Speeches by Norris.

“I am not sure of the distinction between the two things, so I would not want to say something that I cannot deliver on. To be clear, the picture that I as Minister look at regularly with Ben, Catherine and the team—that picture of the recommendation, what we are doing and what we will do next—is what will go into the p…”

“It is important to say that those organisations can access the building safety fund—previously, the cladding safety scheme. But I accept—they have said this to me directly—that what they have to do in order to do that, which is to say that the cost would make their entity unviable, is not a very attractive prospect. I …”

“Absolutely—we cannot have this component of that process take a year. I totally agree: it is weeks, not a year. In terms of lobbying, I am engaged very frequently by the industry, and I get a lot of correspondence. I signed a letter back to one of the developers only yesterday. The onus is on me to make it operationall…”

“This is a conversation I am having on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis with the industry. We have a significant target of 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament. The Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and we as a Department have been clear that that is not in contest with building safety. It is not seen as a trade…”

“Yes. I meet them frequently. The next time I see them will be mid-afternoon on Thursday. On a final point about non-qualifying leasehold, there is the enduring question of the “in perpetuity” status of non-qualifying leases. I can understand the original intention, in the sense that once remediation is done, it is esse…”

“The most important thing for anybody living in those buildings is the remediation of them, and the right day for that was yesterday—or five years-worth of yesterdays. We acknowledged that. I can speak only to what I said earlier: we are trying to bring that forward for all buildings to the quickest practical level. Tha…”

“As you say, we have gone to the point of mandatory sprinklers for new facilities. The judgment made on impact was that, for existing facilities, the building owners need to manage that fire risk. It could be by the installation of sprinklers by choice. That way, there could be alternative models depending on the constr…”

“The tracker that we publish quarterly will reflect our departmental position. There will always be, as you would expect, internal debates and conversations about the best ways to do things, but what we put in the public domain will reflect what we are talking about and what we think. It will be a very sober reflection …”

“Having looked at the previous evidence, I have reflected on the point about marking our own homework. I have to say that in preparing for this Committee I did not feel like I was marking my own homework. I feel—as you all look back at me in this way—like my homework is very much being marked for me. Similarly, when I s…”

“The oversight mechanism is something that, exactly as you say, Ms Smith, the Grenfell bereaved and survivors, and next of kin, campaign for compellingly, as do families affected by Hillsborough and by the infected blood scandal—I’m afraid that, sadly, you could line up scandal and failure of the British state after sca…”

“I am Alex Norris, the Member of Parliament for Nottingham North and Kimberley. I am the Minister for building safety and, at some point today, fire.”

“I really, really want to get on with this. That is the reason for a sharp 45-day consultation. The Green Paper reflected long-running conversations with industry. I think Philip White said it in the previous session: products are a bit of an underpriced element in the safety regime. I think people would be surprised th…”

“There are gaps in the system that it could help to target. First, we are having to crunch 11 to 18 metres. The very good people at Homes England are going through this building by building by building. For buildings over 18 metres, there is an obligation for a building owner to say, “Hey, I’ve got an over 18-metre buil…”

“We want consolidated regulation. The remit that we are starting from is the remit within the inquiry report. The only exceptions to that—and this may be another line of questioning—are that, because of the potential conflicts of interest, actual direct testing and certification should happen outside the regulator itsel…”

“The chief construction adviser will come shortly, which will then lead us to the prospectus publication in the autumn. Not all of that will be legislative, but quite a bit will be. We will then have to bring forward legislation—I cannot run ahead of King’s Speeches in terms of Sessions and similar, but we know we need …”

“Absolutely.”

“We will be looking very closely at what you report here as part of our development process as well. On the outstanding question, Mr Cocking, I have had this conversation with the shadow Secretary of State, because he has had a different view to me on this. I think pretty much everybody seems to be aligned around the th…”

“It will be for the Government of the day to ensure that it has the capacity. Very much in the spirit that I mentioned to Mr Forster, there has to be a regime that feels onerous to work with because that is how you know it is working, but there is a responsibility on everyone to make sure that within that the processes …”

“The machinery of government change we have made reflects what was in the report. That is the transfer of fire functions from the Home Office to MHCLG so that building and safety and fire—as it has been, as it has moved in and out between MHCLG and the Home Office—are consolidated under one roof. The exception to that i…”

“I do not think that that would be a reasonable conclusion to draw. The reality is you have a single inspectorate so you have two choices: you either make a division of that organisation, in which case I think you have to say what goal that is in pursuit of, or you have a hosting Department, which is what the Home Offic…”