My Lords, for the second time today, I shall speak on behalf of my noble friend Lord Northbrook, who cannot be in his place.
Amendment 242 seeks to make access to planning-related British standards available to everyone free online. Should every citizen not have a right to see relevant British standards free of charge? The cost of gaining access to them at the moment is not exactly modest. A few days ago, an inquiry was made about buying BS5228, which relates to noise and disturbance from construction sites, from the BSI website. The charge for part 1 was £298 and for part 2 was £356—a grand total of £654, which is no mean sum.
What is needed, I suggest on behalf of my noble friend, is an instruction to the British Standards Institution, which publishes the standards online or grants online access to them via public libraries. In Committee the Minister insisted that, as his colleague in another place wrote,
“The BSI are an independent organisation and we therefore cannot compel them to publish some, or indeed any, of their standards without charge”.
May I press my noble friend a little on this? Surely there must be numerous independent organisations referred to in statute whose publications are made available without charge on the internet. For example, air source heat pumps are legally required to comply with MCS planning standards or equivalent standards. The relevant microgeneration installation standard MCS 020 is the property of the MCS charitable foundation and is published on the internet for anyone to read without charge. Why cannot BSI do the same? The principle is clear; British citizens should not have to pay to find out about legal obligations with which they have to comply.
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My noble friend objected in Committee, saying that the amendment would destroy the funding integrity of the British Standards Institution. However, since Committee, it has emerged that Libraries NI, the largest single library authority in our country, has introduced free online access to a full database of more than 100,000 British, European and international standards. This amendment is infinitely more modest. It seeks free online access only to British standards related to planning, which must represent a small minority of the total made available in Northern Ireland. So, the question arises: if what this amendment seeks has already been accepted in Northern Ireland, why not in the rest of our country? I am all in favour of every opportunity to bring Great Britain into line with the many good things that have been found in Northern Ireland. The Government claim to be keen to promote digital accessibility. Here is an opportunity for them to do so. I beg to move.