Property Agents: Regulation

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

The Government welcome the work undertaken by the independent steering group chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, on the codes of practice for property agents. That is an important development towards making sure all consumers are treated fairly and all agents work to the same high standards. The Government have approved two codes for managing agents, which set out good practice and are to be taken into account in cases before courts or the tribunal. We will consider other codes as they are brought forward.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare a former interest in that I used to chair National Trading Standards. The Minister will be aware that the department already funds an estate agents and letting agents regulator through National Trading Standards. Would it not make sense to extend the remit of that regulatory function carried out by Trading Standards into this field? That could presumably be done fairly simply, fairly easily and possibly fairly cheaply.

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

Estate agents are regulated under the Estate Agents Act 1979, which is currently enforced by the National Trading Standards estate and letting agency team—the abbreviation or acronym is too complicated for me to work out, so I have given the full title. It has powers to issue warnings and banning orders, and estate agents are required to belong to an approved redress scheme. These things can all be improved on. When we bring forward the home buyers and sellers reform strategy over the coming months, I hope to come back to the House and give details on further actions.

Representation of the People (Overseas Electors etc.) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hayward stressed the central point about these regulations: they bring into effect, at long last, the right of our fellow countrymen and countrywomen living overseas to participate in our elections. They were promised votes for life, and at long last that promise will be fully delivered, following the provisions in the Elections Act of last year that these regulations carry forward.

It is an immensely important day for those who have looked forward to it and have campaigned for it. Many of them are in the Conservative Party, as my noble friend referred to, alongside others in this House. I well remember advocating the removal of the arbitrary 15-year limit in my early speeches in this House, 12 years or so ago. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, will recall the legislation that gave rise to those discussions.

It was particularly gratifying last year, when the Elections Act was carried into effect, that among those who were able to note it with approval and rejoice was a quite remarkable figure: Harry Shindler OBE, a long-time Labour supporter resident in Italy following courageous action during the Second World War. He devoted a large part of the peacetime that followed to draw attention to the very unsatisfactory state of affairs and to call for change, year after year in place after place. It was wonderful to celebrate with this great man, aged 101, immediately after the passage of the Act last year.

This measure implementing what was agreed last year brings us in line with so many other countries that give full voting rights to their citizens living in other countries. It has become a mainstream democratic principle, and we are right to incorporate it in our law. The Labour Party, through the noble Lord, Lord Khan, seems to be suggesting that it is au fait with the retention of some restriction in this area. I remind the Labour Party of the view of Labour International, to which it belongs. It said in March 2021 that it urges the PLP and party leadership to support votes for life for British citizens living outside the UK:

“As a democratic party, Labour should acknowledge that many British people living and working abroad still have close connections with the UK and are directly … affected by decisions and actions of the government in the UK”.


I ask the Labour Party to bear that very much in mind.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is well respected in this House for the cogent and clear way she presents material to us, so I listened with great care to what she had to say. While she explained in detail the practical—and, in some cases, quite complicated—details of how this will work, I heard very little about the philosophy underpinning what is being done. The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, just gave us an example of the philosophy of why this is appropriate—the principle of votes for life for citizens—but what we have not heard is the underpinning philosophy of why this solution is the appropriate response to that.

If elections mean anything, they are about local people choosing a local representative to represent their interests in a Parliament, a local authority or whatever else. Here, we are talking about people who have lived overseas—maybe for 15 or 20 years or even longer—so where is that local link and line through which local people vote for a local representative to sit on a body representing their interests? It becomes very blurred. As I understand the proposals, you will, in effect, have a choice. If you have lived overseas for many years but, in your youth, you lived in all sorts of places around the UK, you can pick and choose the constituency or area to which you have affinity. Is that an appropriate way of demonstrating that link?

Some have made jokes about one of the issues, saying that we should have an MP representing people living in the Bahamas. But the principle adopted in other countries is quite clear: it recognises that, after 10, 15 or 20 years, you no longer have the same sort of local affiliation, and it is therefore legitimate that your interests are represented in some other way. For somebody who was last resident in this country 20 years ago, there may well have been several changes in the Member of Parliament for their area—I have lost count of how many general elections we have had in the last 20 years, for a variety of reasons—and they may not have very much knowledge about what has gone on their area. The question then arises as to why it is appropriate for that link to a particular constituency to be allowed.

