalisation, and having inadequate fire stopping, or fire doors that do not act as fire doors. All that I consider to be essentially breaches of building regulations, and we need to go after the perpetrators. But that is for another group of amendments—for the perpetrator pays or polluter pays—in due course.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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My Lords, before I get my bearings, it is always good to have a few Latin phrases. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”—well, I am just going to say, “Res ipsa loquitur”.

This is the “PP” group of amendments: “polluter pays” if you are my noble friend Lord Young, or “perpetrator pays” if you are the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. Although I will respond formally at the end— I am now speaking to the government amendments—I honestly agree with the sentiment of working with noble Lords and that a pick-and-mix approach is the right way forward. I am very keen to do that between now and Report. That is not in my speaking notes. The important thing is that we need a practical approach. We need one that works in law and in practice, and of course we want the polluter to pay.

I have taken noble Lords’ amendments and sought external counsel opinion, off my own bat, from a leading QC who deals with these issues in the courts to get their opinion. While I know my noble friend has tremendous ministerial experience, he perhaps has not always been in the courts when these things go into dispute. I know the noble Earl has considerable professional experience, but, again, this has to work in law as well as in practice. As the Committee will all appreciate, any scheme that requires government funding is not just a matter for this department; it is a matter for the Government and, in particular, needs Treasury approval.

I have always accepted that, in order for the polluter to pay, we have to have something that establishes liability at the building level. It is not an either/or. That is not to say that the Government’s approach is wrong; I think the Government’s approach is right. We have to have a waterfall effect that goes down the list of the polluters but recognises that not all freeholders are equal—some are “more equal than others”, to quote George Orwell—and that perhaps assignment of liability can be varied in regulation to reflect that. But all that detail is something that happens at later stages of the Bill, as my noble friend will know. Perhaps we will tease out some of those points in due course.

Clearly, if you are a developer like Ballymore that retains its freeholds, it is very easy. But if you are a developer like Berkeley, which often sells off its freeholds to a freehold investor, it becomes slightly more complex. But the intention of the Government is certainly not to let the Berkeley Group off the hook because it took another £20 million or £30 million by selling its freeholds off to another group to manage. It is still in the frame for the buildings that it built. I mention those developers just as examples, because we are obviously talking about a crisis that affects all the major housebuilders, as they freely acknowledge—not just the large ones but the medium and small ones, which have all contributed to a crisis that has brewed up over decades.

Let us move to the government amendments. Following my 11 January repeat of a Statement to this House, we have been clear on our expectations that developers should commit to self-remediate all unsafe high and medium-rise buildings for which they are responsible. They should agree contributions to fund the remediation of all cladding on buildings of 11 to 18 metres. The department has been in discussions with industry leaders on this matter and is making good progress towards a solution. I have had discussions with the medium-rise developers and have been alongside the Secretary of State in all those substantive discussions. However, should we need to take action against those unwilling to make these commitments, amendments tabled in my name will make it possible to impose a solution in law and make sure that developers and manufacturers take responsibility for rectifying building safety defects. I will now outline these important government amendments.

The first measure we are proposing as part of our package to ensure that the burden of paying for fixing historical building safety defects does not fall on leaseholders or taxpayers is a group of amendments to the building safety levy. They are an important part of the solution as they allow the building safety levy to be imposed in relation to building work going through the building control process on all residential buildings, not just buildings over 18 metres or seven storeys. This will enable the Government to raise funds to remediate cladding should the industry fail to step up and pay for the problems it has caused. It is our intention to set out in secondary legislation the levy rates and the details of who the levy applies to. By then negotiations with industry should have been concluded.

I now turn back to the package of government amendments and outline the further amendments that we are proposing to ensure that developers and manufacturers take responsibility for rectifying building safety defects. This package of amendments addresses many of the concerns highlighted today. They introduce measures to allow us to distinguish between companies that commit to shouldering their share of the blame and those companies that do not. The measures will incentivise industry actors to take responsibility in resolving issues with unsafe buildings, through firms committing to remediate buildings with which they are associated, and to contribute towards the funding of remediation of other unsafe buildings.

