Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 467B and 467C address consequential amendments to the marine licensing cost recovery powers. Clause 214 gives the Secretary of State fee-charging powers for post-consent marine licence monitoring, variations and transfers. We are now adding a consequential amendment to clarify the position where there is an overlap between the general post-consent marine licensing fees and oil and gas marine licensing fees for the same activity, to provide that the oil and gas fees will apply in those circumstances.

Amendments 467D, 467E, 504GK, 504M, 509D and 513 will support the Government’s response to the eventual recommendations from the Grenfell Tower inquiry. The Building Safety Act 2022 set up the building safety regulator and its functions within the Health and Safety Executive. We continue to support the Health and Safety Executive in delivering these new functions, and I take this opportunity to thank it for its work over the last two years. To future-proof the building safety regulator and its critical work and protect the other important work of the Health and Safety Executive, the Government consider it essential that we have the option to move the building safety regulator to an existing or new body in the future. This will allow the Government to respond quickly, if needed, to the Grenfell Tower inquiry, which we expect to be published at the end of this year. I recognise that there will be concerns about how broad these powers are. To provide reassurance, the powers are affirmative and include a 24-month sunset provision, which can be extended only if needed and only after Parliament’s consideration.

In speaking to Amendment 467F, which introduces a new clause after Clause 214, I will speak also to Amendments 509C, 504N and 514. This new clause addresses a concern of schools that occupy premises held on special trusts for the purposes of those schools. Local authorities have a discretionary power to provide premises for academies, but there is currently no requirement to transfer the land, as exists for maintained schools. Instead, the local authority tends to offer the academy trust company a lease. If trustees hold particular premises specifically for a school and the school moves to other premises, they cannot carry out the purpose of their charity if nothing else is done, as their premises end up without a school.

The new clause ensures more consistent treatment across the system, where the local authority must transfer the new premises it is providing to the charitable school trustees. In exchange, the trustees must pay the local authority the proceeds of sale from the existing premises—or, if the local authority agrees, the trustees can simply transfer the existing premises to it.

I turn to Amendment 504HA. In the light of the successful passage of the Historic Environment (Wales) Bill through the Senedd Cymru, the Government are giving further consideration to the approach to the power under paragraph 7(2) of the new schedule to be inserted after Schedule 15 by government Amendment 412B. As such, I do not intend to move Amendment 504HA at this time.

Lastly, I turn to Amendments 504K and 504L. The United Kingdom faces constant threats to its national security, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made us all too aware. These amendments will ensure that Ministers can require information about properties that may be used to threaten national security, wherever they are in the United Kingdom.

I beg to move.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I want to comment on and ask some questions about the amendments in this string that relate to the building safety regulator: Amendments 467D, 467E, 504GK, 504M, 509D and 513. The Minister somewhat skated over their significance; I have some serious questions to ask. It is worth pointing out that these amendments tabled by the Government are so out of scope that one of the amendments is seeking to extend the Bill’s scope so that they can be included.

Briefly, these amendments would give the Secretary of State powers to scrap the building safety regime set up by the Building Safety Act, which was passed just 12 months ago. That regime, with a new building safety regulator under the auspices of the Health and Safety Executive, was a specific and central recommendation of the Hackitt review, which the Government accepted in full at the time and which had the sustained support of your Lordships’ House at every stage of the Bill’s passage. There was criticism of that Bill as it went through this House but it centred on the inadequate compensation provisions and the uncertainty created by the delay in bringing the regulatory regime fully into force, which does not actually happen until later this year. No concerns were expressed about the regulatory mechanism being set up.

The 18-month delay in the coming into force of that regulator was said by the Government at the time to be necessary to allow time for the regulator to set up shop and because of the need for the construction industry to train up qualified personnel and then deliver, in accordance with the regulator’s requirements. Bringing the building regulation system under the Health and Safety Executive was warmly welcomed on all sides. Again, the criticism was that its reach was too limited and should not be confined to high-rise and high-risk buildings; it was said that the regulator’s remit should be expanded. No voice was raised that this was the wrong model, still less that it was unfit for the essential job of upgrading building standards drastically and rapidly following the Grenfell Tower fire.

Last year, the Government resisted the expansion of the regulator’s role on the grounds that it had to learn to walk before it started to run. Since the regulator was appointed, multiple workstreams and training programmes have begun throughout the construction industry in what is undoubtedly one of the most challenging catch-up operations that it has ever faced. The industry has faced up to it because of the unflinching, no-holds-barred approach of the regulator—strongly supported, of course, because of the certainty that primary legislation gives it—means that it had no choice. There is no risk—or, in some quarters of the construction industry, no hope—of the regulator going soft over time because it is there through primary legislation with a very strong remit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for that interesting debate on the government amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, asked why this measure is necessary. The Health and Safety Executive has a strong identity and a regulatory background focusing on safety. That is why it was well positioned in 2020 to deliver the building safety regulator quickly, and why the Building Safety Act specified that the Health and Safety Executive—which, I say to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, comes under the DWP—would be that regulator.

