Building Safety Bill (Fifth sitting)

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I quite agree that the Bill will help his constituents, and those of all right hon. and hon. Members on the Committee and in the House. We want to ensure that HSE has the appropriate resources to do its work. I am sure that we will discuss that in greater detail as we proceed, but I can say that the finances available to HSE were increased by 10%—to some £14 million—for the course of the covid emergency. That is an example of the financial stimulus that we provided to HSE, and we will of course continue to support it in its new and important role.

Clause 2 and schedule 1 are vital to our wider reform, which the Building Safety Regulator within HSE will sit at the heart of. They provide the regulator with the necessary powers to effectively deliver a new regulatory regime, and I commend clause 2 to the Committee.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, with your very colourful tie, Mr Dowd. It will be a pleasure to work with everybody in this room over the next few weeks, scrutinising and hopefully strengthening the Bill, which will alter the building safety landscape.

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[The Chair]

Order. The Minister had a little bit of leeway to make a general speech to begin with, but this debate should be about clause 2 and schedule 1. May I exhort you to deal with the specifics of those provisions, please?

[Mike Amesbury]

I certainly will, Mr Dowd.

Giles Grover from End Our Cladding Scandal referred to the many complexities that make up the layers of the building safety scandal, from waking watch to inflated insurance premiums and the funding lottery created by the limited size and scope of the building safety fund. Do the many clauses and schedules of the Bill respond to that immediate crisis? Does clause 2 do that? The answer is no. This is the very Bill that the Minister with responsibility for building safety, Lord Greenhalgh, said was the appropriate vehicle for responding to the crisis. If there were a prize for being consistently inconsistent, this Minister would win hands down—top of the premier league.

Moving on to the fundamental details of clause 2, many witnesses, including the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, Matt Wrack, welcomed the new building regulator and spoke of the constructive working relationship with the Health and Safety Executive, reaffirming the Minister’s statement and the evidence from other witnesses about the appropriateness of HSE. Other witnesses, such as Martin Boyd from the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, spoke of the need to capture the residents’ voice, from the grassroots to the highest table of the new regulator, to help to establish and change that culture, and to improve the competence referred to in future clauses. Given the commitment highlighted in the previous social housing White Paper, for example, I am interested in the Minister’s thoughts about the residents’ voice.

The evidence from HSE management team seemed to indicate that they have the necessary resources to carry out the terms of reference of this new regulator.

[Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that this Bill does in fact make buildings safer, specifically because the Minister said in his opening remarks that HSE will now have the right expertise to oversee the regulator?

[Mike Amesbury]

I do hope so. Working together in Committee and across the Floor of the House, I hope we can contribute towards changing that landscape and making people and buildings safe. However, on resources, and this point was mentioned by—I know the Member has a Bolton seat, but do excuse me—

[Mark Logan]

Bolton North East

[Mike Amesbury]

Bolton North East. It was The Cube, was it, in your—

[Mark Logan]

Bolton South East.

[Mike Amesbury]

It was Bolton South East, yes.

I know it is important to hon. Members that HSE is resourced appropriately, but given the evidence from the inspection regime, with the number of inspectors cut from around 1,400 in 2011 to 900 in 2019 and funding cut by over 30% by HSE, I am not filled with confidence. Will the Minister ensure for residents and leaseholders, let alone Members of Parliament, that the new regulator does indeed have the necessary resources?

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

While it was reassuring to hear that HSE has been assured by the Government that it will receive the resources it requires, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is imperative that local authorities are also given the resources they require to deliver this new building safety regime?

[Mike Amesbury]

I concur with that powerful point. Indeed, the Local Government Association made the same representations. Of course, local authorities have been somewhat hammered over the past decade in terms of resources and austerity. The hon. Lady makes a good point.

In conclusion, Labour welcomes the regulator overall, but we would of course go further and establish a building works agency to deal with the crisis here and now, building by building, with the principle of find, fund, fix and recover, and that the polluter pays. That is the immediate way forward.

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, to participate in this Committee and to follow the hon. Member for Weaver Vale. His contribution was fascinating, and I want to pick up on one of his points about clause 2. I hear what he is saying about not necessarily dealing with the present, but clause 2 is also focused on the future. I am sure he will agree that we have to ensure that we do not see a repeat of what we have seen thus far. We have to ensure, as we heard in the evidence sessions, that the housing market and the industry is fit for the future and keeps people safe, and that we do not allow this race to the bottom to continue or put vulnerable people at the risk of individuals who seem to think it acceptable to create unsafe places to live. Clause 2 is part of the patchwork to do that.

