Building Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Foster of Bath and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I will try my very best to be as quick as I can, as I have tried to in all my contributions. I began my last contribution with concern about the speaking order of Members. Can I just say that it was particularly disappointing to have to start speaking for this amendment knowing that, already, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, had indicated she will not be supporting it? I hope that by the end of my remarks, she might change her mind. I give way.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I owe the noble Lord an apology. It was my fault for getting it in the wrong order. I have been trying to be on the other Bill as well.

Building Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Foster of Bath and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage
Monday 21st February 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Briefly, I support the idea of review clauses and of learning from mistakes. Obviously, I have not been a Minister in this area, but I was a Minister in other areas and I did agree, occasionally, to review clauses where people had concerns. I found that the reports that came along two years later—if one survived that long—were actually extremely useful, and ensured that the Civil Service system was behind the objectives of the Bill. Exactly what one would put in a review clause is another question. I would certainly want added some of the points I made earlier—which the Minister helpfully said were contained in a code of practice for regulators—bringing up the agenda the sort of good practice we have seen at some of our better regulators, such as the HSE. I hope the Minister will think about whether there is scope for a review clause to help on some of these issues.

We talked about sprinklers. As people know, I have run supermarkets, so I have had practical experience of all these different fire safety methods. Certainly, when sprinklers were put in, it took away a lot of headaches, provided you could secure the water supply. That sort of innovation—whatever the new ones are; AI or whatever—can form part of a review process two, four or six years later.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 129 in my name proposes to add a short new clause to the Climate Change Act 2008. Section 56 of the 2008 Act says:

“It is the duty of the Secretary of State to lay reports before Parliament containing an assessment of the risks for the United Kingdom of the current and predicted impact of climate change.”


All I am seeking is to put in something to make more precise the need to refer to the impact of climate change on buildings and to say something about the location of those buildings that will be affected. It would require the Secretary of State to include in a report an assessment of the risks and the locations of such threats to buildings caused by climate change. We all know only too well, just today, the real problems we are facing because of climate change, yet climate change is not mentioned in the Bill at all. The amendment aims to rectify that.