Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Scott of Bybrook and Lord Bellingham

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to support my noble friend Lord Northbrook. It is a very simple and straightforward amendment, but it raises some important principles. As my noble friend pointed out, the BSI is a well-resourced organisation—a commercial, not-for-profit body established under royal charter. I had a look at its website, although I did not look at its accounts. It would be wrong to say that it is awash with money, but it has plenty of money to carry out the excellent work it does on behalf of many different parts of industry in our society. There is no reason whatever why it cannot publish these matters, and it would make a huge difference to residents to be able to know exactly what is going on.

Maybe the Minister can look at one particular point —my noble friend did not mention this, though he mentioned a number of other bodies that are mentioned in statute and different legislation that do make reports and other information available free of charge. I gather that in Ulster such documents are online completely free of charge, and that is a precedent that our Government could follow.

I hope that if the Minister cannot promise to accept the amendment, she will at least undertake to talk to the British Standards Institution about this, because it is a problem that could be solved very easily.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 311 in the name of my noble friend Lord Northbrook would require the Government to make all standards that relate to all planning Acts, or local authority planning policy, online and free of charge.

Our national standards body, the British Standards Institution or BSI, publishes around 3,000 standards annually, and these standards are the product of more than 1,000 expert committees. The BSI is independent of government and governed by the rights and duties included in its royal charter. This includes the obligation to set up, sell and distribute standards of quality for goods, services and management systems. About 20% of the standards produced are to support the regulatory framework. This will include a minority of standards made to support planning legislation and local authority planning policy.

To ensure the integrity of the system and support the effective running of the standards-making process, the funding model relies on the BSI charging customers for access to its standards. As a non-profit-distributing body, the BSI reinvests its income from sales in the standards development programme. In some circumstances, the Government will fund BSI standards to make them available. For example, last year the then Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy made available 100,000 copies of one of the energy management systems standards to UK SMEs.

I hope that this provides sufficient reasoning for my noble friend Lord Northbrook to withdraw his amendment. I am very happy to discuss this further with noble Lords and the BSI.

Residential Leaseholders

Debate between Baroness Scott of Bybrook and Lord Bellingham

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, the Leasehold Advisory Service does an excellent job, but is there an argument to have its remit extended to casework?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

That is an interesting remark that I will take back to officials to discuss further. I will come back to my noble friend.