My Lords, I shall be brief, because there will probably be another vote soon in the House. We are very happy to support the two amendments tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for her comprehensive introduction.
We know that local authorities, as we heard, are responsible for determining whether their land is contaminated. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, talked about the grants that her authority has been waiting for to clean up land. It is really important that these grants are dealt with quickly, because it can be incredibly expensive to clean up contamination. If we are to use brownfield sites, local authorities need to be able to do so in a way that is cost effective for them. That was an important point.
We are also aware that availability of land is one of the biggest barriers to building at the moment. The government targets for housebuilding mean that, in particularly populated areas such as the south-east, any additional homes are more likely to be built on previously developed brownfield land. No one would want to build on contaminated land by choice, but “brownfield” does not necessarily mean that land is contaminated. We need to be clear about this.
However, there is a need to ensure that houses constructed on sites affected by contamination are built to the appropriate standards, including those next to an area of contamination. We need to know where the contaminated land is so that we can do these checks properly. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, things such as flooding can bring contamination across a very wide area, with, as we have heard, sadly catastrophic consequences. As she said, on the surface of it, Zane’s law seems pretty simple and straightforward to implement. If we can identify the size and scale in every part of the country where contamination is, that would be a very logical starting point to prevent future risk to life and support local authorities in tackling the whole issue of contamination so that we understand it better as we move forward with more development and housing. I hope the Minister will listen to this, because it seems to me that Zane’s law ought to be supported.