Draft Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 General Committees

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I begin by congratulating the Minister on introducing something he wanted to introduce as a Back Bencher. That does not always happen when one is a Minister, so he should enjoy it while he can. He is doing the right thing.

There are a couple of points I would like the Minister to deal with. One was alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central, who asked whether replacing a battery counts as a repair. My own view is that it probably does not, but it possibly ought to. We are left with some ambiguity as to who would be responsible. It is easy to say, “Surely the tenant will just replace the battery,” and many tenants will, but not everybody can. Some tenants are elderly and live alone, or they may be disabled, so they cannot reach up to change the battery. Indeed, some people cannot afford things such as batteries. I just wonder whether a little more clarity in the regulations might help make it absolutely clear whose responsibility this is, because they seem slightly ambiguous.

At the back of this instrument is something called an explanatory note, which I cannot say I have seen that often—if at all—in an SI. I am probably wrong; they are probably published all the time. We also have an explanatory memorandum, although I am not quite sure what the difference is. The explanatory note says:

“An impact assessment of the effect of this instrument on the costs of business, the voluntary sector and the public sector is published with this instrument on www.legislation.gov.uk”.

However, when one goes to that website for this instrument, it says that no such impact assessment has been published—there isn't one, which is not very “explanatory”. If that is the explanation in the explanatory note, I am not sure what the explanatory note adds.

However, in the explanatory memorandum, there is reference to an earlier impact assessment that was done during some of the consultation. One assumes—perhaps the Minister can confirm one way or another—that that impact assessment was thought to be adequate and that things have not changed since it was done. If that is the case, the wording in the explanatory note and on the website can be said, at best, not to be helpful. I felt like I was being sent round in circles between the explanatory note, the explanatory memorandum and www.legislation.gov.uk. That could have happened on an instrument that we did not all essentially agree on, which could have caused us significantly more problems as a Committee. Perhaps the Minister can take that point back and suggest that sending people around the houses is not very helpful. If we are going to add an explanatory notes, they should at least explain or help in some way, rather than hinder.

The 2015 regulations, which the changes before us will helpfully improve—I think that is a good thing—were previously reported by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments for

“doubtful vires, defective drafting and unexpectedly limited use of powers.”

I cannot think of too many instances where the Joint Committee has a go at Ministers for

“unexpectedly limited use of powers.”

I imagine that that must be a first. However, is the Minister now satisfied that the problems highlighted by the Joint Committee at that time have been fully remedied by these regulations, or does he think that there is still work to be done to deal with the criticisms that the Joint Committee made in 2015? These things have taken a long time, particularly given the serious consequences of not having smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. The Minister himself referred to the mercifully small but none the less significant number of people who are killed but who may had been saved had there been smoke or carbon monoxide alarms, and in that sense, time is of the essence.

Having made those points, I am happy to endorse the Labour party’s support for the regulations, but I would like to know whether more work is planned.