Fire Safety Bill

My right honourable friend the Chancellor announced in this year’s Budget that the Government are providing a further £1 billion to fund the removal and replacement of unsafe non-ACM cladding systems for both the social and private residential sectors on buildings of 18 metres and above. Those who registered for the £1 billion fund are now able to submit their funding applications.

Every single person in this country, no matter where they live, has the right to feel safe in their own home. Alongside the risk it posed, ACM cladding placed an enormous psychological and emotional burden on residents of high-rise buildings, each wondering whether their home would be next. It is right that we act to remove this danger.

In addition to the removal of ACM cladding, the Home Office has provided £30 million of additional funding for fire and rescue services. Some £20 million of this is to allow them to increase their capacity and capability, while £10 million has been allocated specifically to the National Fire Chiefs Council—to strengthen its protection activity—and to the building risk review programme, which will ensure that all high-rise residential buildings in England are inspected or reviewed by December 2021. A further £10 million has been made available via a protection uplift fund so that fire and rescue services can increase their focus on other high-risk categories of buildings, and £10 million has been provided to build the NFCC’s central capability and ensure that it can implement the lessons from the Grenfell tragedy in local services contained in the phase 1 inquiry.

The Queen’s Speech committed the Government to bringing forward two Bills on fire and building safety. The first is this short, technical Fire Safety Bill, which will amend the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. The second, the building safety Bill, will later be led by me in this House, and was published in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny on 20 July. The draft building safety Bill proposes to put in place an enhanced safety framework for high-rise residential buildings, taking forward the recommendations from Dame Judith’s review. It will bring about a fundamental change in both the regulatory framework and industry culture, creating a more accountable system.

The proposed Bill will put in place an enhanced safety framework for higher-risk buildings, taking forward the recommendations from Dame Judith’s review. This framework will include a new regulator, clearer accountability and duties for duty holders. The Bill will also ensure that the residents of high-rise buildings have a stronger voice, alongside giving them better access to safety information about their building, clarifying their rights and providing recourse to raise safety concerns directly to the building safety regulator. The pre-legislative scrutiny for that Bill is currently under way. I am determined that we will bring forward as soon as possible after that process concludes a Bill that reflects views and expertise from across this House and expert advice from beyond.

At present, there are differing interpretations of the existing fire safety order as to whether the external walls and, to a lesser extent, the individual flat entrance doors fall within the scope of the order. This ambiguity is leading to inconsistency in operational practice. This is unhelpful at best; at worst, it means that the full identification and management of fire safety risks are compromised, which could put the lives of residents at risk.

This Fire Safety Bill clarifies that the fire safety order does apply to the structure, external walls—including cladding and balconies—and individual flat entrance doors in multi-occupied residential buildings. This clarification will also ensure that fire and rescue services can confidently take enforcement action and hold building owners or managers to account if they are not compliant with their duties under the FSO. Clarifying the scope of the fire safety order through this Bill will also pave the way for the Government to bring forward subsequent secondary legislation to deliver on the Grenfell recommendations. I will return to this later.

I wish to clarify a couple of detailed points about Clause 1 before I explain Clauses 2 and 3. First, Members in the other place and industry representatives have raised as an issue the express inclusion of “structure” in the Bill. The concern is that this term will mean that structural assessments should more routinely be carried out as part of fire-risk assessments. I assure noble Lords that that is not the case. The intention, as set out in guidance, is that this should be a visual inspection of the construction and layout of the building on the basis that it will have been built to resist early structural collapse in the event of a fire.

As such, although dependent on the circumstances in any particular case, intrusive surveys of buildings are likely to be required rarely and only on the basis that the fire risk assessor has serious concerns about the risks that the structure of the building could pose; otherwise, non-intrusive surveys should normally be carried out. This will be set out in a fact sheet that we will publish and will be reflected in the industry-recognised guidance.

Secondly, some fire and rescue services have also asked for clarification on what is meant by “common parts” in the Fire Safety Bill. The fire safety order applies to all premises and to all parts of premises unless they are expressly excluded by Article 6. One such exclusion is for “domestic premises”, for which the definition includes parts of the domestic premises that are

“not used in common by the occupants of more than one such dwelling”.

