Sustainable and Secure Buildings Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:23 am on 30 January 2004.

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Photo of Philip Hammond Philip Hammond Shadow Minister (Communities and Local Government) 11:23, 30 January 2004

As far as I recall, I said nothing about my right hon. Friend's position. He is more than capable of advising the House of it in due course. We are considering private Member's business and there is no reason for anyone to assume that views will divide on party political lines. Indeed, that is one of the great joys of being here on a Friday morning—perhaps it is the only one. We often have a better debate on Friday mornings than on other days of the week, for that reason. My right hon. Friend now has the privilege of speaking his mind from the Back Benches without the constraint of considerations of collective responsibility; hon. Members will greatly benefit from hearing his unconstrained views. I apologise to my right hon. Friend because I appreciate that I have been speaking for a long time, as have other hon. Members. I know that my right hon. Friend is desperate to participate. I assure him that there will be time for his contribution.

I have no problem with clause 1. It may need a little tidying up, but we have a regime of building regulations, and although it is relatively bureaucratic, the industry and local authorities have learned to work with it and make it work reasonably well and effectively. The regulations are constantly updated to achieve the objectives that we are trying to advance; the agenda is evolving. It is right to consider new ideas such as making homes more secure, and introduce measures to cover them into the Building Act 1984.

I was especially taken with the example that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove gave of double-glazing units whose seal can be removed from the outside. I experienced something similar, so I understand that that is a genuine problem. It is exactly the sort of matter that a building regulation could sensibly tackle by specifying a standard. If the Bill had contained only clause 1, I suspect that it would have been passed without contention.

The hon. Member for Hazel Grove said that the Bill was permissive, and I have no doubt that before any specific regulations were made under it, Ministers would consult widely and conduct a regulatory impact assessment, as they are required to do, and that we would move forward in the evolutionary and measured way that we have always followed for building regulations, without a huge leap leading to all sorts of dislocation.

I am not entirely sure that building regulations are the best or the only vehicle to deal with demolition, but the principle behind the hon. Gentleman's inclusion of the issue in the Bill is sound. I also suggest that there needs to be a joined-up approach. The landfill tax has made a huge difference to the way in which the construction industry approaches demolition. Removing material from a building site and depositing it in landfill is now hugely expensive, and designers of buildings will go to great lengths to ensure that they can recycle as much material as possible on site. That is a tick in the box; we have achieved something already.

Other agendas conflict with this, however. For example, local authority highways departments have standards of their own about the materials allowed to be used as the base material for adoptable roadways. It often happens that where there is a perfect brownfield site with a building to be demolished—and, we hope, recycled—the material cannot be reused because of the regulations for the construction of roadways. There is, therefore, a need to look across the spectrum and to find a joined-up approach. There is also a need to recognise that, just as we might have to absorb some costs in accepting this more sustainable approach, we might also have to compromise in some other areas to achieve the optimum sustainable solution. Bearing in mind those caveats, I believe that clause 1 is well worthy of the House's careful consideration.

Clause 2 is a mixed bag. Subsection (4) introduces security measures into schedule 1 to the Building Act 1984. I have already said that that is okay in relation to installation if we are talking about the windows problem, but it presents a wholly different problem if we are proposing a regime of regular inspection of security systems, because of the recurring cost that that would impose on householders, some of whom might be of quite modest means. I have not refreshed my memory on this matter today, but I seem to remember that my own alarm system, which is inspected four times a year and connected through BT Redcare to a switchboard, costs about £900 a year to maintain. I suggest that such a cost would be well beyond the means of many, if not most, householders. We must be absolutely clear about proportionality here, and I shall return to this issue in due course.

Clause 2(4) also refers to

"monitoring and measuring supplies of electricity".

I thought that I already had such equipment in the form of my electricity meter, but I understand the point made by Matthew Green in his helpful intervention. Subsection (4) also refers to "recycling and composting facilities". Earlier in the debate, it was suggested that regulations about those already exist. I do not know the answer to that, but I would like to tell the House of a specific problem that I have come across, which again emphasises the need for a joined-up agenda.

We would all advocate the maximisation of home composting; it is the most efficient way of dealing with garden and vegetable refuse. If it can be promoted by the very simple and cheap provision of a composting facility at the time of construction, that would certainly be worth looking at. I have discovered, however, that local authorities that have to meet Government targets for recycling waste get credit for composting only if they collect the material—in a vehicle—and take it to be composted at a central composting site. If they give out home composters to individual householders, as my Conservative-controlled borough council in Runnymede has done—that is much the most environmentally friendly way of doing it—they get no credit in the Government's scheme of things. I have written to the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about this issue, and both have acknowledged that it needs to be addressed. It is another example of how simply tackling the hard-wiring by saying, "Let's require people to provide the hardware," is not necessarily going to produce the beneficial results that we seek, unless the whole regime around it is constructed in a way designed to deliver.