Building Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Grey-Thompson and Lord Stunell

Committee stage
Monday 21st February 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests: I am the president of the Local Government Association and, when in London, I stay in a block of flats. I have a number of amendments in this group. Amendment 9 is the most substantive but my name is also attached to Amendments 4A, 7A, 7B and 147A.

I tried not to test the Committee’s patience by adding “and disabled people” to every part of the Bill I could, but I am looking for more specific recognition that disabled people need greater support and protection than they currently have. If they are not specifically mentioned, disabled people will be forgotten, however good the intention right now may be. There are several important parts where explicitly mentioning disabled people would add significant value, such as on residents’ panels. Of course, there are many types of impairment —we are not one homogenous group—but bringing in additional or different knowledge would be useful for a far greater number of people.

I listened to the experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. It is what disabled people think about every single day. In every building I go into, I automatically start thinking about how I would get out if there was a fire. The noble Baroness and I could probably spend most of the afternoon listing all the instances when we have been left near or on staircases, but I take my personal responsibility very seriously. I can still get down a flight of stairs in my wheelchair as long as I have a handrail to hold on to. I can do it reasonably quickly; when I was an athlete, I could do it incredibly easily. However, I know that, as I get older, it will get harder and my ability to get out will become more challenging.

One time, I was in an office block when the fire alarm went off. It was not a drill. There was one evacuation chair—absolutely fantastic—but there were two wheelchair users on that floor. We looked at each other and worked out who needed the evac chair the most. I went down five flights of stairs in my wheelchair. Since Second Reading, more disabled people have got in touch with me to explain their fears but also to let me know about some solutions they have been given. Quite frankly, they were ludicrous, which is why we need to have different things included in this Bill.

In situations like this, we often see that the solutions that non-disabled people come up with are very much based on the medical model, rather than the social model, of disability and do not take into account a disabled person’s reality or life. It was once suggested to me, not in relation to this Bill, that it would be far easier if disabled people had a curfew so that they went home at night and we knew where they were. It was a really serious suggestion; I struggled not to laugh at it, I am afraid. If anything vaguely approaches that in Committee, I hope noble Lords will understand if I push back on it quite strongly. Tagging disabled people is not a sensible solution to this problem either because it absolves us from our responsibility to change how we think about disabled people. We need to be more forward-thinking and, in essence, we need to future-proof the decisions we take.

Specifically on Amendment 9, in another place, the right honourable Mr Christopher Pincher said:

“The Secretary of State can already consider the vulnerability of residents when making regulations.”—[Official Report, Commons, 19/1/22; col. 435.]


However, I do not think that this goes far enough. I know that there are likely be suggestions about including information in a premises information box; that is interesting but, again, it does not go far enough. We need to consider the needs of disabled people. I very much welcome a discussion with the Minister and the Bill team to think about how we can find the right wording, not just by sticking “and disabled people” at every point in the Bill but by genuinely helping disabled people to make it better.

At Second Reading, I asked the Minister when the personal emergency evacuation plan consultation would be published. On 3 February I asked a Question for Written Answer about this, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, answered on 17 February that it would be

“once the views of all individuals and organisations who contributed have been carefully considered.”

She stated that the timeframe would be “shortly”. I know that “shortly”, in parliamentary terms, can be quite a wide timeframe. Can the Minister provide any update on what it means in this context? This piece of work would be incredibly useful in helping us navigate this Bill.

I am expecting some sympathy from the Minister, although possibly not much movement. Obviously, I will take away his comments from this debate, but will return on Report with amendments in this area and divide the House on ensuring that we have protection for disabled people.

I will speak very briefly to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. He apologises for not being here today; he is trying to get down to London—when he spoke to me this morning he was stuck somewhere around Penrith. He is hoping to be here very shortly. He messaged me to say that, with his amendment, he wanted to add buildings below 18 metres that pose a special risk—not to tie the Secretary of State’s hands but to give the option of complete flexibility to define “buildings” and alter any of the definitions in the section. As he expressed passionately at Second Reading, we have no idea what will be found when proper inspections take place, but there are flats that have been converted from office blocks and box flats with no windows.