This has led to some confusion about which parts of the overall building are covered by the order. I can clarify that walls and structure are expressly within the scope of the FSO, and that “common parts” applies whether they are “used” by residents or not. An example of a common part that could be routinely used by residents might be a communal area that is immediately outside flat entrance doors. An example of a common part not frequently accessed by residents could be a boiler room.

Clause 2 provides the Secretary of State with a regulation-making power to amend or clarify the premises that fall within the scope of the fire safety order. Through this, we will be able to respond quickly to any further developments in the design and construction of buildings and our understanding of the combustibility/fire risk of construction products.

The territorial extent of the Bill is set out in Clause 3. The fire safety order extends and applies to England and Wales. The order, and therefore the Bill, relate to matters within the legislative competence of the Senedd Cymru, or Welsh Assembly. This matter will be put before the Welsh Assembly for a legislative consent Motion in relation to these provisions on 6 October.

Finally, the Bill will provide a power to commence the provisions of the Bill on “different days for different purposes”. This acknowledges the operational implications of this Bill, in particular the potentially significant number of responsible persons who will need to review and update their fire risk assessments. For many, that will require specialist knowledge and expertise from competent professionals who can advise on the fire safety risks for external wall systems.

In recognising these operational implications, the Home Office established a task and finish group, which is chaired jointly by the Fire Sector Federation and the National Fire Chiefs Council. It includes representatives from local authorities, private sector housing developers, the fire sector and fire and rescue services. We are currently considering their advice, which we received earlier this week, and I intend to set out the Government’s position on how they will commence the Fire Safety Bill to this House in Committee.

As I just mentioned, we recognise that there are capacity issues relating to fire risk assessors and concerns around competence. It will be helpful to touch on the measures that we are taking to address them. Significant work has been undertaken within the MHCLG-led building safety programme by the industry-led competency steering group—in particular, its sub-working groups on fire risk assessors and fire engineers—to look at ways to increase competence and capacity in the industry, which proposes recommendations in relation to third-party accreditation and a competence framework for fire- risk assessors. The final report from the CSG will be published next week, and MHCLG, the HSE and the Home Office will consider the recommendations of the report in detail.

It is extremely welcome that there is a shared commitment across all parties to implement the recommendations of the inquiry and legislate where necessary. That commitment bears repeating: we will honour the memory of those who died in that appalling fire and implement the Grenfell inquiry recommendations in full.

On 20 July, the Government launched a consultation that included proposals to implement the recommendations and further strengthen the fire safety order. The consultation closes on 12 October 2020.

It is important to deliver the Fire Safety Bill first, then subsequently the secondary legislation taking forward the outcomes of the fire safety consultation. This is a matter of sequencing to ensure that we consult the relevant parties appropriately on the measures we propose, which in a number of areas go further than the inquiry’s recommendations. It will mean that the legislation will be informed and properly enacted. It is in everyone’s interest that we get this right. The Government will bring forward the necessary secondary legislation as early as practicable following commencement of the Fire Safety Bill.

Nothing can bring back those who lost their lives in the Grenfell tragedy. Nothing can undo the errors that led to their deaths. Yet, if anything is to come from this disaster, let it be the lessons we have learned from those errors and our solemn determination to ensure that they can never happen again.

I spoke earlier of how proud I was in taking this Bill forward. Legislation alone can never have all the answers, but this, the first Bill since the Grenfell fire, will, I believe, make a significant contribution to protecting residents in multi-occupancy buildings from the dangers of fire. I commend it to the House and I beg to move.

It is the Welsh Government’s intention to bring forward a White Paper for consultation by the end of this current term and the analysis of this consultation will be available to inform any new Government bringing forward primary legislation in this vital area. These reforms build on the work set out by the Welsh Government’s Building Safety Expert Group in its report, A Road Map to Safer Buildings in Wales. The remit of the group was to identify the parameters of a Welsh response to the issues raised by Dame Judith Hackitt’s report, Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety.

