My Lords, I first add my tribute to Andrew, Lord Stunell. I have sat opposite him for many hours in this Chamber and in Committee, being challenged by him in a detailed but always good-humoured way. I am going to miss him. I did not know where he was this week to begin with, and I asked questions. He will be sorely missed, particularly on the issues that we talk about as a group of Peers. I send his family, friends and colleagues our best wishes. May he rest in peace.
I thank noble Lords for the amendments on building safety and for this thoughtful debate. It is an important issue. I will take all the amendments in turn and put the Government’s view. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for Amendments 93B and 107. Their aims were debated extensively during the passage of the Building Safety Act 2022 and the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023. I thank the noble Earl for his years of important campaigning on building safety, and for tabling these amendments again and speaking to them in such a detailed way. We continue to consider his arguments and are always willing to listen carefully to the ways in which we could improve the current regime. That is why the Government tabled several clauses in the other place to clarify and extend the protections in some particular areas of this Act.
However, I reiterate that implementing a new building safety remediation scheme would reverse what has been achieved by the regulatory regime set out in the Building Safety Act. Creating a system which mirrored the existing regime would delay essential remediation already being carried out. It would also create uncertainty for leaseholders across the country. The responsible actors scheme, the developer remediation contract, remediation orders and remediation contribution orders are already delivering many of the noble Earl’s objectives, requiring developers to fix problems that they have caused.
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The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, asked what would happen to buildings that needed remediation if the landlord went into insolvency. An application for a remediation contribution order can be made by an interested party under Section 124 of the Building Safety Act to recover contribution costs of remediation from a past landlord, a developer or a person associated with those entities, including a person associated with the current landlord. It follows that a leaseholder or other interested person would be entitled to apply for a remediation contribution order even if the current
landlord was insolvent. As any proceedings would not be against the current landlord, the insolvency of the landlord does not preclude this course of action. If an application for an order is successful, the tribunal has the power to order that payment is made directly to a specified person.