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11.16 am
Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South): My hon. Friend the Minister referred to my state of health. I noted her touching concern, but it is not my health that I am worried about; it is the health of the town that I represent. In St. Helens we make all the products that we have been discussing: we make the glass for double glazing, we make the wall insulation, we have Ibstock brick. I therefore have a considerable vested interest in energy conservation and insulation.
I remind my hon. Friend the Minister, however, that I am not a believer in the "apple pie and clotted cream" school of politics which seems to have entered the House in about 1987. I have seen Ministers come and go, and no doubt I will see a few more come and go before my time is up. I have consistently and persistently attacked the building regulations, because, by and large, they are a load of rubbish.
As for the Bill, although I support it, it needs an awful lot of amendment. I say that cold-bloodedly. We are back with the apple pie and clotted cream brigade. The 1995 amendments to the regulations were not improvements;
they were tinkering by the "We will play to the gallery; gosh, we are going to do something about it" brigade. If in the months ahead the Government produce any regulations along those lines, they can expect me to be equally critical.
Mr. McWilliam:
The warmest home I ever owned was a Georgian flat in Edinburgh that was built 200 years ago, before there were any building regulations.
Mr. Bermingham:
I am not surprised. The warmest house I ever owned was built at about the same time. Metal ties between the inner and outer walls were not used in those days, and, as my hon. Friend knows, metal ties are the best way of losing heat in a building because the heat flows along them, regardless of the amount of cavity insulation. The Swedes, who are practical people, use plastic ties. Heat does not flow along them. That is the sort of minor point that our building regulators overlook. They talk about single, double and triple glazing. The measures that we are discussing are more efficient, but we do not cater for them in our public or our private build, because it might increase the expense. And look at all the cowboy builders there are! My learned friend--I am sorry; I thought I was somewhere else for a moment. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam) will doubtless mention that if he is called to speak. If we are to increase efficiency, we have to examine this matter root and branch, not tinker with it and say:
I do not know. I do not understand that sort of thing anyway. I know whether a house is warm and efficient. It is all very well talking in such language, but if the Secretary of State says, "The calculation shall be according to this formula or that formula," there will be arguments over the formula.
What qualifications will we ask of the surveyor? Modern valuation surveyors come in all shapes and sizes. Some are qualified, some are not. Some estate agents have not a qualified person in the premises. That is a problem. The whole profession is not regulated or controlled. There are no professional standards.
If we were to say that every estate agent has to be a qualified quantity surveyor or a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, fine, but what about the boy who is sent to look at No. 32 Redbrick avenue, who says, "The next door neighbour's house sold for £32,000, the one on the other side sold for £42,000, so let us take an average of £37,000"? That is what happens; I notice the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) nodding in agreement.
That is the guy to whom we are going to say, "Tell us what the heat loss valuation is and what improvements are needed." If he does not know what sort of ties are in the wall, how will he know what sort of insulation we need? How will he know what the density and quantity of the insulation is? It is the world of make-believe. Can we come to the world of reality? That is what the Bill should be doing: bringing us to the world of reality.
The Minister will say, "Of course I will take advice from my civil servants and we will be told by the institutes," but they all have a vested interest in this. What we should saying is, "Let us examine the matter root and branch. Let us go back to when we build houses, whether they be flats or houses in the private sector or public sector. These are the standards and qualities that we will build to." We should not tinker with the building regulations, but examine them root and branch again. We should say what sort of material should be used, what the quality of material should be, and the quality to which properties should be built.
I look again at the building industry, and I regret to have to say this. There are some very good builders, but there are some awful cowboys around as well and they are building houses that will fall over unless they are propped up in a few years' time. As a practising lawyer--I declare an interest because, in my time, I have prosecuted a few people in relation to this sort of thing; no doubt I will prosecute a few more before I am done--I have witnessed the sheer criminality of the way in which people are exploited.
A home is the essential part of any person's life. It is the most important thing that any of us will ever acquire or seek to acquire, whether it be rented or purchased. We have a right to expect that that home should be of a merchantable quality.
Therefore, we have to examine the building industry and say, "Right. Let us look at the quality of the products." I do not think anyone would criticise the major manufacturers, which include Pilkington and Ibstock, both of which are in my constituency. They are world leaders, so our materials are first class. Our architects are first class, but let us consider our builders. They range from the superb to the ridiculous, so we have to have quality control there.
For quality control, we need local authorities, their building departments and inspection departments. I go back to my intervention during the speech of the hon. Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Burnett), when I raised the quality of inspection.
There is an old phrase that I have heard many a time, "Pay peanuts and you get monkeys." Why not pay building inspectors properly? Over the years, we have had no end of problems. Why not let local authorities have the funding? Of course I speak about money, which is a terrible thing to speak about in this day and age, but I say unashamedly: if we invest at the beginning, we acquire something that has value and lasts; if we do not have the right inspection processes, we will not have the lasting quality that we require and, as a nation, deserve.
We will now be building for the next 1,000 years, the next millennium, so why not improve and support local government by providing the resources and funding that is necessary for proper inspector?
Mr. McWilliam:
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. All too often, the required qualification for a building inspector is a fairly close relationship to the chairman of housing.
Mr. Bermingham:
I say nothing. My hon. Friend has, I think, had some experience of Scottish politics.
As I say, if we start at inspectorate level, we achieve quality control.
There used to a television show many years ago that said, "Never mind the quality, feel the width." I know some bricklayers who say, "Never mind the quality, look at the length I have laid in one day and that is where I get my money from." That is not quality control, which is essential in all this.
When we have quality control in the building industry, we will get houses that will last and are warm, air tight and all the other things that we require. This is not a simple issue. I support the Bill, but it is tinkering with the real issues: quality control, the quality of the properties that we build, the materials we use and the way in which properties are built.
That is why I say to the Minister that I look forward and long for proper building regulations, properly implemented and properly enforced. In that way, we will not need such Bills because our houses will be insulated and our energy losses will be minimal. There are ways to achieve that.
The other day, I was asked to examine a property, not professionally, but by a friend who wanted to show me because I had told him about the Bill. He had hacked away part of the wall. He looked at the ties and there was water all over them. What value those ties if we insulated that wall?
Mr. McWilliam:
Worse than that, with water all over the ties, the house will be damp because it cannot insulate against the water.
Mr. Bermingham:
That is right. That is the sort of thing that we should be talking about.
"Each mortgage lender,"--
whoever that might mean; I shall return to that--
"as part of any survey or valuation required by it and in accordance with guidance given by the Secretary of State, shall
What is the basis of the information? Are we going to examine how the property is actually built? Are we going to say to the surveyor who has been sent by the building society, "Gosh, you have to provide this and say how many joules are lost per hour", or whatever measurement is used? How will the magistrate understand what the basis of the information is?
(a) provide the borrower with information".
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