In the immediate aftermath of Grenfell, the primary focus was on aluminium composite material—ACM—cladding systems, which had been implicated in the propagation of the fire. In Wales, we have made good progress in relation to remediation of buildings with ACM cladding. There were 15 buildings with non-compliant cladding, all of which have been remediated or have plans in place. We have been able to develop and maintain relationships with building owners and managing agents to ensure an open and honest dialogue about progress. No leaseholders will have to pay for remediation works in relation to ACM cladding. In addition, the Building Regulations 2010 have been amended to ban the use of all combustible cladding on residential buildings over 18 metres in height. The ban applies to combustible cladding on all new residential buildings and where renovation works take place, including flats, student accommodation, care homes and hospitals over 18 metres high. The ban ensures that ACM and other potentially dangerous cladding cannot be used on tall buildings in the future.

The Welsh Government have worked closely with the Home Office on this Bill. It significantly expands the fire safety order’s coverage of blocks of flats, in particular to include the external walls and internal doors that were so clearly implicated in the spread of the Grenfell Tower fire. They have also been working with the social landlord sector through Community Housing Cymru to develop and trial work in relation to resident engagement and sharing of building safety information. Safety First in Housing intends to support those managing buildings to put in place helpful measures ahead of legislation that will allow genuine engagement with residents, and I urge the UK Government to follow this lead in resident engagement.

Newport City Homes had to take the original contractors of the cladding to adjudication to recover its costs to make the building safe. The reality is that flammable material should never have been put on the outside of buildings, and the contractors and developers who allowed this to happen should rectify matters.

The Welsh Government intend to take the opportunity to establish two new regulatory regimes for Wales. The proposed fire safety regime will build on the existing fire safety legislation and will cover all residential buildings containing more than one dwelling. That goes significantly further than the Home Office proposals for England. It intends to establish a new regime focused solely on fire safety in domestic dwellings, unlike the current fire legislation that blurs the focus of workplaces and residential buildings. The Welsh Government also intend to establish a building safety regime for purpose-built high-rise blocks of flats. This will incorporate the fire safety regime but will look across the whole life cycle of buildings, putting in place additional requirements on those designing and constructing high-rise residential buildings, all the way through to the way in which they are managed and maintained during occupation.

Dame Judith Hackitt’s review identified competence issues throughout the system. It found that there was no clear set of competence standards or expectations for many of the professionals involved in the design and construction of fire-safe buildings or the maintenance of fire safety in occupied buildings. Her recommendations apply across the UK. Building industry action to develop more robust approaches is welcome, in order to make the improvements necessary to ensure that competence is clearly embedded within the professions that make up the construction industry.

Dame Judith was clear that information, from inception to occupation, is key to overseeing the ongoing safety of buildings. It allows buildings to be constructed safely and managed appropriately when occupied. Her proposals for a “golden thread” of building information not only are the basis of the information and data required during the gateway process as buildings are designed and constructed but flow through to the occupation stage. The golden thread will be comprehensive and include full as-built plans, a construction control plan and a fire and emergency file, and culminate in the safety case, which articulates how structural and fire risks will be managed and mitigated against. The safety case identifies the potential hazards in the building and considers how these might be reduced and mitigated against. The findings of these considerations should be recorded and acted upon. Evaluating and reviewing the success of mitigating actions should be monitored, and the processes of reviewing and assessing hazards undertaken on an ongoing basis. The golden thread is a live document—in effect, the user’s manual for the building.

Buildings must be designed and constructed in a way that ensures they are as safe as they can be. This is more than health and safety on a building site, and more than ensuring that there is fire-fighting equipment in an emergency. It is not only about ensuring that the design complies with building regulations safety requirements but that the intention is delivered in the finished product. This means making sure that safety features are properly installed in the right places, using the right materials and standards, by persons who are competent.

In conclusion, the Bill goes a good way to redressing the gaps in controls and provisions that led to the tragic loss of life at Grenfell Tower but I ask the Minister to ensure that no positive opportunity is overlooked when reviewing the steps available to get the Bill absolutely right for the future safety of our citizens, wherever they live in the UK, and to acknowledge and learn from the stronger steps that other Governments are putting in place for public safety.

That is the context in which the Minister has brought forward the Fire Safety Bill today. I thank him for setting out so clearly what it is intended to do when it comes into force and for making the point very clearly that it is a start, not the finished product. I thank him too for the letter that he circulated to your Lordships today that sets out other measures that the Government have taken and plan to take.

