Queen’s Speech

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jordan (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I want to talk about the proposed building safety Bill referred to in Her Majesty’s gracious Speech. In doing so, I declare an interest as vice-president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

Following the tragedy at Grenfell, the Government’s response in bringing forward further legislation is welcome, and this House has rightly spent much time debating and discussing fire safety. However, I draw the Minister’s attention to another area of building safety as crucial and urgent as fire safety. Is he aware that a person in this country is 234 times more likely to be hospitalised from a fall in the home than from a fire, and that almost one-third of a million people attend accident and emergency each year because of falls? Unsurprisingly, the majority of them are elderly people, given that 12 million people in the UK are now over the age of 65. Most Members of this House will know someone who has had a fall in this way and be aware of the consequences that falls can have. As well as the physical injuries caused by a fall in the home, it will often be a catalyst for a longer decline in health from which many never recover. The cumulative cost of this, in terms of the pain and suffering inflicted on individuals and their families and the cost to the NHS, which is estimated at £4.4 billion, is unacceptable.

The Government’s building safety Bill offers an opportunity to make a significant contribution to ending the reputation of the home as the most dangerous place in Britain. RoSPA’s concern for safety in the home has led it to work with representatives of the housebuilding industry, and together they have developed a new framework for safety in the home, called Safer by Design. Among other things, this framework calls for the adoption of British Standard 5395 on stair design, which is backed by industry as being commercially and technically viable and creating a radically improved safety outcome, with 60% fewer falls on stairs designed to this standard.

The Government have an ambitious housebuilding programme and I am sure that they are equally ambitious that when houses are built, the safety of the occupants is seen as essential. I can tell them that “safer by design” was crafted to fulfil that ambition. Their involvement in the project would signal a clear intention to make the home a safer place.

I urge the Minister and his colleagues in the other place to use the Building Safety Bill to demonstrate their direction of purpose by first addressing the critical issue of staircase safety. This would require that the new British Standard not only be in this Bill but be made mandatory. Many lives would be saved as a result, and it would also prevent Britain’s best builders being undercut by those in the industry who are prepared to sacrifice safety in pursuit of profit. If the tragedy of Grenfell has taught us anything, it is that measures designed to secure people’s safety must not be optional. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.