Building Regulations &c. (Amendment) Regulations 2012

Baroness Anelay of St Johns Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge]

That this House regrets Her Majesty’s Government’s decision to lay the Building Regulations &c. (Amendment) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/3119) before Parliament, and in particular their decision to change the provisions on electrical safety in the home, which will be detrimental to public safety.

Relevant documents: 23rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I know that noble Lords have heard enough from me already, but I remind colleagues that the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, is trying to assist the House by going first after Questions, so if colleagues could leave fairly quietly, we can get going on her Motion.

[Baroness Tonge]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for bringing this Motion forward. It was delayed four weeks ago and we waited a long time for it, but now, thanks to her, it has been brought forward. I wish I could provide a little light entertainment for noble Lords while they wait for this hugely momentous Motion, Statement or whatever it is that is going to be coming later this evening, but sadly this is not light entertainment. In a lot of people’s opinions, electrical safety in the home is as important, if not more important, than regulation of the press—but maybe that is a personal view.

In placing this Motion of Regret before the House, first, I declare an interest. Nearly nine years ago my daughter was electrocuted in her own kitchen in front of two small boys aged two and four, with no one else in the house. We discovered that this had happened because of dangerous electrical work carried out when her kitchen was extended and refitted four years previously. I will not go into detail; the full story remains on the Electrical Safety Council website alongside other tragic stories of electrical accidents, including another young mother—also with two little children, also alone at the time—electrocuted in the bath of a rented holiday cottage because of faulty wiring in the bathroom. These stories remain as a warning to householders about the danger of electricity in the home and to people doing electrical work without proper training.

I was amazed at that time to find out that electricians were required to work only to guidelines and that there were no statutory regulations controlling their work. When I approached the Labour Minister at the time, Phil Hope, I discovered to my delight that his department was aware of this problem and was working on additions to the building regulations. These additions are now known as Part P, and required electrical work to be done or inspected by a registered electrician and notification to be sent to the building regulations department of the local council, to ensure that the work was done properly. I was invited to help with the campaign to introduce Part P and to publicise the new regime, which of course I did willingly. I have since become a patron of the Electrical Safety Council.

Part P regulations have been protecting us since 2005. The introduction of residual current detectors—RCDs—has been a great safety measure but, again, there is a question about how many homes are covered and whether the devices they have are adequate. A poll of 4,000 registered installers in 2011 found that 53% believed that the standard of electrical installation work had improved under Part P.

In 2012, to my dismay, the coalition Government decided in their bonfire of the regulations that Part P must go and with it the regulations for electrical installations in the home. Can the Minister tell us what pressure the Government were under to scrap Part P? Was it pressure from a few disgruntled, unqualified cowboys who did not want to be registered or have their work inspected? Some of them certainly wrote to me. Why was the decision made on Part P in particular? No one has suggested scrapping the regulations for gas fitters. They are equally dangerous, why the electricians?

After protest from safety campaigners, the Department for Communities and Local Government agreed to go out to consultation and announced last December that minor electrical work undertaken in kitchens, in bathrooms, more than 0.6 of a metre away from water, and outdoors should no longer be notifiable or subject to inspection. Work done in the very places in the home where electricity and water can be close together—and dangerously so—the Government have decided needs no regulation. Why?

Although statistics are sketchy, the impact assessment published by the department in December showed that since the introduction of Part P regulations, 2.3 deaths per year from electrocution alone have been prevented and, in addition, there have been up to a 30% reduction of mains wiring incidents. In terms of electrical fires, they are estimated to have prevented 2.6 deaths a year and cut by 15% the number of domestic incidents due to faulty electrical equipment. Twenty-seven thousand contractors have had their work inspected for safety on an annual basis in the past nine years and sales of electrical safety testing equipment have gone up by over 100%. I hope, too, that the skills and expertise required by a good electrician are now being valued more as more and more of them seek registration from an approved body so that their work does not have to be inspected. This is all a result of the Part P regulations.

Since the proposed changes to Part P were announced last December, several electrical contractors concerned have contacted the Electrical Safety Council to say that electrical alteration work undertaken by kitchen fitters, in particular, will once again go under the radar and not be inspected.

The department, in its wisdom, has concluded that it is not possible to say whether Part P has delivered health and safety benefits, and yet the Minister, Don Foster, in the Westminster Hall debate last September said that the Government do not want changes to Part P unduly to diminish safety. At an extra session of the Select Committee for Communities and Local Government two days ago, the same confused message came over, with the additional nugget of information that scrapping the regulations would save £14 million. We were also told that the building regulations challenge panel would oversee what was going on in the industry. How much will that panel cost and will it challenge shoddy electrical work? Where does the figure of £14 million come from? It all sounds a bit confused to me.

The consultation undertaken by the department, we are told, showed that of the 158 respondents, 65% supported making more electrical work non-notifiable, but that was the response to an open question. When asked about electrical work in kitchens, specifically, and low-risk areas of bathrooms, a much higher percentage opposed scrapping the regulations. It is also worth noting that although electrical contractors supported the proposals to scrap Part P, building control bodies were not supportive of reductions to notifiable work and the Which? organisation and the Trading Standards Institute were also opposed.

The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Committee has also expressed reservations about the consultation. Its report notes:

“In his Statement, Mr Foster said that the new Part P of the Regulations sought to ‘achieve a reasonable balance of risk’. The House may wish to note that the detail given in the Department’s consultation summary indicates that large numbers of interested parties may not be persuaded that this is the case”.

Can the Minister tell us how many consumer organisations, beyond those mentioned, were against reducing the scope of Part P?

This all leaves great cause for concern. Refitting kitchens is big business and very popular with householders. It often requires adjustment to electrical wiring, as happened in my daughter’s kitchen. In 2004, the year she died, an impact assessment carried out by the Department for Communities and Local Government showed that some of the worst electrical work at that time had been carried out by kitchen fitters. Recent statistics for 2010-11 on electrical fires originating in the kitchen listed 14,700 incidents. The kitchen is a dangerous area and surely electrical work there should remain notifiable, as it should in the bathroom and outdoors where water and electricity are also in close contact. There is no requirement, either, for do-it-yourself outlets, such as Homebase and B&Q, to insist or even recommend that their products should be installed by a registered and qualified electrician. I ask the Minister: why not? How do the Government intend to monitor these changes over the two-year period of the review that they have announced? Will she promise that Part P regulations can be restored if necessary?

The Select Committee for Communities and Local Government has spent a great deal of time on this issue and I thank the committee and its chair, Clive Betts MP, for its hard work and recommendations. I close by reminding noble Lords that regulations are an irritant, a nuisance and sometimes cost money, but when a much loved person is killed because of a lack of regulations, they all become worth while. I beg the department to reconsider.