Net-Zero Carbon Emissions

Debate between Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Whitty

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I start with some congratulations. I first congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on picking out this debate and on his masterly coverage of the issues in his opening statement. This is a vital point; we need to make sure that government not only is not prone to complacency—as has been the case hitherto—but is getting itself into a position where it is capable of delivering what it promises and its stated intentions. I also briefly congratulate the Government, who yesterday produced on paper a pretty coherent response to the Climate Change Committee’s latest carbon budget, increasing the ambition of the timescale for delivery of our pathway to net zero.

That was positive. It was also positive that, for the first time, they included figures for the UK’s contribution to the cost of shipping and aviation, which the British economy imposes on international transportation. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked, however, where are the means of delivery? We have already failed—or are likely to fail—to meet the previous CCC carbon budget, and there is no reason to think that the Government are in better shape to deliver on the subsequent stages. The work of the Climate Change Committee has been vital. It has spelled out across the board what we need to do nationally, locally and internationally. Everybody—apart from a few climate change deniers, whom we still have in this House—has agreed that this is a good and clear road map. In theory, so it is, but it is the practice to which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has drawn to our attention.

I draw the same conclusion as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. We need in charge of this process a senior Minister at least equivalent in status to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The appointment of Alok Sharma, capable man though he is, is not what I mean. I mean someone who has command over other departments, whose name resounds around Whitehall, and who can give a lead to other parts of the public and private sector.

We also need to engage all departments in a high-level Cabinet committee, probably led by that same Minister, if not the Prime Minister himself. In different circumstances, I might have suggested the Prime Minister, but I am not entirely sure that, in the present circumstances, that would be wise. We need somebody specifically focused on this task. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, says, the departments largely in charge of delivery at the moment are not particularly highly rated within Whitehall or, indeed, in the country as a whole. Moreover, their climate change commitments are only part of their responsibilities, so BEIS’s responsibility for climate change is often swamped by its industrial and energy responsibilities. Even Defra, which is still in charge of mitigation and various other aspects of climate change, is swamped by rural and agricultural requirements. They are not departments that can deliver. We need a new department for climate change.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. There is a Division in the Chamber, so we shall adjourn for five minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Grand Committee will now resume and I invite the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, to continue his speech.

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

I apologise for the interruption; I have slightly lost my place. My original intention in looking at this was to go through all 10 points of the Prime Minister’s commitment to creating a green industrial society and strategy. That was probably too much and, in any case, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has already covered a few of them.

However, under each point, it is clear that is not just central government and a particular department that is responsible for delivery, but a whole range of departments; that was pretty clear from what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said about transport, buildings and so forth. Even the things that appear to be the purview of one department are affected by the position of other departments. Take the first: quadrupling offshore wind power. This involves BEIS, obviously, as the sponsoring department in energy policy, but we are proposing quadrupling wind power, which means that we will have to bring more of that power ashore. It means that the current situation, where individual turbines in arrays have their own point of contact to the shoreline, will increase a hundredfold if we allow every single instance of a turbine in an array to have its own point of contact. That is ridiculous.

We need to ensure that there is a network at sea before we bring it on land so that we reduce those hundreds of points to a few score. That requires planning permission from the local authority; environmental controls from the Environment Agency; and Defra and the marine authorities to look at the effects on marine life and fisheries. And all that needs to be brought together to deliver what seems to be a simple quadrupling of what has been a very successful commitment to offshore wind.

The same will apply in other areas, even in nuclear power, which seems very much a central, single government interest. That will also require huge commitments on the environmental, planning and construction side. It will require an integration of the delivery of new nuclear power with other aspects of the delivery of greener energy and heating, such as the creation of hydrogen and, indeed, carbon capture and storage.

I have decided not to go through all 10 points so I will not do so. However, in addition to the changes in central government that the noble Lord referred to, as have I, we will need local government to become more coherent, we need relations between the central Administration and the devolved Administrations to work more effectively on this, and we will need to ensure that there is clarity in reporting to Parliament.

That is my last point. I was a member of the Joint Committee of the House of Commons which preceded the Climate Change Act 2008. I now seem to have gone full circle: as of last week, I have become a member of the Lords new Committee on Environment and Climate Change, and I am very grateful to your Lordships for putting me there. However, some things have not improved, and cohesion in government is one of them. If that is not achieved by government itself, perhaps parliamentary pressure through our committees and the Commons committees will ensure that the fine words and the very clear policy direction is delivered by an interlocking and clear commitment from government. The clear strategy, some of which was announced yesterday, the fine words, the individual commitments, and the fact that we have most of business and much of the public on side, will not deliver of itself. It would be a serious problem if we were to screw all this up due to institutional inflexibility and a lack of interlocking government.

