Exiting the European Union (Building and Buildings)

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mike Amesbury]

Of course, many of the products, whether ACM, HPL or insulation, have been tested, though some of those tests have been questionable. As my hon. Friend rightly says, any divergence beyond the arrangements that we have now for transition out of the EU—of course, we do not have a trade deal—may have a further impact, and building safety issues go much broader than cladding, whether ACM or HPL, affecting thousands of buildings and hundreds of thousands of people.

Of course, 1.5 million people are now trapped in flats that largely have a zero rating for a mortgage. They also have to pay additional costs for waking watch, which in some cases can be thousands of pounds a month. Going forward, measures in the building safety Bill have the potential to put even more charges on leaseholders. Does my hon. Friend concur that, beyond Reading, this is a national scandal—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am sorry but this intervention is way too long. Has the hon. Member got the gist of the point?

[Matt Rodda]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend on the Front Bench. He is right that this is a national scandal. I seek to give one example of one constituency and to represent local people. It is utterly abhorrent that millions of people in the United Kingdom face these dreadful problems and are living with the nightmare of an unsafe flat that they cannot sell or leave. It is dreadful that they are living through this utter nightmare. I call on the Government to step up their action and address this with far greater urgency. I find it staggering that, three years after Grenfell, it is still an issue on the scale that it is and that the Government are only now beginning to address it. I ask the Minister respectfully to explain—perhaps in front of the House, or he could write to me—how the Government will deal with the risk of confusion about regulation and the potential watering down of the current standards once we are no longer in the EU regime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. We have always been at the forefront of good design and product safety, and I hope that nobody in the House will assume that somehow, because they are EU regulations, those regulations must ineluctably be better than our own. We will make sure that we have regulations that are suitable for our markets. We will make sure that we have really good regulations and that, as we leave the transition period, we maintain EU regulations, which are being incorporated, as I have said, into British law.

The hon. Gentleman asked a question about enforcement. One reason why we need to introduce the amendments to amendments is to make sure that local authorities, which are usually responsible for the enforcement of such regulations, have the wherewithal in England, Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland to enforce the necessary regulations, whether they are the CE regulations that we are transposing in Great Britain, future regulations that we might apply or the construction products regulations that will continue to pertain in Northern Ireland. The enforcement regulations —I think Lord Blunkett asked about this in the other place, and my noble Friend Lord Greenhalgh replied—will be maintained as a result of these amendments.

What will happen in future? It is for my noble Friend Lord Frost and his negotiating team to win a great trade deal for the United Kingdom, and that is what he is endeavouring to do. I hope, given that the amount of trade in construction products is definitely in the European Union’s favour—something like £10.8 billion-worth of trade, compared with £4 billion and a bit the other way—it is in its interest to reach a good trade deal with the United Kingdom, to ensure that that trade continues to flow.

The Government believe that the regulations that we have laid before the House are needed to ensure that there continues to be a functioning legislative and regulatory regime for construction products at the end of the transition period and that it is, as I have said, in line with commitments set out in the all-important Northern Ireland protocol. I trust that I have answered all—or nearly all—the questions that have been put to me by Members in all parts of the House. If not, I am happy to write to them. With that, I conclude and commend the draft amendments to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Construction Products (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, which were laid before this House on 15 October, be approved.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. We are going to suspend for three minutes so that the Dispatch Boxes can be sanitised.