When the Minister responds to my noble friend Lord Khan’s regret amendment, she needs to address why we are doing this. What is the philosophy that underpins it and, secondly, what is the reason for choosing this particular method of delivering the commitment to lifelong electors? Why are we saying that you have this opportunity to pick and choose—to decide which constituency you might want and whether you will participate in local elections about local services? You will, ultimately, decide the amount of expenditure on refuse collection and other matters. That is no doubt fascinating, but if you have lived overseas for many years, it is difficult to see how you have that affinity and that interest. We have to understand why this particular solution has been taken. When the Minister explains why the option of creating a constituency for overseas residents has not been dealt with, perhaps we can then have some explanation as to whether this has created a significant further loophole in respect of bringing money into this country for electoral purposes. It is difficult to understand why there is this sudden move to do it, and to do it in this way.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be very brief, because I know your Lordships wish to move to the vote. I will just follow up on some of the points made by my colleague. The real problem we have is that the 2010 coalition abandoned all the work that Labour was doing on establishing a national identity. If that had proceeded, we would have created a national identity for every individual. We would have known where they were located at the time they left the country, and that would then have been used as the point at which they cast their vote. I address my remarks primarily to my Front Bench. As we prepare our manifesto, I hope we will go back to what we were doing then. We see the problems that we are having with immigration, the failure to know how many people we have in this country and so many areas in which we need a national database. We should have a look at the Indian experience and the way in which India has created quite an amazing national digital identity, and look to see whether we should not have one in the UK to bring ourselves up to date. It would answer many of the problems of this kind of legislation.

Voter Identification Regulations 2022

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Can I move on, please? The statutory instruments also sets—

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend has asked a reasonable question. Perhaps the Minister could give the House the courtesy of a reply?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I have given a reply. The details of why we would not accept young people’s railcards were well discussed and debated at the time of the Bill. We are now discussing the statutory instrument to deliver that legislation that has already been discussed.

I will now move on. Showing photo identification is a part of day-to-day life for people in all walks of life and it is a perfectly reasonable and proportionate way to confirm that a person is who they say they are when it comes to voting. Indeed, it has already been a requirement to show photographic identification to vote in person since 2003 in Northern Ireland.

I must also speak to the two amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Pinnock. I thank them both for having met me in the past week to share their concerns and suggestions for this statutory instrument. On the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, we disagree strongly with the views that she has set out. We are aware of concerns that have been raised in the sector about the pressures that election teams may face, but the Government remain confident that the electoral administrators will be able to deliver this important measure to protect our democratic system from fraud. We have worked extensively with stakeholders across the sector to develop implementation plans, and extensive funding has been made available to local authorities to deliver the new processes and to the Electoral Commission for its national awareness campaign.

The Government also disagree with the suggestion that electors will be prevented from voting. As we have said on a number of occasions, everyone who is eligible to vote will continue to have the opportunity to do so. Any elector who does not have a suitable form of photographic identification will be able to apply for a voter authority certificate from their local electoral registration officer, free of charge. It will be possible to apply online or on paper, just as for registration to vote; indeed, it will be possible to register to vote and to apply for a certificate at the same time. We are working hard to make the application system as accessible and user-friendly as possible, and testing with both electors and electoral administrators is receiving very positive feedback.

Covid-19 Secure Marshals

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, this is the latest flight of fantasy from No. 10, designed to distract attention from the manifold failures of the response to the coronavirus: the lockdown that came too late now being lifted too fast; the “world-beating” test system which is not. There is no news on whether these marshals, who will be acting with the Prime Minister’s authority in the community, will be DBS-checked, or whether they will have proper PPE. They may be spat at; they may need stab vests. Is it correct that no money is being provided for this—though the Daily Telegraph tells us that they are going to be paid £30,000 a year—and that these marshals will have no powers to enforce anything? The Minister cannot tell us how many there will be or when they will arrive. Can he tell us how they will differ from phantom armies deployed by a deranged despot from his bunker as everything collapses around him?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I note the rhetorical flourish, but marshals have already been deployed throughout the country very successfully to encourage and support compliance and to welcome people back into public areas—places such as Leeds, Bradford, Cornwall, Devon, Peterborough and Crawley. We will continue to work with local areas to come up with approaches to deployment and to the training that is required. An announcement on funding will be made in due course.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sheikh (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 11 in the name of my noble friend Lord Balfe. Clause 3(2) states:

“Before making a determination in respect of the application”


for a pavement licence,

“the local authority must … take into account any representation made to it … consult the highway authority … and other persons as the local authority may consider appropriate.”