My right hon. Friend the Minister talked about the importance of the Building Safety Regulator sitting within the Health and Safety Executive. I absolutely agree with him. He particularly mentioned the importance of collaboration. HSE has 45 years of experience in dealing with health and safety, and will now be focused on building safety too. That is the right approach. As the Building Safety Regulator is developed, we have to ensure that the right expertise is there, because it will have such a crucial role in the future of the housing market, probably for the next generation.

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[Christopher Pincher]

I congratulate all members of the Committee on their contributions on the clause. A number of Members, properly and understandably, raised funding, including my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West and Opposition Members such as the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby. We have made further funding available for the creation of the shadow regulator within HSE. We also, as I said earlier, made funding available to HSE during the covid emergency. We have also made commitments through the building safety levy to ensure that developers that have made mistakes in the past provide appropriate and proper restitution for the remediation of high-rise buildings. We will provide more information about that in due course. Certainly, the funding of HSE is, as always, subject to discussions with the Treasury in the spending review, and I am sure we will hear more about that—to the benefit of HSE—in due course.

The hon. Member for Weaver Vale referred to Grenfell in his remarks, and he was right to do so because Grenfell was the wake-up call to the challenges that we face in a very complex development, ownership and safety terrain. That is why we must approach the Bill and the clause with care, to ensure that we address the complex situation of buildings, safety and ownership carefully, and that is what we will do throughout the course of the Committee.

The hon. Gentleman made two specific points to which I think I ought to respond. He asked about residents’ voices. Sarah Albon made clear in her evidence to the Committee last week that HSE is reaching out—to use that modern phrase—to stakeholders, including residents and dwellers of high-rise buildings, to ensure that their voices and concerns are heard. We have also committed to a new homes ombudsman. That is not the point of the clause, but it is something that we will debate later in our scrutiny of the Bill, giving the hon. Gentleman and other Members the opportunity to learn about the Government’s work to ensure that residents’ voices are heard. The hon. Gentleman also made the point about HSE funding, and I refer him to the comments that I have just made.

To conclude, we have heard the high regard in which HSE is held by all members of the Committee for its historical and, one might say, international reputation as a safety board of the highest regard. We believe that HSE provides the regulator with the necessary powers to effectively deliver the new regulatory regime. I commend the clause to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Clause 3

The regulator: objectives and regulatory principles

[Mike Amesbury]

I beg to move amendment 11, in clause 3, page 2, line 14, at end insert—

“(c) mitigating building safety risks due to climate change, including—

(i) flood risk

(ii) coastal erosion, and

(iii) overheating of buildings.”

This amendment would mandate the building safety regulator to mitigate for risks to building safety due to climate change.

[Mike Amesbury]

Although there is much to welcome in elements of clause 3, there are two points on which I believe it important to expand what is currently set out. Amendment 11 seeks to expand the objective of the regulator to include another major threat to the safety of people in buildings, beyond fire and the threat of climate change. In 2019, the Climate Change Committee published a report on housing in which it stated:

“UK homes are not fit for the future.”

It found that

“efforts to adapt the housing stock for higher temperatures, flooding and water scarcity are falling far behind the increase in risk”

from the challenging climate emergency. We will face serious consequences if we do not act soon. Some of the biggest risks are the lack of protection from increasing floods and coastal erosion, and the overheating of buildings. There is also the danger of under-insulating buildings. Projections indicate that maximum summer temperatures could rise by 9° by the end of the century. Some 20% of homes overheat in the current climate. Modern high-rise flats are disproportionately at risk of overheating due to lack of protection from the sun and lack of ventilation in many cases. As a result, deaths caused by overheating could triple over the next 30 years if we do not reduce the risk. This is about people and about building safety beyond fire safety. At the other end of the spectrum, cold deaths are also predicted to remain high, but we could reduce them by better insulating homes.

It is not just high-rise flats that are at risk from the effects of climate change; 1.8 million people now live in areas at risk of flooding. That could double by 2080, but we are simply not seeing the resilience measures that we need to be built into the framework. In mentioning flooding, I am not talking about eighth-floor flats, yet there is a clearly a huge risk. Many constituencies and constituents regularly face the threat of flooding. This summer has seen huge flooding that has killed hundreds of people across western Europe. This is another example of how we must look beyond the narrow definition of the present risk and of building safety.

Last year, the chair of the Climate Change Committee’s Adaptation Committee, Baroness Brown, wrote to Dame Judith Hackitt as chair of the board overseeing the establishment of the Building Safety Regulator. In the letter, she stated:

“The current building safety works programme must be broadened beyond its current focus on fire safety to include the risk of addressing climate change.”