Most of his amendments are in the form of “regulations may”. He made it very clear that, when he chaired the Delegated Powers Committee, he would have deplored such a formulation of words, but he recognises that a number of provisions in the Bill must inevitably be skeletal. He also said that taking the power does not mean that it has to be used and it certainly does not imply a commitment to undertake fire remedial work on all buildings, even those under 11 metres which may still be four storeys high.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow on from what the noble Baroness has outlined. I strongly support what she has been saying. I will speak on a couple of other points that have been raised so far, particularly on Amendment 4 and what the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said, and on what my noble friend Lord Foster proposes in his amendment.

However, I will first deal with the point just raised. It is not about a theoretical code; there are absolute, actual conflicts between the requirements which fire officers, for instance, dictate in relation to fire doors—how soon they should shut, and so on—and the requirements of what someone with mobility problems needs to pass through that doorway. These issues are not resolved at the moment; they are not just the subject for soft words but for reconciling the tensions and devising ways to find solutions to those problems. I could make the same point about railings and barriers, where what is required for fire safety is often in conflict with what disabled people need.

Apart from the generality of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, I say to the Minister that there are really specific regulatory pitfalls; things which, if you implement them very mechanically, have internal conflicts which need to be resolved. I very much hope the Minister can, at least during the passage of this Bill if not today, undertake to consult both fire officers and the disabled community on rational ways of solving or at least ameliorating those difficulties.

Amendment 4 was very ably proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. He has made the central point, which is that there is an important difference between having a set of regulations which are really a complicated algorithm or tick-box—where if you have got everything right you have simply passed, and that is it—and having legislation which sets out the overall purpose of having any regulations or rules at all in the first place. That is where this amendment comes fully into play. It says that safety has a wider import than simply what we mean by making a building fire safe; it is about what we mean by making it safe to live in in the long term.

When I looked at page 82, I was interested to see that Clause 60(8) says that regulations can be made under this provision where there is a significant risk of deaths or

“serious injury to a significant number of people.”

It is clear that, if you think about buildings as things which kill people, far more people are killed by buildings which are damp, leaky and dangerous than by buildings which catch fire. Asthma and bronchitis deaths caused by poor housing form a significant fraction of the health service’s burden during the winter months. That broader outlook or vision of what we actually mean by making a building safe—creating a safe home for people—lies at the heart of this amendment. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to respond to it with a very generous spirit.

I would perhaps urge the Minister on a more practical point: later in the Bill, we shall consider the establishment of residents’ engagement strategies for buildings. I am not sure quite how he envisages those will work, but at some point a large group of residents in a particular building will meet and tell its owners what they believe needs to be done to make their building safe. The Minister has led a council and been to residents’ meetings, so he knows the kinds of things which are raised at them. I would bet that, by 10 complaints to one, they will be about damp, draughts and leaks as against fire doors that do not close properly. Those residents’ engagement groups are going to give a lot of grief to those who run the system in the future. Including this overall vision of what safety and well-being mean within the compass of the Bill and the scope of the new regulatory environment would be one very good way to show that there will be a route for residents to have their complaints, whatever their nature, about their lack of well-being or safety in their home addressed by the legislation.

Having spoken on Amendment 4, of course I strongly support what my noble friend Lord Foster said about the property situation. My support may be irrelevant but I notice that the National Fire Chiefs Council strongly supports this provision, as do the Institution of Fire Engineers and the Association of British Insurers. They all support the inclusion of property risk alongside life safety risk in the regulatory structure that we erect for the Bill. I very much hope that, as with Amendment 4, the Minister will be able to give us a very satisfactory outcome on Amendment 1 from my noble friend Lord Foster.