My Lords, I welcome these regulations, and in speaking to them I do not want to sound too harshly critical, but I fear that the carbon monoxide provisions do not go far enough. As the Minister said, there are on average 40 deaths a year from carbon monoxide poisoning in the home. The figures that I have—and I speak as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Carbon Monoxide Group—are that more than 4,000 hospitalisations a year are related to carbon monoxide poisoning in one form or another. The problem is that the available figures may seriously underestimate the size of the problem. University College London recently assessed that 6% of the London households it surveyed had a high or very high risk of exposure to carbon monoxide. Public Health England commented in March that,
“the burden of non-fatal accidental CO poisoning in England is higher than the burden from mortality”,
and that,
“the numbers of people admitted to hospital with CO poisoning in England are larger than previously estimated and do not appear to be reducing”.
The cumulative effects of low-level poisoning over time can indeed be lethal and can present as things such as strokes. The All-Party Parliamentary Carbon Monoxide Group, which I co-chair, recommended that
“the Government should ensure that all coroners’ post mortems routinely test for carboxyhemoglobin … levels”,
to see how many cases are missed. I am grateful to the chief coroner who has had a very useful discussions with myself and others and the Gas Safety Trust, which is now piloting with Public Health England a study to develop a protocol for coroners to test for carbon monoxide at post-mortems so that we get an idea of the size of the problem.
The difficulty with the proposed regulations is that they relate to just over 330,000 private rented homes with solid-fuel-burning appliances, but this would protect only a small number of people—roughly 8.2% of those in private rented accommodation—because there is an equally high risk of carbon monoxide poisoning from other fossil-fuel-burning appliances, not just those that burn solid fuel. It particularly names gas. The data collected from coroners’ reports in the past 19 years shows that over 35% of deaths were related to mains gas. The requirement that landlords should install and maintain an audible carbon monoxide alarm in all properties with fuel-burning appliances is laudable; the problem is that it will not protect the remaining 92% of those living in private rented accommodation. Some 4.6 million homes will have other fossil-fuel-burning but not solid-fuel appliances, and are at risk not only from the appliances being badly maintained but from neighbours’ appliances being badly maintained with carbon monoxide leaking through brickwork, through cracks in the walls and cracked flues—and also at risk from some of the cooking practices from some of the families who have come here from abroad, who use tinfoil as a way in which to distribute heat over the top
of the gas stove, when therefore the gas does not burn properly but burns to carbon monoxide. In that way, you get very high levels of carbon monoxide at about waist height, which is of course the level of the children’s heads and faces when they are in the kitchen with their mother.
The problem with testing alarms is, of course, that in asking that the alarm is tested every six to 12 months, I and others would like to see the onus on the landlords to test the alarms, and that they be required to do so annually. Can the Minister clarify what “proper working order” means? Does it mean that the sensor is checked and not just the battery? Only last week, a couple in Devon had a narrow escape from death after their alarm failed to register a leak, which was because of a faulty sensor. The problem is that alarms cannot be a substitute for proper installation and maintenance of fossil-fuel-burning appliances across the board.
I also have a concern that social housing is exempt. A Hackney Homes study of over 22,000 local authority homes found almost 5% carbon monoxide instance per thousand households. The study also found 35% of these instances resulted from a defective gas appliance. Therefore, while these regulations are step one, can step two include social landlords and then, after that, include that every home where there is a fossil-fuel-burning appliance, at the time when that appliance is installed, renewed or serviced, must be fitted with a carbon monoxide alarm? It should also be the case that those providing the service are proper registered Gas Safe services, and those selling the appliances should sell the carbon monoxide alarm at cost price, not at the huge mark-up that there is at the moment.
4.15 pm