My Lords, it has been an interesting debate so far and I hope that I will not let the standard drop. Three excellent amendments have been proposed. I have added my name to Amendment 2 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, but I could equally well have done so to the others as well. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
In different ways, the amendments all look at the strategic vision for what building safety should be and how it should perform. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, made a strong argument for widening the purposes of building regulations from the simple protection of life to the protection of property.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has renewed his persistent and well-justified point that there is a terrible shortage of performance from the construction industry, driven by its dysfunctional character—in particular, as he highlighted, the use of retentions in building contracts, which makes a collaborative process difficult to achieve in the industry. He referenced the Construction Playbook and what BEIS is doing. If the Minister is just going to say kind words to the noble Lord, will he also undertake to get the Department for Education to follow the Construction Playbook and get rid of retentions in the contracts that it signs? All the questions that I have asked of the Department for Education have been answered in a rather injured tone. It says that it is doing its best for the public purse—not while it continues to insist on retentions, which undermine the collaborative way the construction industry has to go.
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The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has had many supporters who have spoken with great eloquence and much more expertise than I on Amendment 2 and the call for a broader definition of well-being. I strongly support this cross-party amendment and have added my name to it. Well-being of the individual must be added to avoiding harm.
I think that the Minister will say that all three amendments are strategic overreach as far as this Bill is concerned. I am sure that he will find good reasons to say that this is not the right time or Bill to add these wide-ranging extra provisions. I hope that he will not say that, but I sense from the way he has responded to other debates so far that he probably will.
That brings me to Amendment 8 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Pinnock. This is within scope of the Bill; there can be no argument that this is the wrong Bill for it or that these are the wrong topics for the building safety regulator. I hope that the Minister will support the preceding three amendments to which I have referred, but I very much want him to support Amendment 8 or give us some degree of comfort that he understands the issues and will provide a solution to your Lordships to the problems raised.
In Committee, passionate arguments were produced in support of each of the four features in the amendment, which requires the building safety regulator in its first two years of operation to produce
“an assessment of the benefits and costs of measures on improving the safety of people in or about buildings relating to”,
first, fire suppression systems. That is a posh phrase for sprinklers, but it also includes other ways in which fire might be suppressed, including, as my noble friend has said more than once, how buildings are compartmented so that fire does not spread from one area to another.
Then there is the
“safety of stairways and ramps”.
We heard plenty of evidence in Committee that there is a standard but it is just not enforced. It needs to be; let us hear what the building safety regulator says, because various noble Lords advanced with much eloquence a strong case for improvements to be made. This amendment says, “Let’s just ask the new regulator
of building safety to come back within the next two years and say whether noble Lords have been exaggerating—whether these are real problems or whether there is some issue we can tackle through regulations.”
The third thing listed in the amendment is the
“certification of electrical equipment and systems”,
on which my noble friend Lord Foster is an outstanding expert. Again, evidence was adduced in Committee of the costs and loss of life that arise from poorly certified or uncertified electrical equipment. An evaluation by the building safety regulator is the way to get to the bottom of each of these issues where such concern is felt by the public and such passion has been expressed by noble Lords in previous debates. Let us get to the bottom of that and get the building safety regulator to look at it.
Fourthly, there is the provision for people with disabilities. My noble friend Lady Brinton and other noble Lords with direct personal experience have clearly highlighted the difficulties that there are for people with disabilities in emergency situations in buildings. As I have said before, there is a direct conflict between some of the requirements that fire officers talk about and some of the requirements that people with disabilities see as essential. Let us get the building safety regulator to look at that.
Noble Lords have helpfully added a number of other things that might be there. Well, they are not. Only these four things have come forward in the past two years. However, the end of my amendment says that the building safety regulator may
“identify and give notice of such other matters relating to safety of people in or about buildings that they determine require further examination.”
That is the catch-all, if you like, but I say to the Minister that these issues are not going to go away. They, and the noble Lords who advocate on their behalf, are going to pester him—and his successors, if necessary—to get this problem tackled. Here is an opportunity, with a clean slate and a new building safety regulator, to set out clearly in this Bill the four topics that need the most urgent attention. Let us hear what the building safety regulator has to say about it. If they come back and say that I am hopelessly exaggerating the concerns and problems so it is not necessary to regulate, let us hear it. However, if it is necessary to regulate, let us hear that as well. We want to hear a positive reply from the Minister. If we do not, we will certainly want to test the opinion of the House.