However, it is clear from the evidence given to the Grenfell Tower inquiry that the Government must provide stronger stewardship across the wider built environment, addressing safety alongside issues such as housing standards and the intergenerational impact of new buildings. That may require longer-term reform and could impact on building-related regulatory functions that are currently spread across multiple regulators and arm’s-length bodies. The Government must continue to consider the best vehicle to deliver that intent.

That does not affect the ambitious timeline for the building safety regulator. That is important work. We expect the regime to be fully operational by April 2024 and are determined not to impact on that programme. I say again that we are grateful to the Health and Safety Executive for all that it has done to bring this regime to life.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I ask the Minister to consider the timeline a little more carefully. If the current regulator is not going to be in full flow until April next year, and if the Grenfell inquiry’s final report comes—as she suggested it would—some time next year, are the Government confident that they can maintain a viable building safety regulatory operation using the existing structure based on the HSE, properly staffed and properly led, through that transition period? Is she further satisfied that a two-year window following the publication of the Grenfell Tower final report is sufficient to undertake the very wide-ranging review that she has just been outlining? Would it not make more sense to pause that process and, once the Grenfell Tower inquiry’s report is received, take a measured look at all those together and produce a further Bill in good time, with proper consideration by your Lordships?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, my Lords, because we are not actually putting anything in place in this Bill. We are giving the Secretary of State the opportunity to do so if the Grenfell Tower inquiry comes out with something that it requires. I have no doubt that the building safety regulator will continue to work as it has always worked—with professionalism —to deliver that, and I am not hearing any issues from the building safety regulator.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, asked why these measures were not included in the 2022 Act. The Government recognised the need for major reform of the building safety regime to be delivered as quickly as possible, following the tragedy of Grenfell. The priority is now delivering this new regime effectively while remaining open to going further and faster wherever any evidence makes it clear that we should do so. We are just making sure that we are ready if the inquiry decides that we need to.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, mentioned transition, and of course it is important that, if there is to be another system, there is a good transition. The regulations will be taken through the affirmative procedure, as set out in these amendments, in close consultation with the HSE, and we will work with Parliament to ensure that they are delivered in a seamless and exemplary manner.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I am sorry to trespass on the time of the Committee, but can the Minister give a clear understanding that the existing complete independence of the building safety regulator will be maintained when the Government come up with their new alternative? I remind her that considerable time was spent in this Chamber safeguarding the professional independence of the regulator and freeing it from the possibility of interference, by either the Government or other bodies.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

What I can assure the noble Lord of is that, if we do have to go down this route, both Houses of Parliament will have a say in that. I am sure that we will have long debates on it. The noble Lord also asked about accountability to the House. As I have said, the powers will be made under the affirmative procedure to ensure that the House is given full and proper opportunity to scrutinise any proposals if they come in due course.

The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, brought up the concerns raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its 31st report of this Session. I reassure noble Lords that the powers that we are seeking to take in Amendment 467D are intended to allow us to change only the home of the building safety regulator, as created by the Building Safety Act. There is no intention or plan for fundamental policy change in that.

Moving on, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked whether Amendment 467F was entirely about schools with religious foundations. There are also non-religious schools that have these charitable site trustees. We are not talking about academy trusts here: we are talking just about the charitable site trustees. They are mainly religious, but there are others that are not.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, also asked whether the trust required proceeds from the original premises to fund—no, I am sorry, this is something that I asked. It might be interesting to the noble Baroness that, if the trust required proceeds from the original premises to fund new schools, I was concerned about that. It has been made clear to me that capital funds come from local authorities where there is a need to provide sufficient school places, so I hope that will also put the noble Baroness’s mind at rest.

I was asked where the local authority fits into this. It will be in no worse a position than if the same schools had relocated as maintained schools or as foundation and voluntary schools, where the local authority would be obliged to provide the new site and transfer it to the trustees. Land would be held for the purposes of the academy, with appropriate protections for public value, including that the land could ultimately return to the authority if in future it is no longer needed for a school, so the local authority is protected on that.

The noble Baroness also asked whether it is a compulsory swap and what local consultation there would be for the local authority on the swap. It would be a compulsory swap only if the trustees are being asked to surrender their interest in the current site in exchange. We would expect such arrangements to occur only after the usual processes for relocating a school, which would include consultation and a consideration of the impact of moving places from one site to the other. All those issues would have been looked at.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, asked whether—I cannot read this.