We are in a climate emergency. Amendment 11 would put that very commitment on the face of the regulator’s objectives. I urge the Minister to consider the amendment.

[The Chair]

I call Siobhan Baillie.

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[Siobhan Baillie]

My hon. Friend is right. We will address the climate emergency in many forms. I think the regulator will already be working on it, and I will come to that in a second.

[Mike Amesbury]

If the regulator and the Bill’s provisions genuinely address the climate emergency, why not add it to the objectives rather than making it an assumption?

[Siobhan Baillie]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. I am somebody who does not think that we should add words for the sake of it, if the regulator is already doing the work. The explanatory notes describe the regulator’s core functions, stating that it will implement

“the new, more stringent regulatory regime for higher-risk buildings. This means being the building control authority in England in respect of building work on higher-risk buildings and overseeing and enforcing the new regime in occupation for higher-risk buildings. The Building Safety Regulator will work closely with, and take advice from, other regulators and relevant experts in making key decisions throughout the lifecycle of a building.”

We know from our constituencies that the Environment Agency, our local authorities and our parish councils are committing to looking very carefully at such issues—particularly, in my patch, those related to flooding. That work, and the work that the Government are already doing to combat flooding, will flow through. I am confident that the Bill as drafted achieves that.

[Mike Amesbury]

The hon. Lady referred to local authorities and other stakeholders giving due care and attention to flooding. In my constituency, given that new developments are still being built on flood plains, I do not think that is the case. I would again argue that, rather than making it an assumption that the regulator addresses the climate emergency, it should be added to the Bill.

[Siobhan Baillie]

Forgive me—I hear the point again, in a new form, but I still do not think that that is necessary. We have to rely on the expertise of the regulator and everybody who will be involved. We are so focused on building safety risk at the moment, and rightly so, given everything that has happened. I feel that the work is there.

I had my own mini-experience of coastal erosion growing up. It was not in Stroud, which is landlocked, save for the River Severn. I grew up in Yorkshire and went from Filey to Scarborough to school on a school bus. As we were going along, a hotel called Holbeck Hall fell very steadily into the sea. Many Members may know about it. It went on for many months. It was completely fascinating to school children, but even those many decades ago it was known about, thought through and seriously considered. Everybody was focused on it. Given the work that has been done in the Bill, I do not believe that, were a building in that state of peril, the regulator would not pick up on it and be able to help.

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[Shaun Bailey]

In the light of your comments, Mr Dowd, I shall try to keep mine short and sweet.

I do not disagree with a lot of what the hon. Member for Weaver Vale said. My concern, as a constituency Member who had real flooding issues last year, is that planning is a real patchwork. That is one thing that we perhaps need to go further on. The hon. Gentleman talked about house building, and he will know as well as me that water companies, for example, are not statutory consultees on planning issues. I would like that to change, because it is ridiculous that water companies are just asked to join an estate up to the network, having played no part whatsoever in planning. That is an example of something that needs to change.

On flooding specifically, we go down a plethora of different avenues. Flood Re is meant to cover buildings at risk, and some house building standards are being amended right now. I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman about the climate change issue; we know that temperatures are going up and that we all have a responsibility to tackle that. The environment that we are dealing with at the moment is complex and will require us to bring many strings together. Although I do not disagree with his intentions, my concern is about the mechanism for ensuring that that happens. I do not think that relying on the BSR should be our only avenue; we need a mechanism to ensure that this happens.

I have seen the impacts of flooding on my constituents, particularly in deprived urban areas, which are quite often overlooked. For the best part of 18 months, I have been making the case that there needs to be more of a realisation that it is not just nice shire areas that get flooding, but inner-city areas, too.

[Mike Amesbury]

In my own constituency, the Northwich area has been subject to flooding for the last two years. Undoubtedly, that is partially an impact of the climate emergency. In future, a high-rise buildings regulator could, through a planning gateway process, future-proof that and other environments.

Last week, I had the displeasure of visiting the Strand in Liverpool, near the waterfront. Work there was signed off by building control under a permitted development, and some secondary legislation has already been passed for that. The regulation for such buildings is minimal, to say the least. It is so important that this provision is added to the remit to future-proof and to respond to the climate emergency, including with the practical examples that the hon. Gentleman gave. Beyond this debate, I would like to sit with Ministers and have a conversation about the wording around this, because it is very important.

[The Chair]

Can I just be clear? People can speak for as much as they want with a substantive issue. Interventions should be pretty short, sharp and to the point.