I support this Motion and I hope the Government take serious notice of what has been said.

Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Whitty

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 29th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. He is not responding, so we will come back to him. I call the noble Lord, Lord Whitty.

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in relation to the responsibilities of leaseholders. It is important that this is reflected in the terms of the Bill. Leaseholders are not the responsible person unless they happen to be co-owners or co-freeholders, and as we heard in the debates on earlier amendments, leaseholders are being faced with quite substantial costs. It would be wrong if the legislation allowed an interpretation whereby in certain circumstances they were the responsible person. They are not. The owners or their agents are the responsible person and we should make that quite clear.

I also strongly support the principles of the amendment tabled in the name of my noble friend Lord Berkeley. Like him, I am astonished that at the moment, the regulations relating to domestic dwellings and indeed other buildings do not include a requirement on new build and major refurbishments for the installation of sprinklers.

Perhaps I may divert slightly from the question of high-rise domestic buildings. When I was at primary school in the 1950s, the school burned down. The fire actually started in my classroom. The report on that fire suggested that a simple sprinkler system would have quickly suppressed the fire and saved the building. As a result, when we returned to school, we were accommodated in temporary huts. Those temporary huts, in 1952, were required to have a rather crude sprinkler system. I was astounded to find out that in the year 2020, there is no such requirement for school buildings and no such requirement for high-rise buildings and premises in multiple occupation. That is something that should be addressed, if not in this Bill, at least in the batch of measures being brought forward by the Government in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy.

I am grateful to my noble friend for raising this issue because it needs to form part of the Government’s thinking in relation to the overall response to fire safety problems. I hope that at some point the Minister can indicate where that proposition will end up. I would strongly support such an addition.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I apologise that I could not participate at Second Reading. I had wanted to raise carbon monoxide detection—a silent killer production of combustion—with fire detection, but I understand it is outside the scope of this Bill. I would like to speak to Amendment 8, to which I have added my name. Let me explain why.

I remain haunted by seeing the blazing Grenfell Tower from my daughter’s window, and I have every sympathy with those whose flats all over the UK find their leasehold purchases are now valueless and are still paying out their mortgage and charges. Back in the 1970s, we financially squeezed ourselves to buy our first flat, only later to find it was built with high alumina cement and, until deemed safe, completely worthless. That is why I feel a commitment to others caught in this plight. This amendment would bring further clarity to the meaning of a “responsible person”, and ensure that leaseholders who are not also freeholders are not made liable or responsible for any remediation work needed as a result of poor building and development decisions on flats which they believed, and were told on checks, comply with building regulations. I want to read the Minister’s response to the previous amendment very carefully, as I hope that it allays some of my concerns, but I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has raised some ongoing questions.

The huge costs of fire safety checks, materials testing, removal and replacement of dangerous materials, and the retrofitting of sprinklers and other fire safety equipment, all currently fall to leaseholders. Let me illustrate this with information from one such leaseholder. For residents of three blocks of flats in Baltic Avenue, Brentford—which probably should never have been signed off—fire safety checks have been quoted between £15,000 and £24,000, the mock testing of current cladding and insulation will cost £50,000, and rectifying all identified issues has been initially quoted to be at least £6 million. The previous group of amendments highlighted the huge burden on leaseholders, so who is responsible? This is surely the responsibility of developers and their team of architects, builders, et cetera, and the freeholders—and what about the banks that earn an income from the loans?

As the Minister has pointed out, he is well aware of the crippling costs, and he is clearly committed to doing something about the many leaseholders living in flats that are currently valueless, that cannot be sold or re-mortgaged. Many leaseholders are already financially stretched and bought their flats using the Help to Buy scheme, but if they cannot afford to pay for the fire safety checks they need to obtain an ESW1 form, Homes England will not value any properties bought under the scheme. Despite living in flats that are valued at zero, many leaseholders still find themselves having to cover interest payments on a loan that was given on the basis that if it fell in value you paid less. If the flats are worth zero, have all these loans been reset to zero, and are we sure that that has happened?

Even more seriously, these leaseholders are now suffering real mental health problems, not only from the financial burdens but because they know they are stuck in flats tonight that could go up in flames at any moment. The removal of cladding and other dangerous materials really is a matter of life and death. All this means that insurance costs will be sky high for buildings that are still considered to pose such a high risk. Can the Government give us some evidence of really speedy action?

In July, the housing Minister agreed that all costs should not have to be met by leaseholders and should be met by the developers or building owners. Many leaseholders believe the Government have changed their position, saying that leaseholders would still have to foot some of the bill, but they just do not have the money to do it. This amendment rectifies this by being absolutely clear about who is responsible for what, and that is why I support it.