Clause 1 - Purposes of building regulations
Sustainable and Secure Buildings Bill
9:30 am
Mr Simon Thomas (Chief Whip; Ceredigion, Plaid Cymru)
May I say at the outset that I am delighted to sit on this Committee under your chairmanship, Mr. Hurst? I look forward to the Bill going through Committee, amended if necessary, but not so that its purposes are hindered. I look forward to its taking a shape that the Government find acceptable, and so becoming part of the legislation of the United Kingdom.
As you said, Mr. Hurst, it is convenient for the amendments to be grouped together, as they all relate to devolution, although not necessarily to clause 1. I hope that you will allow a short stand part debate on the principles of the clause, but first I shall focus on the amendments.
The background to the amendments is the devolution settlement, and the way in which Bills such as this, which go through the House, have to relate to the National Assembly for Wales. Much of what we will talk about in the framework of the Bill—but not everything—will be devolved to the Assembly in its administrative and regulatory functions. It is important that we take a little time to consider how the Bill will work with the Assembly's aims and objectives on energy efficiency and sustainable development.
The context is that the Assembly is the only Executive in the United Kingdom that has written into law the aims of sustainable objectives per se and sustainable development in particular. I welcome the fact that sustainable development is written into clause 1 of this Bill, too. The Assembly has a statutory duty under primary legislation to achieve sustainable development. We must ask ourselves how a Bill with the aim of sustainable development written into it, going through this House, marries in and matches up with the Assembly's sustainable development strategy, which is called ''Living Differently?''
There are two principles behind the amendments. Some deal directly with ensuring that the Bill fits into the current devolution settlement. That is to say, when we talk about the Secretary of State's powers to make regulations, and those regulations' aims of achieving sustainable development and energy efficiency, we must bear in mind that de facto—and de jure, indeed—it is the Assembly that does that in Wales.
The second principle behind the amendments relates to functions to do with building regulations that have not yet been devolved to the Assembly. I want to explain my feelings about why that has not happened. I hope that hon. Members will appreciate that there is a real reason for trying to achieve that devolution through the Bill. Last year, I served on the Committee considering the Municipal Waste Recycling Bill, promoted by the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock). A similar case arose with that Bill. When it came to Committee, it very much focused on England and could not really work in Wales because the right parts were not there for devolving it. We had a similar debate in that Committee on household recycling targets in Wales and England, and on how they might work. The Bill left Committee, and by Report, the Wales clauses were included. That was done in agreement between the Government and the promoter of the Bill, which worked well for England and Wales. I hope that that will happen as a result of this debate and these amendments. I do not seek to trammel up this Bill.
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) will, at least in principle, support devolution in respect of the Bill, because he has always been a strong supporter of devolution in practice. My purpose is to see how the Minister will respond to these ideas and ensure that when the Bill is enacted it addresses the real needs and abilities of the National Assembly, allowing it to deliver some of the objectives in Wales.
Some parts of the building regulations were not transferred to the National Assembly at the time of the Government of Wales Act 1998 and the transfer of powers order. There is an interesting little story behind that, which explains how it happened, although I do not know whether it is true. A couple of years ago, I introduced my own private Member's Bill, the Housing (Wales) Bill, which got nowhere at all, other than a bare Second Reading that was deferred. However, I am pleased that the Government have taken up several issues in the current Housing Bill that were contained in my Bill, such as the licensing of houses in multiple occupation, and so forth. My Bill also contained an element about building regulations, and I am trying to put that into this Bill, which has a wonderful long title—
''To make provision in relation to matters connected with buildings''—
that is amendable from all sorts of perspectives.
The story is as follows. I took on a piece of work for my party and considered housing and housing needs in Wales. I produced a report about three years ago and came across a problem with building regulations. This was in the early days of the National Assembly, and many people were telling us that it could do everything with buildings, including planning, council tax and council housing functions, setting the cost floor and dealing with home renovation grants. In fact, they were saying that it had everything to do with sustainable building except building regulations in many respects. We asked the following question: ''Since building regulations are, as the name suggests, secondary legislation, you would
expect the National Assembly to have powers over that, so why did that not happen?''.
The story emerged that the Welsh Office had once had responsibility for building regulations. In the 1970s, a civil servant in Cathays Park in Cardiff had responsibility for them. Nobody knew about that then, because it was rather more hidden. There was a Secretary of State for Wales and building regulations were de facto undertaken by the Welsh civil service. However, that civil servant, whose name is no longer available to us, retired, and is now, I am sure, living in happy retirement in Pembrokeshire, or somewhere else. Perhaps that happened in a time of cost-cutting, when the then Secretary of State, whoever that was at the time—because who knows what Government was in power—said, ''Building regulations don't need to be administered in Cardiff. It's easy enough to do it from Whitehall. It can go back. Nobody will notice. There's no problem. I can talk to my colleagues about building regulations.'' When it came to the transfer of powers order and considering all the administrative functions being carried out in Wales—and transferring the powers to the National Assembly as a matter of course—the building regulations were not included and were not transferred, because they were not dealt with by the Welsh Office, as it then was.
I hope that hon. Members will see that, as all other parts of housing policy have been devolved to the National Assembly, it is not logical for that little bit of housing policy not to be devolved. I raised that with the Richard commission, which will report at the end of March, and we have encouraging signs that it will recommend not only that these powers be devolved, but the National Assembly have primary legislative powers. We are discussing a Bill that deals directly with building regulations, sustainable development and energy efficiency and therefore deals directly with a core strategy function of the National Assembly.
I hope that we will not wait for further devolution but will use the opportunity provided by the Bill to ensure that the National Assembly is properly empowered to carry out its objectives. That is a straightforward and simple thing to do, as it does not interfere with the devolution settlement. I hope that Committee members, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove and the Minister will consider the amendments in that light. The ones that deal with building regulations would extend the powers of the Assembly, but would do so correctly and within in the ambit of the Bill. The others, although they may be faulty in drafting, would ensure that the Bill works, and matches and marries with what the National Assembly does.
The Assembly is the only devolved body with the aim of sustainable development. This Bill imposes sustainable development—although ''impose'' is not the right word: we should not impose it, but simply live it. The Bill seeks to encourage sustainable development in terms of energy efficiency. We need to ensure that, if we put those two together, they work in the context of Wales. I hope that the Minister can give us the assurances that we need, and that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove considers these issues too. I
hope that the amendments, in principle at least, find agreement in the Committee.