I support having input from the people and organisations stated, but I feel that it is necessary for the local police to be consulted in making a determination.

To reiterate what I said at Second Reading, I welcome the Bill, which will trigger the revitalisation of our businesses and help the well-being of the people. As a businessman, I would like the economy to pick up and create employment for all the people who have been idle for the last few months. However, my concern is the safety of staff and the nuisances and disturbances caused on pavements and streets and in neighbourhoods. Before the pandemic, we saw young men and women misbehaving and fighting in the streets on Friday and Saturday nights. I used to see this happening when driving through towns at night. My concern is that people have been frustrated over the last few months and that the relaxation of the rules will lead to social problems.

When the problems of anti-social behaviour arise, they will be dealt with by the police on the spot. Local police know the hot spots in their areas where problems are likely to flare up. To alleviate the issues and possible problems, we need consultation and input from local police when an application is made for a pavement licence. I appreciate that the police have powers to issue closure notices, but this is like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. It is therefore important that the police are consulted before the problems arise.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my interests in the register and apologise to the Committee for not having been able to speak at Second Reading.

I welcome and accept the Government’s objective of getting the hospitality sector moving, and we should not underestimate the wider impact on the economy if that sector does not revive. Speaking personally, despite the strictures of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, I would welcome a shift towards a café culture society and away from the focus on binge drinking and vertical drinking establishments. However, this move should be achieved with local consent and neighbourhood support, where the parameters can be properly policed and enforced. That is why Amendment 11 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, is so important. The views of local police must be sought on whether the proposed arrangements being considered in a locality are in practice workable and sustainable from a policing perspective. This raises a wider question: will the police be adequately resourced to manage what may be a more volatile street scene? What has the National Police Chiefs’ Council said about this? I observe that the extra officers the Government have promised will certainly not be available this summer.

An interesting and separate point is raised by Amendment 44, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, on digital age verification. It is extraordinary that the Government have been so slow in encouraging digital age verification. I declare that, for a year or two, I was associated with a company developing such a digital solution. The problem was, and remains, that licensees are required to inspect a physical document with holographic authentication. This means that teenagers routinely take their passports and driving licences with them on a night out, many of which are then lost. Digital age authentication, based on mobile phones, is not only possible but far more practical. When will the Government act on this?

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[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I wonder what she might have said had she mentioned the Government’s proposals on electric scooters in the context of the problems of disabled people, or of those with visual impairments. It seems to me that they are going to exacerbate some of the problems we are talking about.

The amendments in this group deal with the nature of public consultation. Amendment 6 in particular, to which I have added my name, tightens up the expectations on local authorities. As I understand the Bill as drafted, it would be sufficient for a local authority simply to put the details on a notice stuck in the window of the town hall. The amendment, however, would require that those details be in a form accessible to the residents affected. I would like to see local authorities expected to consult directly with the residents in the immediate vicinity of some of these proposed licence changes.

Amendment 6 would also properly allow seven days for residents to register their objections or raise concerns. That seems to me to be a minimum. Seven days is a very short time under any circumstances, but, unless these subsections are strengthened, most residents in the immediate vicinity of a premises for which these changes are intended will never hear about them until they have been agreed, and probably not until the extra pavement furniture appears; until the extra noise starts; until the extra singing starts; and until the yobs start urinating and defecating on their properties. I assume that the Minister does not wish to be regarded as the Minister responsible for people doing that in others’ front gardens—but that is the danger, unless there is a proper degree of consultation, and people have the opportunity to raise their concerns. Amendment 6 is very modest, and I trust the Minister will accept it.

Amendment 17 is also very modest. If the new pavement use turns out to make it difficult for people with disabilities, or others such as parents with pushchairs and young people, to navigate the pavement, the local authority must speedily visit and assess the situation. If there is a problem, the pavement licence should be revoked. Social distancing already requires people on many pavements to step into the road to get past each other. It is clearly more difficult if you are blind, in a wheelchair, or simply pushing a double buggy with another child in tow. If you have to navigate a group of inebriated and boisterous young men—and it will often be young men—on the pavement, it is far worse. Under such circumstances, not only is consultation needed but an inspection of how the arrangements work in practice. How far do the pavement tables extend? In practice, on whichever model the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, was talking about, how much leeway do the groups standing around leave for those passing by? Again, I trust that the Minister will accept this amendment.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, with his detailed knowledge of local rules. However, I wish to emphasise the importance of balance, and to remind noble Lords that these are temporary measures. We must not get bound up in regulatory amendments, however justified these might be for permanent laws. We have to get the economy and our high streets going again and allow vibrancy to return to our bars and pubs. Our hospitality sector has been decimated and it needs all the help it can get.

