Building Safety Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Shaun Bailey Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Eddie Hughes]

I refer again to the overarching responsibility of the Building Safety Regulator. That is the ultimate entity to which these people will be responsible. The Building Safety Regulator will have complete oversight, will understand and will be there to validate that the special measures manager is appropriate for the job.

With regard to the market for this, we now have so much more focus on building safety in this country and there has been an appropriate, commensurate growth in the services provided by some big providers, who understand the demand and need for this service provision. So I do not think we need to feel anything other than assured that there will be a smooth transition.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mrs Miller. Just to expand on the response that my hon. Friend gave, does he agree that with the preceding clauses we have created a building safety sector and profession that will ultimately have their own professional regulatory obligations? If someone is going in as a professional within that sector, is it really worth their certification or their job to put profit before the duties they have to their profession? It is no different—to use my experience as a lawyer, for example—from a solicitor going in with their overarching professional regulatory obligations and then trying, for some reason of malfeasance, to undercut that. Does the Minister agree that we have to look at the overarching professional obligations that these people will have?

[Eddie Hughes]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s point. What we have seen through the development of this Bill is that specific people will now be accountable for very specific functions: the accountable person, the building safety manager and, in the case of the building safety manager, a specific person identified with that responsibility. Now that there is a clear line of sight to who is ultimately to be held accountable, I think we will see increased professionalisation and the sector responding to that, in terms of developing the professional capacity of the people involved.

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Moreover, clause 111(5) gives a power to the Secretary of State to amend by way of regulation the list of notifiable persons, which will mean that the right persons are notifiable in the future if changes are made to the new building safety regime. The clause is a key aspect of making the fire and safety management of a building more transparent and accessible.

[Shaun Bailey]

Speaking to what my hon. Friend has said, I appreciate that we are dealing with a very technical clause, but it is important that we have the opportunity to be as flexible as we need to be and enable variations to take place, because quite often in these circumstances orders can need to be varied. Although this is a very technical clause, it allows us to have the flexibility and fluidity we need in the special measures procedure. The one thing right hon. and hon. Members would not want to do with these technical provisions is to pin ourselves into any sort of corner, so we need the tribunal to have the ability to vary orders.

We also need to ensure that there is still an engagement piece as part of that variation, which is equally important. As we found earlier in our deliberations, it is a technical process and can seem quite disconnected, so it is important that there is a flow of information to key and vital stakeholders.

I welcome the provisions. It is absolutely important that we enable that fluidity, combined with communication, to complement the regulatory framework that the legislation will build.