My Lords, I support the thrust of the amendments in general. I also much regret the news we had today about the noble Lord, Lord Stunell.
The points I am going to raise relate to a previous debate we had on the levelling-up Bill where he followed me and also raised some very practical issues on safety.
I want briefly to follow up the points I raised on 18 September last year during the passage of the levelling-up Bill, at Hansard cols. 1252 to 1255, regarding the issue of electrical safety and what are known as NCDs—neutral current diversions. I have no interest to declare, other than my 60-year membership of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and that I came across this issue via an article in the April 2023 issue of the IET magazine.
Since I raised the issue in September last year, I have been contacted by several electrical engineers. Indeed, I visited one factory involved in preventing neutral current diversions. I will keep the techy bit brief. A neutral current diversion can occur on the network when the combined protective earthing and neutral—PEN—conductor fails. The current is then diverted, making a circuit via exposed metalwork on buildings, including gas, water and oil pipes. This can lead to a significant build-up of heat, because those pipes are not designed to carry electricity, which can lead to fires and gas explosions. These conductors are susceptible to damage, corrosion, and general wear and tear across what is an ageing network. We probably have the second-oldest electrical network in the world—and it will vastly expand due to our net-zero obligations.
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Last year, it was revealed that reports of broken PEN conductors had increased eightfold in Great Britain between 2003 to 2021. They are occurring at a rate of more than one a day—these are the ones that the HSE bothered to record. One broken PEN conductor can affect 50 or more properties. I will use a substantial example in a moment. The distribution network operators —for those of our generation, that is the old electricity boards—are terrified of raising the issue, and their trade body says that there are only a small number of such incidents, but electrical experts say this is because no routine testing is carried out.
Before I give a few examples, I want to make it clear that neutral current diversions are not voltage surges. A voltage surge will generally last a millisecond. Neutral current diversions provide an ongoing current in a place where it should not be flowing, as I have said, such as gas pipes, water pipes or oil pipes.
I gave an example in September of where someone put a coat on a gas meter—I do not know why—and the coat caught fire. A current flowed through the gas meter that affected 75 properties. Nobody knew at the time because there was no flickering or warning, but the current was such that the gas meter acted as a massive resistance coil.
There was a tragic case in Australia that I read about where after a failure the current was transferred to a water pipe that was filling a swimming pool, and which was touched by someone in the pool. I will not go into further detail, but it was a tragic case.
What concerns me, particularly in view of the statistics that I have read about and which the noble Lord, Lord Young, gave, are the hundreds of thousands of people living in high-rise blocks with faulty cladding.
It is bad enough to have the cladding, but the key thing is to stop a fire in the first place. Preventing a neutral current diversion in these circumstances is crucial. Indeed, I am led to believe that people take it so seriously that the most expensive blocks of flats in London, where the flats are selling for more than £150 million, have had equipment fitted to prevent neutral current diversions. The HSE and the distribution network operators are dragging their feet, and I do not see any government push on this issue.
I was informed on 23 April, in a Written Answer from the Senior Deputy Speaker, that the Parliamentary Estate has had voltage surge protection installed, yet we still spend a fortune on 24/7 fire protection as, clearly, there is no neutral current diversion protection. Severn Trent is fitting protective equipment, as are British Gas and Network Rail. All the street EV chargers had to be designed specially so as not to allow a neutral current diversion. The risk of electrocution was enormous, so the regulations were changed by the institution that recognises and organises British standards.
In the United States of America, the network in some areas is older than the UK’s. There are serious issues. In one case I read about, pavement manhole covers became electrified.
Cambridge council has recently reopened a building— I regret that I do not know which one—that was closed for six months due to an electrical failure. Anti- NCD equipment has now been fitted.
I will finish by giving the example of Grimsby. Last year, 750 homes were without power and domestic electrical equipment was blown up due to a neutral current diversion. I read the blog by David Watts on 24 March 2023, on the SparkyNinja website of electrical experts, based in Stockton-on-Tees. He quoted Northern Powergrid, the distribution network operator, which said:
“The fault occurred at 02:40 on 22 March 2023 and impacted homes across 20 streets in Grimsby. The fault caused irregular voltages in customer homes, which meant that up to 415 Volts, rather than the typical 240 Volts, was supplied to power outlets causing damage to internal electrics and appliances”.
Note that this was not a millisecond voltage surge; 415 volts were “supplied”. The damage in some homes, at the early time that this was written, had reached £10,000. TVs, washing machines, microwaves and cookers were completely wrecked in one home. I do not know the final cost, but it must have been very expensive.
The electrical engineers tell me, and Mr Watts wrote, that one reason that training and guidance have been poor is the “economical compromise” by industry stakeholders. There we have it. The small number of NCDs means that the DNO and HSE keep quiet and pay up when they occur—but what about the hundreds of thousands of people living in these unprotected high-rise blocks? Leaving aside the cladding and delays—it must be done quickly—they are vulnerable to neutral current diversions. Nobody knows, nobody is testing and nobody is checking—well, I think they should be testing and checking.