There are safeguards: there is scope for suspending licensing conditions for up to three months, or removing permission for sales of alcohol for consumption off the premises. There are quite onerous requirements for Covid-19 risk assessments prepared in consultation with employees and unions. There are also various forms of guidance which, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Blencathra, can contain anomalies. But the economy needs to open up. Bars and pubs must be part of the revival and regeneration, whether by young people, tourists or those of us at a more stately stage of life. The Local Government Association has, rightly, supported the Bill, including pavement licensing freedoms, and we need to get on with turning it into law.

Finally, I did not get a chance to say so, but I will be returning to digital verification on Report, as there is more to be done—and quickly.

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[Baroness Grey-Thompson [V]]

My Lords, I have nothing further to add on this amendment at this time.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My lords, I have put my name to Amendments 15, 16 19, 22 and 23. The Bill allows applications for a pavement licence, and it says that they are deemed to have been approved if the local authority has not determined the matter within seven days. That approval then lasts until September 2021. This is not a temporary fix; it is quite a long-term fix. I think most local residents will find it pretty extraordinary that if, by default, something has not been considered or determined by the local authority, it will stand until September next year. These are the people who will be directly, and potentially, very adversely, affected by the outcome.

Clause 2(7) says that the clock starts from the day on which the application is “sent” to the local authority. I am not sure that many people will send such applications by post, but the difference between the date sent and the date received is potentially significant. Why does the Bill not specify that the time limit runs from the receipt of application?

Amendment 15 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, limits such an automatic approval of a licence to September of this year. That would no doubt meet the requirements in the remarks that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, is about to make, and it would allow something to happen now. However, it would also mean that the matter could be reviewed in due time, and I would have thought this was a modest amendment that must make sense.

In my view, Amendment 16 goes to the heart of these issues. These determinations should—and, in my view, must—take account of the consultation with those who are going to be affected by them. Like me, the Minister has been a council leader. I doubt whether, in his time in this role, he would have been very happy not to consider or take account of the views of local residents affected by a proposal. I know that, sometimes, matters of high politics might mean that you wish to override them, but most of the time you will want to listen to local residents and to those who are going to be directly inconvenienced by the changes that you are agreeing. You will want to listen to those who are going to be adversely affected by noise or any rowdyism and anti-social behaviour, and to those who are going to be affected because people are—and I will use the phrase that I used in a previous group of amendments—urinating and defecating on their property. Let us not pretend it will not happen; that is what will happen, particularly in the absence of proper policing resources and local authority enforcement resources.

I ask the Minister again: what are the estimated extra costs that local authorities will face in their enforcement role to manage these changes and what will be the cost of extra policing? That is why my noble friend Lady Wilcox of Newport’s amendment is so important. Clause 5(6) gives the Secretary of State the power to publish conditions for pavement licences. Will local authorities and their associations be consulted about those conditions? Will they be given the enforcement resources they need? Again, what guarantees are there that the police will have the officers to ensure that suitable order is maintained as a result of the licences?

Finally, I have signed Amendments 22 and 23 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which acknowledge that, as a result of these licences, people will spill over into the highway or be forced to do so to get around those availing themselves of what is provided. Public safety may require that parking and speed limits be adjusted. That would require the highway authority, which may well not be the same as the local authority, to make adjustments. Similarly, transport operators—those running the bus services—may have to alter their schedules or make minor adjustments to routes to ensure that people are safe. The amendments would require that such discussions took place. Again, they seem modest, and I hope that the Minister can accept them.

[Baroness Noakes]

My Lords, I hesitate to be predictable; the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, has partly predicted what I will say. I am concerned that some of the amendments will make the process of applying for a licence more difficult and the process of getting one unattractive. In particular, if an automatic licence is granted for a very short time, it is of no real use to a hospitality business, which will probably have to invest in further tables and chairs and so on to operate outside, because not all can move outside the tables that they have inside. The amendments work against the spirit of the Bill, which is to try to get the economy going again.

We should not embellish the Bill with lots of extra things that have to be taken into account. There are already significant powers for local authorities to deal with these applications. Local authorities may have to get a bit more agile and deal with applications a bit more quickly than they have in the past. My impression of local government, never having been closely involved in it, is that it is not very agile. I will probably get into trouble with my husband when I get home because he chairs a planning committee, sits on a licensing committee and probably would not recognise my characterisation of lack of agility, but in these difficult times local authorities should be prepared to get a move on and do whatever they need to do to protect their local residents. They do not need any changes to this Bill to do so.