The Liberal Democrats certainly support the Bill’s intention and will be supporting it in its passage through your Lordships’ House. It plugs some gaps and removes ambiguities and, crucially, it makes a named individual responsible for fire safety reports in every building in England and Wales, regardless of its height. There will be a formal assessment.

This Bill has thoroughly good intentions, which we support, but we should also be quite clear that it would not have stopped the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire. That would require not only this Bill but also the building safety Bill to come into force urgently. It will require a complete change in the culture of building safety from the construction industry, clients and building owners, designers and contractors, national and local regulators and building users too. It is going to require a massive investment in the training of fire engineers and fire assessors and of all those in the industry who, up to the night of the Grenfell fire, had just been winging it and keeping their fingers crossed. At every step of design and procurement and every level of contracting and subcontracting, there have turned out to be fatal gaps in knowledge and skills that must be plugged. The Government have a serious responsibility to enable, facilitate and drive that process relentlessly.

In considering this Bill, I and my colleagues will be urging the Minister not to confine himself simply to the routine task of steering an uncontroversial Bill on to the statute book, but to undertake to put a rocket booster under the process of delivering a complete package of reform. I hope that he will take back to the Government the intense concern from right across your Lordships’ House on all the progress needed to make sure that things happen “at pace”. That catchphrase has been used repeatedly over the last three years from the Dispatch Box and we need to see it happening, not just in the Home Office, where this Bill sits, but also in MHCLG in relation to regulations, in BEIS in relation to the Construction Leadership Council and the work it is doing, and, indeed, in the Department for Education on apprentice training and graduate training to fill some of the gaps in knowledge and manpower.

The reform the whole building regulatory system, the proper staffing and training of qualified personnel to operate that system and the restoration of confidence of local communities caught in the eye of the storm all remain to be done three years after the fire. We take this Bill as some evidence of progress but it is also, to some extent, evidence of delay so I hope the Minister will convey the sense of concern in this House and the anger of local communities right to the very highest level of government, to which, I know, he has good personal access.

I have some questions. Will the Minister undertake to provide your Lordships with a detailed report on the number of fire engineers the Government estimate will be needed to properly deliver the regulatory system set out in the Bill? Can he tell us what estimate he has of the current shortfall and the steps he is putting in place to overcome it? Does the Minister share my fear that the implementation of the Bill will have to be delayed because of that shortfall? Has he taken note of the fall in the number of fire safety officers employed by fire and rescue services in the last 20 years? Does he believe that the current number is sufficient to take on the new duties that the Bill sets out? Perhaps he can say a little more about that. Can he confirm that there is to be a publicly accessible register of all fire assessments?

I know that the Minister will want to honour the often-repeated promise that tenants and residents would be at the heart of the new post-Grenfell regulatory system, with their concerns and their practical experience of day-to-day life in their own home being taken seriously. Does he agree that every one of them should be able to read a copy of the assessment for their block and be told exactly who is responsible for monitoring the risks and delivering the necessary changes? That needs to be a person with actual responsibility, not a distant corporate body registered in the Cayman Islands or an anonymous helpline. We must never again have residents’ legitimate concerns ignored or simply dismissed as troublemaking. We shall certainly want to return to this in Committee.

I am sure the Minister will have read the useful briefing prepared by the LGA, setting out its concerns about some of the practical matters of implementation. It is not at all surprising that, in view of the cuts local authorities have suffered to their income because of Covid-19, they have also raised serious concerns about where the cost of inspection and enforcement is planned to fall. No doubt other noble Lords will expand on that point in the debate.

The Bill is wholly silent on the question of costs and the impact assessment is vague too. The struggle to safeguard leaseholders and tenants who face huge bills directly arising from the replacement of ACM shows just how easily the individuals with no prior knowledge or professional background get left carrying the can, while the contractors and the paid professionals just move on to the next job.

What are the Government’s intentions when it comes to meeting the costs of any remediation that the Bill shows is necessary? Has the Minister any assessment of what those costs are likely to be? How does he intend to safeguard leaseholders against being saddled with yet another huge bill caused, as they might see it, not by them doing something wrong but by a new piece of well-meaning legislation dumped on their heads?

