Chamber and committees

Does Miles Briggs agree that it is not just about ministers having reporting duties but about action, so that people actually get work done on their properties? I am less interested in hearing from the minister on how he is doing; I want to know what is happening on the ground.

I know that the minister has not been in post for long, but I can tell him that a number of us, including Jeremy Balfour and me, have been going on about this issue for years, and we have demanded action from the Scottish Government, which has not come. As the committee report states,

“Progress with cladding remediation programme in Scotland has been slow, with just one building out of 105 so far having remediation works carried out. The Scottish Government has introduced this Bill in order to address some of the issues behind these delays.”

There is a sharp contrast between the pace of response here and in England. I do not seek to make any political capital out of that—it is just a fact. As far back as 2020, I and others, including Mr Balfour, were calling for a ban on combustible cladding in Scotland, but that appeared to be too difficult a concept to grasp. The lack of urgency here in Scotland is illustrated by this point from the committee report:

“the Scottish Government has committed to ensuring that all 105 buildings”

in its remediation programme

“are on a pathway to a single building assessment by summer 2024. In contrast, as of December 2023, in England 1,608 buildings (42%) have either started or completed remediation works. Of these, 797 buildings (21%) have completed remediation works.”

It goes on to say:

“Of the £97m so far provided by the UK Government to the Scottish Government for the purposes of cladding remediation”,

just £7 million has been spent, which is 7 per cent.

Those issues have been known about for some time, but despite that, the bill is rushed. It suffers from vague language, which has no place in legislation. The Law Society of Scotland highlighted concerns about a lack of clarity around the definitions of “Development”, “Risk to human life”, “Undergone development” and “Premises”, and around the

“interrelationship between ‘single-building assessment’, ‘single-building assessment report’ and works.”

That is not good enough, and if the bill is to proceed, it must be vastly improved, but after listening to the minister earlier, I am not filled with much hope that it will be improved.

Secondary legislation has its place, but I do not like to see it overused. The committee says that it can allow some flexibility in the operation of the responsible developers scheme, but the lack of detail currently available creates significant concern for developers, and it quite rightly calls for the inclusion of greater detail in the primary legislation in relation to that scheme. Therefore, I expect the committee’s support if I lodge an amendment to that effect.

Members will know that I chair the tenement maintenance working group, which reported in the previous parliamentary session. We have been dealing with some of the issues that are covered in the committee’s excellent report. We reconvened this session, and we are working with the Scottish Law Commission, which is doing extensive work ahead of producing proposed legislation, probably in the next session. That is hardly a rush job.

I asked some of our experts to cast their eyes over the bill and suggest where it could be improved. We have alighted on section 6 of the bill, which gives the Scottish ministers power to arrange remediation work that has been identified in the single building assessment report as being needed to

“eliminate or mitigate risks to human life that are (directly or indirectly) created or exacerbated by the building’s external wall cladding system.”

However, SBAs that have been carried out under the pilot scheme have identified other fire safety-related works, such as a lack of adequate fire escapes. I will be looking at an amendment to tackle that.

Homes for Scotland has outlined some key and rather obvious concerns. It is not clear what a single building assessment actually is. The cladding assurance register is fine to keep a record of what properties have been remediated to date, but there is a lack of clarity on what information will be provided, the obligations of which parties are required to complete work for registration, who will be responsible for continual monitoring, and the timescales and scope for the inclusion of properties.

On the responsible developers scheme—again, we got no joy from the minister earlier on this—there is not enough information on how that might work and who is covered, but it gives the Scottish Government the ability to prevent businesses from operating in Scotland if they fail to comply with terms that are not yet known. That is not good enough, and that is quite different from the situation in England.

My view is that the bill as it stands is not good enough. I am disappointed by the minister’s response so far. I will very reluctantly support the bill’s general principles, but that support will expire if there are no improvements as the bill progresses.

One of the criticisms of the responsible developers scheme, and of the bill in general, is a lack of clarity. For example, we do not have enough information on how the scheme might work and who would be covered. Can the minister tell us that, and how open is he to dealing with sensible amendments to the bill to clear up some of the confusion around it?

Let us start at the beginning. Other members have rightly said that the whole issue began when Grenfell tower turned into an inferno in June 2017, killing 72 people. It was a scandalous mass tragedy that could have been avoided had inflammable cladding not been on the building.

One would think that there would have been a UK-wide response to find out which other buildings had unsafe cladding, schemes in all parts of the UK to help home owners who were unable to sell, a ban on said unsafe cladding and a programme of removal, but here we are, nearly seven years on, with a bill that the Scottish Government did not even consult on.

What does Willie Coffey understand by the phrase “tolerable risk”?

Would the member want that level of detail in the bill?

We will probably ask you about the A9 later, but would you describe the A9 as a programme or a project?

Alyson Stafford, you have been asked a couple of times about the capital grant from the UK Government. Just so I can get it clear in my own mind, what was the overall block grant, and was it up or down on last year?

Overall. Everything—capital and revenue.

Right.