Parliament has been full of eye-catching things recently. Unfortunately for us, most of that has not been related to consultation, but to the behaviour of politicians, and whilst we managed to find an angle on that before, this time we could do little but repeat that article verbatim. But the naughtiness of men and ministers is beyond us to comment on today, so what else has been happening in the corridors of power?

Westminster

One of the items on the agenda in Westminster this week was the Building Safety Bill, the Government’s major post-Grenfell reworking of building safety regulation, currently  undergoing ping-pong between the Lords and the Commons. We’ve touched upon it a few times passim, because there have been many arguments about the degree and quality of the consultation. One of the big issues has been the problem of leaseholders being passed fees for the costs of remedial works to bring them in line with new regulations. This has naturally caused some consternation for residents, who have sometimes been faced with enormous bills.

Whilst some measures had already been announced to deal with the issue, it remained for some of those living as leaseholders in commonhold and collectively enfranchised buildings, where there was no real external owner to bear the costs. An amendment to address this was introduced in the Lords, and the Government has now announced a consultation on how leaseholders in such buildings can be protected from the costs.

This hasn’t gone down entirely well with some MPs, who are determined that action should be taken in the Bill, rather than delayed until after consultation. From our point of view this is one of the occasions where consultation is likely to be eminently suitable and appropriate, as this problem may well require a innovative solution. Most of the remainder of the Bill is predicated on passing costs on to owners who might either have built the buildings, or have a greater capacity to properly assess and absorb the costs of amendments. With commonhold and collective enfranchisement arrangements, that isn’t so easy as the ownership structure is likely to fall more on individuals, rather than corporate entities.

A consultation here may well produce a more innovative and appropriate solution- many minds working on a problem is likely to bring in a variety of thought that you might not conventionally see were a Government department just to declare a solution. We’ll take a look at the consultation when it emerges, and see what we reckon.

Scotland

Out of Holyrood this week, we see an announcement that the Scottish Government intend to consult on bringing forward plans to make certain misogynistic behaviours standalone offence beyond the regular framework of hate crime law. The Kennedy review, published last month by Baroness Kennedy QC recommended the creation of three new criminal offences around misogynistic attacks against women and girls. In the UK, an amendment to introduce these into the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill was rejected by MPs.

Like all such consultations, it should be an interesting one to watch. Gender and sex related consultations draw strong views on all sides, and it’s often the strongest or most extreme voices that end up being highlighted, often to the expense of ‘ordinary’ stakeholders. Whilst the Scottish Government tends towards the more socially aware sides of these arguments, they have had issues in the past, particularly with the Gender Recognition Bill, which even after multiple consultations still looks like it will have a difficult passage. Whilst the issues there are slightly more charged, we should still expect this one to have a lot of vigorous discussion- always a time when it becomes even more critical to get the consultation right.