The Minister may feel that these are small details and that we should focus instead on the bigger picture, but I say, as a former Minister, that it is often the small details that trip up and spoil the big picture. Even more to the point, if we look at the big picture, this Bill is not the big picture; it is a small part of a much bigger picture, where reform and challenge is urgently needed to put right past wrongs and prevent future tragedies.

So we do welcome this Bill, but it has to be seen as only a small step in a long journey, one that has taken a long time to get started, where the pace is still too slow and the urgency to bring forward legislation seems to have been somewhat lacking. Those 72 Grenfell residents and their families and neighbours have waited far too long to see justice and to see meaningful change and action. I very much hope that the debate today can put some extra energy back into the campaign to achieve that change.

I met my other supporter, my noble friend Lord Hill, in my first job, when I became a member of the Conservative Research Department just after leaving university. I was given the job by my noble friend Lord Lexden. I think he was and remains surprised that he gave me the job, and he seemed similarly surprised that I had arrived in your Lordships’ House, but I owe him a very great debt in that, 35 years ago, he had the confidence in me to launch me on my political career.

I arrive in your Lordships’ House to discover that, of course, it is very different to the other place; but it is also very different to the place it was just a few months ago, because of the way proceedings are conducted. I am full of admiration for the way your Lordships are grappling with new technology so as to speak remotely and vote electronically. Indeed, I remarked to a friend in the United States, a former ambassador, that he might see it as a double constitutional outrage that I had been appointed a legislator for life and that I was now voting remotely, not even present in the Chamber. He nodded and smiled and said, “Yes, that is what we fought the War of Independence about.” I hope that it will not be long before we are able to return to the previous practice of being present in this House.

Of course, one should not believe that age is any impediment to using new technology. My elderly parents, in common with many others of their generation, have become fiends in the use of personal phones and iPads. We encouraged my mother to begin texting and she started to do so voraciously. I recall sitting on the Front Bench in the other place when I received a message from my mother to say that I should call her urgently. I texted back to say that I was sitting on the Front Bench and therefore unable to do so. “Yes”, she replied by text, “I can see that you are on the Front Bench. I am your mother. I would like you to call me now.” I made my excuses and went out of the Chamber, expecting that something terrible or dramatic had happened. I called, only for my mother to ask if I would be there for lunch on Sunday. These are the imperatives of life.

It is a very great pleasure to be able to rejoin the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global LGBT Rights, which I founded, along with many Members here and in the other place, and had the honour to chair. I will be chairing the Government’s international LGBT+ conference, which has unfortunately been postponed because of Covid but will, I hope, be held in some form next year. I continue to chair the Global Equality Caucus of parliamentarians around the world who are united in the belief in the importance of equality and ensuring that everybody is treated with dignity and respect according to their fundamental human rights.

I have also rejoined the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Tuberculosis and will now be resuming my co-chairmanship of that group. I also founded that group when, 15 years ago, I visited Kenya and learned about a disease called tuberculosis, the orphan of diseases, in that it is so little talked about, yet it is still, despite Covid, the world’s deadliest infectious disease. Tragically, Covid has now killed 1 million people worldwide, but tuberculosis still kills 1.5 million people every single year and will do for many years to come unless we find a vaccine, unless we find new tools and unless we renew our determination to beat it. We do not face a choice between tackling these infectious diseases; we must learn the importance of global health security. I will also continue to chair the Global TB Caucus, trying to mobilise parliamentarians from around the world to take action to ensure that people can beat this terrible disease.

I was appointed a Minister in the Home Office and in the Ministry of Justice. It is not always easy to be a Minister in two departments, as I am sure my noble friend the Minister is discovering. I soon realised that the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice are very different places. One notable difference was the lifts. Ministry of Justice lifts are much smarter than Home Office lifts; I will make no comment about them. But I was shown a button by my private secretary and given a code to key in. If I did so, the lift would immediately come down or up to me to ensure that I could get in it very quickly and rush off to vote.