Homelessness

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My noble friend makes a good point that these are highly complex issues which can take time to work through. That is why we have all these initiatives. The rough sleepers strategy is set around three core pillars: preventing rough sleeping before it happens, intervening at crisis points, and helping people to recover with flexible support that meets their needs. We are working ever more closely with the Department of Health and Social Care on these important issues, because a lot of them are health- related, including drug misuse.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Viscount has come nowhere near to answering the question posed by my noble friend Lord Kennedy. Could he tell us why the position on people sleeping rough in this country has got so palpably worse in the last decade? What measures did the Government take or fail to take during that period which now need to be reversed if any progress is to be made?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I hope I have set out to the House the actions that we are taking. There are a variety of reasons why people sleep rough. We know what they are and we need to address them one by one; there is no one simple solution to this. For example, some people become homeless as a result of friends or family no longer being willing or able to accommodate them. There are domestic rows and the termination of assured short-term tenancies. There are lots of reasons, but the main point is that action is being taken to address all these complex problems.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 1 Report

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, it is an enormous pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hendy, who made an outstanding maiden speech. I am not surprised. I am sure that somebody who cut his teeth in the Newham Rights Centre and then became “the barrister champion of the trade union movement” will fit into your Lordships’ House and its various strands of view with great aplomb and that he will add immeasurably to the quality of our debate and counsels. In fact, I am sandwiched between two maiden speeches. I am looking forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, whom I think I first worked with about 20 years ago, possibly more, on Operation Black Vote.

The fire on 14 June 2017 was an appalling disaster and a tragedy for all affected. I am quite clear that the reason why so many lost their lives was the nature of the cladding and the condition of the building. I want to focus today on one narrow aspect of the tragedy: the problem with communicating effectively with the residents. Assistant Commissioner Andrew Roe told the inquiry that he made a decision to change the policy soon after taking over as incident commander and by 2.47 am—almost exactly two hours after the fire started—control room staff were told to advise residents who called to evacuate immediately. At 4.14 am, an hour and a half later, the police started telling onlookers to contact anyone still trapped in the building and tell them to evacuate immediately. There were no other means of contacting residents in the tower directly. Indeed, the Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, Dany Cotton, told the inquiry that as there was no central fire alarm, evacuating the building,

“would physically require someone to go and knock on every single door and tell people to come out”.

Likewise, Michael Dowden, the North Kensington watch manager, told the inquiry:

“For me to facilitate and change a stay-put policy to full evacuation was impossible”,


because there were no means of communicating directly with the residents in the 20 floors above the fire.

I am not wanting today to make any judgment on the rightness of the “stay put” policy generally in fires in tower blocks, nor am I qualified to make any comment on how quickly that policy should have been overridden in the specific circumstances of Grenfell Tower. What I want to concentrate on is that through no fault of its own, the fire brigade could not tell those in the tower that the “stay put” policy had changed and that they should evacuate at once.

One of the many tragedies of that appalling night was that the technology that would have enabled that communication to happen exists and is widely deployed elsewhere in the world, but not in Britain. It has been tested here; the Cabinet Office deemed the tests a success; but it has not been deployed. The issue has frequently been raised in your Lordships’ House. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, was wheeled out time and again as a Minister to defend the indefensible. I apportion none of the blame to him personally because I know that behind the scenes, he tried to get this issue moving.

This technology was trialled in Easingwold in North Yorkshire on 18 September 2013. Those with a suitable mobile phone handset received an alert on the home screen of their phones saying “UKAlertTest. No Action Required”. It was trialled again in Glasgow on 3 October 2013 and in Leiston in Suffolk on 20 November 2013. Those tests were part of a Cabinet Office project on mobile alert systems for use in an emergency. The conclusion from those trials was that,

“emergency responders are still very keen to see the implementation of a national mobile alert system. Views from members of the public also suggest that the vast majority of people (85%) felt that a mobile alert system was a good idea .... it would be an effective way of getting people to take specific protective action during an emergency”.

The report recommended further trials. They never happened.

I looked at this as part of my 2016 review for the mayor—London’s Preparedness to Respond to a Major Terrorist Incident. That led to my recommendation that,

“the Mayor should quickly work with the Cabinet Office to introduce a London-wide pilot of this public alert technology”.

