My Lords, the amendment before the House today is greatly simplified from the one that I tabled in Committee. It is a regulation-making power, and that is all. It would allow the Government time to gather information from the review that was helpfully announced today. Northern Ireland and Scotland have already introduced a requirement to fit carbon monoxide alarms when new or replacement boilers or heating appliances are installed in a dwelling. In England and Wales a domestic carbon monoxide alarm is required only when a new or replacement solid fuel appliance is installed, and does not apply to other types of fossil fuel.
So far as we know, there has never been a death from carbon monoxide in the UK when an audible alarm has been present. The first part of the amendment concerns a recommendation from the inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Carbon Monoxide Group, which I chair, which recommended that the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 be amended to require all rented properties to be fitted with an audible carbon monoxide alarm, manufactured to European Standard EN 50921. The amendment’s wording would ensure that any property, including local authority housing, rented housing, holiday lets, rented static caravans and other high-risk properties received attention around carbon monoxide that they currently lack. All carbon fuels, including biomass, are covered in the text of the amendment.
As I said in Committee, recorded figures on carbon monoxide poisoning are the tip of an iceberg. The true morbidity and mortality remain unrecorded. The current increases in fuel prices, along with the increased cost of living, mean that many are likely to forgo the annual servicing of appliances. Initiatives to increase home insulation have decreased draughts in houses, effectively making them sealed units, so that if carbon monoxide is produced the concentration steadily rises and thereby endangers life.
The second part of the amendment relates to fire and rescue services, such as the Chief Fire Officers Association voluntary Blue Watch scheme, which attempts
to address the national absence of carbon monoxide alarms. It would allow others who fit or service fuel sources or appliances or meter fuel usage to supply, sell and fit an alarm. A co-ordinated fire rescue service response was shown with smoke detectors. Before the regulations changed, about 8% of homes had smoke detectors; now over 80% of households have a working smoke alarm.
The final part of the amendment would require a statutory instrument to be laid. That would ensure that Parliament was aware of the progress being made in addressing this silent killer, and would demonstrate how seriously the Government were taking the issue of these preventable deaths. I beg to move.