I thought that I would try out this process when no one else was around. I keyed in the code and the lift hurtled down to my floor. The doors opened and out stepped the then Lord Chancellor—now my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham—my boss, who said that a sign had come up in the lift saying, “This lift is now under ministerial control”. However, it was not under his control, and indeed we discovered that very little was when we were in the department. He asked me what on earth could have happened and I suggested that he took the matter up with the Permanent Secretary. I did not own up that I had seized command of his lift.

I will continue to take the closest interest in matters to do with policing and criminal justice. I have recently set up a Commission for Smart Government, whose members include noble Lords from all sides of this House. It is focused on how we can make government more effective. One thing that we want to do is to look at how any Government can ensure that they are able to deliver. In the end, that is the imperative for Governments. I am reminded of one thing that a previous Lord Herbert—Lord Herbert of Cherbury, a poet, soldier, Member of Parliament and brother of the poet George Herbert—said in the 16th century:

“The shortest answer is doing.”

That is a motto that any politician, and certainly any Government, would do very well to remember. In the end, people will judge us not by what we say or promise but by what we do and are able to deliver. There can surely be no more important task for any Government than to make their people safe, and that is why this Bill is so important and why I am so pleased to be able to speak at Second Reading today on this short but important piece of legislation.

In conclusion, perhaps I may say something about the Bill and the Grenfell disaster. The tower was built in 1974—it is, or was, younger than almost every Member of your Lordships’ House. It was not an old building but a relatively new one. The truth is that many wealthy people around the world live in tower blocks, but it would be surprising if they had faced the same situation or the same risk, because the towers in which they live would have been equipped in a very different way. That is the truth of the matter. It is right that we now take every step to ensure that no tragedy of the kind that we saw at Grenfell, in which 72 people lost their lives, could ever happen again.

At the root of what happened, an injustice was revealed—a social injustice about the conditions in which some people were living and in which others would never have considered living. That, in the end, is why there is a wider agenda to level up in this country. It is an agenda that the Prime Minister has fully committed himself to, and it is one that I will proudly support.

It is right that we say that there will be a memorial on the site of the Grenfell Tower in due course and that the local community—Grenfell United and others—will be leading on that. It is also right that the greatest memorial that we can offer the people of Grenfell and those who have fought since the fire to right that wrong is a legacy that ensures that this can never happen again. The Government have, quite rightly, moved in many ways—with the independent inquiry under judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick and with the regulations review of building safety led by Dame Judith Hackitt. We still await news on criminal prosecutions. Although I recognise that this is, in a sense, quite separate from government, we have given—and I was able to give—information and publish how many people had been interviewed under caution in relation to this matter. The Minister might not have details of that to hand. If he does not, I would appreciate it if he were able to write to me saying something on this matter, with a copy being sent to other participants in this debate and placed in the Library. Understandably, responsibility for what happened that night remains a very real concern.

The Government have also moved to put in place fire protection measures, and the use of combustible ACM has, quite rightly, been banned. The remediation of unsafe buildings is happening, but herein lies the rub. I suspect that we all agree on what needs to happen —I cannot imagine that there is any great difference on that—but the issue is the speed with which it is happening and needs to happen.

Understandably, there was a time when interim safety measures needed to be put in place—but that surely was only for the interim. The very use of the word “interim”, which we continue to use as a Government and as a country, indicates that we are not there yet, so I shall press the Minister on this. The key issue here is speed in remedying what needs to be remedied. I think that he mentioned that 74% of building remediation had been started or completed in relation to the removal of ACM. Is he able to give the percentage for the amount that has been completed, rather than started or completed? That would be a very useful statistic for us look at.

The Queen’s speech quite rightly committed the Government to two Bills. We have heard quite a lot from the Minister about the draft building safety Bill, and we have also heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport, about remediation measures in Wales put in place by Senedd Cymru. I again emphasise to the Minister that it is useful to work alongside the devolved Administrations, particularly in this instance with Wales. I am sure that is happening, but it would be useful to know what lessons and partnership work are going on with Wales, so that we can tackle these scourges together—because I am sure that the aim is one of unity in terms of what we need to do.