Three years further on, there is still little progress.

The fire brigade has said that it could not have communicated directly with the residents because it did not have the people to do so and, in any case, it would have taken too long, but the technology has been used regularly in Australia since 2009. The United States and the Netherlands started doing so in 2012. Portugal uses it. The summer before last when I was on holiday there, I received a text message on my mobile phone, in English, alerting me to the danger of forest fires. Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Saudi Arabia and Iceland have alerting systems. Earlier this year, thousands of lives were saved in India when 2.6 million text alerts were sent to residents in the path of Cyclone Fani. These systems work, are proven and save lives.

Australia’s emergency alert can send an SMS text message to every mobile phone in a tightly defined area. Precisely the same sort of scenario as the Grenfell Tower fire was tested six years ago. It focused on the 37-storey Department of Justice and Community Safety building in the heart of Melbourne. The system’s mapping tool was used to draw a warning polygon over the building and the presence of 5,736 mobile devices was detected. When the alert was sent, it reached over 90% of those devices within 12 seconds and delivered the alert to people on every floor.

Therefore, we have had six years of drift. Apparently, no one could decide which government department should lead and whose budget it should come from. Then there was a whole row about which technology was best—the best being made the enemy of the good.

I do not know whether an alerting system such as that deployed in Melbourne would have saved lives in Grenfell Tower, but at least residents could have been told that the “stay put” advice had changed and they could have tried to leave. Debating “what if” does not bring back any of those who lost their lives and it cannot heal the hurt of bereaved families and friends, but we cannot go on any longer without emergency alert technology being made available in this country. Next time there is a disaster, those alerts would make the difference between the life and death of those involved.

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[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Yes, I can reassure the noble Baroness on that front and reiterate the point I made earlier about greater joined-up thinking across different agencies and bodies.

Learning from the inspectorate’s reports and the creation of national standards based on the best operational practice will help the LFB and the fire and rescue service as a whole to respond to the issues that the inquiry identified. We expect the NFCC to support services faced with challenging reports to drive improvement and make sure that cross-service learning is happening, which helps to answer the noble Baroness’s question.  

The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and my noble friend Lord Bourne asked about collaboration and co-ordination, and communication within the emergency services. An assurance programme was conducted in 2017 on joint interoperability with more than 100 police, fire and ambulance services. Findings showed that new processes are embedding, and the Home Office is continuing to drive work to embed this programme locally.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris, and others raised the issue of problems with communication between firefighters. Each fire and rescue authority, including the London Fire Brigade, must evaluate local risks and determine its priorities, policies and standards for fire protection and response, including equipment. It does this through an integrated risk management plan. It is for the Mayor of London to set the budget for the London Fire Brigade so that it has the equipment needed to do its work. The Government will work with the fire and rescue services to ensure that lessons are learned from this terrible tragedy.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

To make it clear, my point about emergency alert communications was not a matter for individual fire brigades or for the Mayor of London. It is a more general one about the Cabinet Office and other government departments agreeing a system and ensuring that it is available for all emergency services.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I take note of the noble Lord’s point and will feed that back.

I realise that my time is running out, but on this very important subject I want to spend a couple of minutes on some final remarks. I want to reflect on the work of the Government in and around the Grenfell community. Rehousing the 201 households that lost their homes has been an absolute priority for the Government. Today, 95% of these households have now moved into their new permanent homes and, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham alluded to, they must truly be places that they can call home.

We will continue to support the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council to ensure that the nine remaining households can move into permanent homes, and that those affected continue to have access to the services and support they need to rebuild their lives. But of course, there is much more to do to restore trust in that community and, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said, bringing different faiths together to help with this is of paramount importance.

We are committed to ensuring that government support remains in place for the bereaved and survivors for the long term. This is reflected in the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission, which is made up of representatives of the bereaved, survivors and local residents. While the Government have taken ownership of the site of the tower, it is for the community to determine the most fitting and appropriate way to remember those who lost their lives.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham spoke about his concern about the neglect of humanity. Let us never forget that this tragedy is about human beings: human beings who lost their lives, human beings who survived and human beings who keep fighting for the truth and justice they so rightly seek, but now it is also about human beings who are taking—and must continue to take—responsibility and bring about the changes we need to see. No report can change what happened that night or bring back those who lost their lives, but yesterday’s report is an important step on the road to lasting change, and we must work tirelessly and without delay to ensure that we achieve it, so that when we say “Never again” we really mean it.