Speeches by Norris.

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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 …”

“In our design and preparation of the regulations we did all the impact assessments that you would expect, whether that is for environmental or equality responsibilities. In Government we have discussed the challenges and the impact that it might have on supply. I think that speaks to why we have given more time for the…”

“They say exactly the same thing to me, and our view is exactly the same. We just want to have that good and appropriate balance that means that the process works effectively but still holds safety at its heart.”

“One of the very important recommendations in the inquiry was the establishment of a panel to assess and bring forward ideas on building control. We are setting that up very soon. It is a real challenge within the system, as it is with fire risk assessors. Unless you have enough high-quality building control professiona…”

“I expect the announcement of the chair to be any day now. Can I just say it—it is probably easier? It is going to be Judith Hackitt. I keep telling people, but it was never clear whether we had announced it or not. We have asked Dame Judith Hackitt to chair it, and she has said that she will. We are now pulling togethe…”

“It will be advisory in the sense that it is not statutory. We have largely asked Judith to convene her own team. When you had Philip White before the Committee, he was about to go on to a session with the industry responsibility group—I am getting its name slightly wrong. I mean the coalition of the willing, as they ca…”

“At the moment, building control is keeping its head above water. I am more worried about down the line. We need to ensure that we are growing and developing the workforce, and that we have an environment where that practice that is as safe as possible. That is what I am particularly motivated by.”

“I would not say that my personal view would be that it should be a 50:50 split, because the size is different and the estate is different, and we should always match up against risk. I will confess that I am still a little bit in the foothills of this, but having looked at it, I think that a third of the resources of t…”

“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 …”

“I would want form to follow function, such as on whether deadlines were not being met—well, it is quite hard to believe that statutory deadlines would not be met. But if there were concerns raised about quality, that sort of thing would tell you whether the resourcing was not right, but I would wait to see that before …”

“Yes. We are having those conversations in great detail. Prior to the machinery of government change, I already had responsibility for local resilience, so that linked to those local resilience forums across the country. There is a broader national resilience review in the context of the findings of this inquiry and in …”

“I read very closely what Edward Daffarn said in the previous session. He recognised some of the progress that had been made with the council, but the gap is exactly as you characterise it. I do not think you can decouple it from the conversation we had at the very start about quality and culture by those social housing…”