Unsurprisingly, I am a strong supporter of the Bill. I am pleased that we are dealing with the ambiguity of what is covered by the term “building” and that it will cover external walls, and therefore cladding, flat entrance doors, balconies and so on. It is obviously right that we have that clarity. I also very much support there being a responsible person for each building to take forward responsibility for this and to make sure that we act in the right way. These are aims that I am sure we can all support. But I come back to the issue of speed. We keep saying “at pace”, but it needs now to be not a moderate pace but a fast pace. I am sure that we all have that haunting thought that we do not want to see anything like Grenfell ever again. The way that we can prevent that is by moving at a fast pace in terms of removal of cladding, and in the admirable array of things that the Government are doing. The only thing they need do now is accelerate that.

One issue that has not been touched on yet was discussed in the other place when my honourable friend Sir David Amess moved an amendment on electrical safety. I thank Electrical Safety First, which has provided me with a valuable briefing on this. It is important to note on this issue that, although our focus is quite rightly on ACM cladding, which certainly led to the spread of the fire—there is no doubt about that—nevertheless the trigger for the fire, as it has been in many other fires, was an electrical fault, as it was at Lakanal House and Shepherd’s Court, where there was another serious fire, although thankfully not one that led to fatalities. Over 14,000 fires a year are caused by electrical faults, so I will be pressing the Minister on what we are doing with regard to checking the safety of flats in tower blocks, of which there are hundreds of thousands, to ensure that electrical appliances are periodically checked for safety. That will minimise the risk of electrical fires, and it is something we could usefully do. I look forward to looking at this in more detail perhaps in Committee. In the meantime, I would be interested in what the Minister has to say.

In short, I strongly support the Bill, as I am sure I will the building safety Bill. My one real concern is pace. It needs to be fast, and we need to accelerate now. As the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said, it is now some 34 months since the fire, and we must move quickly. Otherwise, I will be pressing the issue of electrical safety. But I know that the Minister is totally committed to this, as is my right honourable friend in the other place James Brokenshire. I look forward to working with them and others to make sure that we have a piece of legislation of which we can all be proud and which I am sure we will improve in your Lordships’ House.

My noble friend Lady Wilcox referred to sprinklers and the progress there. The case is not the same in Wales as it is in many authorities around England. The noble Lord, Lord Bourne, referred to electrical safety, and rightly said that the majority of domestic fires are caused by electrical faults. Inspection and enforcement of regulations in that area are also necessary. Whereas with gas there is a mandatory responsibility on landlords to inspect the gas installations, there is not one for white goods and other electrical installations within multi-occupied buildings more generally.

There is also some obscurity as to which pieces of legislation apply to which buildings. This Bill apparently applies to all multi-occupied buildings, whereas some of the other proposed legislation and regulation applies to buildings over 18 metres high, and that limit has been queried. We are also unclear as to how many buildings and landlords we are referring to. In the impact assessment for this Bill there is a pretty wide range of figures for buildings—2.2 to 3.2 million individual flats—and for the number of landlords, both private and social. So the House deserves a much more strategic report from Ministers on this whole area.

There are also wider issues. At the end of the day, whatever regulations come forward must be professionally enforced, and we must have adequate numbers of professionally trained inspectors. Regrettably, in the fire service there has been a cut of over 20% in recent years. That cut needs to be reversed. In particular, there is nowhere near a sufficient number of qualified and experienced fire inspectors to fulfil the clearer responsibilities in this and the other Bill. The Fire Brigades Union has indicated that there are fewer than 1,000 people who are even remotely qualified to carry out such inspections, which is about half the number there were a decade ago. We need a training programme and a recruitment programme to train up firefighters and others to fulfil these professional roles.

Of course, this may grow, because while in the Bill we are talking about tightening restrictions, the proposed new planning changes will allow, for example, conversion of office blocks to residential use, and adding storeys to existing buildings. If we are not careful, and do not have a robust and effective system of enforcing the use of safe materials and the safe design of the structure of the buildings, that will increase the potential danger of unsafe buildings.

The problem is not only with the fire service and fire inspectors. One of the other areas most drastically cut by many local authorities in the past decade has been building regulations enforcement, and the numbers employed there. The enforcement of standards of materials and the application of materials, as well as of the design of buildings, is clearly inadequate in almost every local authority.

