Fire Safety Bill

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

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

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful for these probing amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I understand her point: they are clearly important and they help our further consideration of the Bill. In particular, her identification of the need for trained assessors seems extremely important; I think that we will deal with that a little later this afternoon.

Amendment 2 relates to low-rise domestic buildings—that is, those of four storeys or fewer. I am not clear why, because they are lower than a high-risk block, they should be deemed a lower risk. Surely we are trying to stop fires breaking out; that is not related directly to the height of a building. Added to that is the fact that, sometimes, building height is quoted at different levels for different purposes. Sometimes it is done on the basis of height; sometimes it is done on the basis of the number of floors. I would appreciate some greater standardisation so that we do not face discussions on 18 metres or 11 metres, the number of floors and so on.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said—this is important—that the Government must map a way forward. I hope that the Minister will bring some clarity on this in his response. As the noble Baroness said, it is terribly important not to get the detail wrong. In our consideration of this amendment—as we know, it is a probing amendment—it would be helpful to consider it as part and parcel of our intention to get the detail much better than it has been in the past.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being in the Chamber when my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe opened her remarks. I rise to speak in support of Amendment 2 but I will focus my remarks on Amendments 20 and 21 in particular, which deal with the need for impact assessments.

I thank my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for setting out so clearly the rationale behind her amendments. I begin by explaining why this issue is so important to me personally—in short, there but for the grace of God go I. Contrary to the damaging impression given by the Lords Commission’s inept decision to cut the attendance allowance and reduce significantly the eligibility to claim it—just at the time when the Chancellor introduced the furlough scheme to reduce stress—many noble Lords are not millionaires and have given up well-paid jobs to serve their country in your Lordships’ House. I have never earned a huge amount of money, so as a former leaseholder in the shared ownership part of a new-build development, I do not know how I could possibly have coped with the uncertainty, stress and immense costs currently faced by leaseholders.