The first two amendments in this package would give the Secretary of State a power to establish a scheme or schemes for the building industry. This would act as a means of identifying which industry actors, including developers, and cladding and insulation manufacturers, have done the right thing and committed to act responsibly. Regulations will set out which persons in the building industry may be members of the scheme. In the first instance, the Government are minded to focus this measure on major developers of residential buildings and manufacturers of cladding and insulation. We are keeping this under review as talks with industry continue. Industry actors will be considered “responsible” if they meet published membership criteria for a scheme for which they are eligible. The membership criteria for a scheme will be set out and will include a commitment to rectifying building safety defects. The distinction between responsible actors and actors who have failed to do the right thing will be taken into account by the Government and regulators in their interactions with firms that are eligible for inclusion in a scheme.

The third amendment would give the Secretary of State a power to block developers that have failed to act responsibly from carrying out development for which planning permission has been granted, and to make sure that any breach of this block would be subject to enforcement action. The amendment would also allow the Secretary of State through regulations to require a developer to serve a notification of proposed development commencement and to prevent the grant of certification of lawful development for affected developers, should they seek it.

The fourth amendment would give the Secretary of State the power to prevent developers that have not committed to act responsibly, as set out in regulations, obtaining building control sign-off on their developments. This will make selling developments difficult for these developers, as building control approval is in most cases a prerequisite to occupancy and sale. The building control prohibitions will be imposed by regulations that will also set out details such as prescribed documents.

These new measures will help to make sure that while responsible industry actors can go about their business freely and with confidence, others will face significant legal, commercial and reputational consequences. They align with two of the principles set out by the Secretary of State: that the industry must pay for remediation and that the burden should not fall on leaseholders or the taxpayers. These measures will ensure that the burden is shared among the relevant industry actors while protecting leaseholders and the taxpayer. We cannot continue to allow those who are unwilling to commit to resolve the building safety crisis to have a role in building homes of the future. These amendments are being tabled to ensure that we have the legislative provision to help us to do this. I beg to move.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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My Lords, this has been a very good debate. I have enjoyed listening to virtually every speech, including that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I am not going to pick out any speech that I did not like, but the contributions were very good. I am reminded of when I met someone who worked for Senator Cory Booker when he was mayor of Newark, which is a deprived part of the United States. Apparently, at a Democratic National Convention he came out with a phrase that sticks with me. He said:

“If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”


When it comes to making sure that we get the polluter to pay, this Government are not proud about picking the best ideas that people have put forward today and putting them into the toolbox to ensure that we do precisely that.

I think of my noble friends Lord Young and Lord Blencathra, to whom I will add the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, as the three wise men. I was Faith Minister, so that description is appropriate. I have to say that the prize for the wisest of the wise goes to my noble friend Lord Blencathra, who seems to have that intellectual agility to change his position based on circumstance. He is someone who was a distinguished chair of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee one week, and the next week says, “Well, that was last week and this is this week. Come on Secretary of State—think about these ‘just in case’ powers”. We will think about them, but I thank him for providing us with that breadth of thinking.

I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Blencathra for suggesting that we look at reordering the Bill or setting objectives, as the Fisheries Act does. He also gave some advice; I will read out a note about why there needs to be a maximum for the levy. These are all great tips. To the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I say that we will look at whether we can produce a written Explanatory Memorandum and of course we need to do impact assessments. These are all jobs of work and we will see how quickly we can get those things done. This is all in the spirit of wanting to be helpful and to have a better Bill, so I take all those points on board.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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Housing is ring-fenced.

The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)

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My Lords, I can see that my noble friend is about to rise, but there is a crescendo in this group of amendments and I realise that it is very important to hold in reserve the speeches from my noble friend Lord Young—as well as the crescendo of the amendments to be introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. This is a veritable feast of amendments, so I will introduce the government amendments at this point, if I may, before I summarise the group.

As this is a feast of amendments, I have looked up my old grace, which I used to say when I was 18, 19, 20 years of age. It is very long—I hope I will not get it wrong, as I know the right reverend Prelate will know if I do. It goes as follows:

“Oculi omnium in te sperant Domine:


Et tu das escam illis in tempore.

Aperis tu manum tuam,

Et imples omne animal benedictione.

Benedic, Domine, nos et dona tua …

et concede, ut illis salubriter nutriti

tibi debitum obsequium praestare valeamus,

per Christum Dominum nostrum.”