With regard to materials and equipment, it is not just cladding that we should be worried about. There is also, for example, the issue of fire doors. In its briefing for the Bill, the LGA—I declare my interest as one of its vice-chairs—claims that thousands of non-compliant doors have been delivered to local authorities and housing associations in recent years. It estimates the replacement cost at £700 million. That is an absolute scandal. I know of nobody who has been prosecuted for failure to supply compliant doors.

The impact assessment on the Bill makes no mention of the significantly increased resources for both personnel and training that will be required to make it, and related measures, effective in carrying out their job. So there is a significant number of wider questions that we need to address in this context. I will support the Bill; I think it is necessary. But we need a clearer indication of how it fits in with other such measures.

Even in this limited Bill there is a serious omission. We need to mention the role of residents—tenants and leaseholders—and the need for them to be informed, and to have their concerns taken seriously by building owners, managers and suppliers. Let us remember that Grenfell residents were warning of the dangers of the refurbishment years before the tragedy happened—in terms of the cladding, the loss of firewalls and the increasing space for a fire to spread, and also of the potential dangers of the “stay put” evacuation advice. All were pointed to by the residents, and all were ignored.

More widely, the effects of the uncertainty about the safety of the buildings in which they live is causing widespread anxiety among all residents. Leaseholders also face potential substantial economic loss, as the value of their property falls and the availability of affordable insurance recedes because of safety fears. Tenants and leaseholders need to be listened to, and their role needs to be reflected in this Bill and in related legislation.

The revelations that we have heard from the inquiry hearings are worrying. They have shown that cost cutting has been too dominant a consideration in building construction of high-rise blocks, and that there have been major failures in the testing of materials and in the enforcement of fire regulations. This Bill is a start in addressing that deficiency. In all respects, public safety and the minimisation of risk must come first.

So the aims of the Bill are very important. But is the Minister confident about delivery? Once this Bill and the building safety Bill are in place, will local government and the fire services have sufficient powers to make this Bill effective? Has there been confirmation of this from organisations affected? I am concerned about, for example, entrance doors in tower blocks. How will responsible persons have enough power to ensure that individual flats owned by leaseholders have adequate fire safety protections, given that their doors join common areas?

Responsible persons are rightly required to review their fire risk assessments, and in buildings with no cladding there is likely to be sufficient professional capacity to assist in undertaking those reviews. But how are responsible persons to get the expert resource necessary to update the fire risk assessments of all buildings that do have external wall cladding systems? Are there enough qualified people to do the job? If not, what are the plans to increase training and, following that, numbers of staff?

I hope that the building safety Bill will be properly integrated with the amended fire safety order, to establish a building safety system that is easy to understand and easy to implement. Doubt about responsibilities must be avoided. For example, it has been suggested that there are differences between the fire safety order’s concept of a responsible person and the proposals for an accountable person and a building safety manager contained in the Government’s response to the Building a Safer Future consultation response. Will the Minister confirm that such differences in interpretation will be avoided, and that clarity will be paramount in the Bill and in regulations?

Since the Grenfell fire, the Government have allocated money to alleviate some of the critical problems related to ACM and other cladding, and they created a building safety fund worth £1 billion in June this year. Despite this, overall spending is low and there is confusion over entitlements. In addition, many owners of flats can face a lengthy wait to sell properties, because surveyors need to get evidence required by mortgage lenders on the construction of their flats, on whether there is external cladding, and on whether there is an external wall survey—which often may not exist.

The situation is not helped by the sheer amount of work to be done, and by the complexity of the responsibility chain, with so many different organisations and tenures involved across the public, voluntary and private sectors. I hope that the Minister understands the urgency of resolving this problem.

I have one final point, which my noble friend Lord Stunell also talked about. I have raised before the issue of whether there should be a public register of fire risk assessments. There is a very strong case for having one, and I raise the issue again, in the hope that the Minister might take a further look at it.

Together, these measures will significantly improve fire safety standards. I pay tribute to all those from the Grenfell community, particularly Grenfell United, whose members spend their time campaigning on this issue solely so that what happened to them does not happen to anyone else. At the very least, we owe them some reassurance as to when these much-needed changes will be brought about.