That is roughly right. It is what we used to say before we could eat. This is a feast, and I appreciate that every amendment is laid with the interests of improving this Bill. If we cannot accept them, I want to say that I appreciate the intentions behind every one of them. I will summarise our position at the end.

I have tried to summarise each group in three words. This is the “residents and redress” group, and I have always been clear that residents should be at the heart of the new regime. Today’s debate demonstrates the continued importance of that commitment. I am pleased to start by speaking to a group of amendments that is focused on ensuring that residents and others have more access to redress.

Amendments 76 and 77 create a new power for the High Court to impose building liability orders in appropriate cases. These orders will allow civil claims to be made against the associated companies of a company involved in the development or refurbishment of a building in certain circumstances, including when the original company no longer exists. In this House and in the other place, we have discussed the lack of ongoing liability that large developers have due to their use of special purpose vehicles. These amendments directly address this issue and support the changes we have proposed to the Defective Premises Act. They rebalance the level of exposure that small and medium-sized businesses in the construction industry currently have compared with the larger players—and, most importantly, they unlock potential funding for those who have remediated or who need to remediate, if they bring a successful claim. I consider that these orders will be an important tool in holding “polluters” to account and making them pay for their past misdeeds—so I hope that noble Lords will join me in supporting these amendments.

Moving on, I have also tabled a series of amendments that will help to make sure that construction product companies pay to put right building safety issues that they have contributed to causing. I do not intend to move these amendments today but have laid them to invite the scrutiny of noble Lords. I will listen carefully to the debate and bring these measures back at a future stage. Briefly, they target construction product manufacturers and ensure that they take responsibility for their part in the creation of building safety defects. The new clauses in Amendments 107 to 109 and 144 introduce two new causes of action against construction product manufacturers. There are currently almost no routes which allow leaseholders to hold construction product manufacturers accountable for their role in the creation of serious building safety defects. The Government are clear that those who have been responsible and continue to be responsible for building safety defects have a responsibility to put them right.

These causes of action will enable claims to be brought against construction product manufacturers and sellers for their role in the creation of building safety defects. They will apply if a product has been mis-sold or is found to be inherently defective, or if there has been a breach of construction product regulations. If this contributes to or causes a dwelling to become “unfit for habitation”, a civil claim will be able to be brought through the courts under these causes of action.

The cause of action relating to cladding products in Amendment 107 will be subject to a 30-year retrospective limitation period. The broader cause of action relating to all construction products in Amendment 108 will be subject to a 15-year prospective limitation period. These limitation periods reflect the changes we are making to the limitation period under Section 1 of the Defective Premises Act. These causes of action will ensure that construction product manufacturers can be held responsible for the costs of rectifying their mistakes.

Amendments 110, 113, 114, 141 and 145 will create a power to make regulations to require construction products manufacturers and their authorised representatives, importers and distributors to contribute towards the cost of remediation works where they have caused or contributed to dwellings being unfit for habitation. Amendment 110 will enable the Secretary of State to serve a costs contribution notice on companies that have been successfully prosecuted under construction products regulations, where the relevant product has contributed to identified dwellings being unfit for habitation.

Amendment 114 introduces a new schedule that will give the Secretary of State the power to appoint an independent person to inspect buildings where the relevant product has been used. This assessment will consider whether the conditions for serving a costs contribution notice are met, and the remediation works required. Amendment 114 will enable the Secretary of State to make regulations setting out a process for establishing costs that a company should be required to pay, which will take account of its ability to pay, and to whom payment should be made. This amendment will also enable the Secretary of State to require a company to contribute towards the cost of building assessments carried out as part of this process. Setting out this scheme in secondary legislation will enable the necessary interaction between costs contribution notices and construction products regulations, including those that will be made using the powers in this Bill.

I will listen carefully to the remainder of the debate today, as I have to every speech given so far introducing various amendments, and I look forward to hearing from noble Lords. As I said earlier, I will be moving only Amendments 76 and 77 today. I will carefully consider what I have heard in relation to the other amendments, and I will bring these measures back at a future stage.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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No, I do not.

Lord Greenhalgh (Con)

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My Lords, I rise to say how amazed I am by how young the noble Lord, Lord Khan, is. I thought I was a whippersnapper as someone in my mid-50s, but the noble Lord must have been born in—what, the late 1970s?