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The presence of potentially unsafe cladding—and I stress the phrase “potentially unsafe”, because, as I have said, we are confident that the assessments will find the majority of buildings to be safe—has had a significant impact on people. Indeed, I have met people in my region who are in that situation—I am sure that other members will have had the same experience—and we in the Government get regular correspondence from people who are unable to move.

However, I come back to the point that this is the fundamental reason for carrying out the single building assessments, and the progress on that was reported in the cabinet secretary’s statement. We are taking action to roll the approach out faster and to more buildings. We fully expect that most buildings will be found to be safe; however, where any risk is found, it should be remediated, and the Government has always made it clear that developers have to play their part and step up to remedy buildings with unsafe cladding. Even some of the people to whom I have spoken who are in this extremely difficult situation are not making the case—or, at least, have not made the case to me—that the taxpayer should effectively bail out developers in meeting a cost that it is believed they ought to bear. There is a general acceptance that the developer community needs to play its part in ensuring that that work takes place.

Some of the relevant powers here are reserved to the UK Government, particularly around insurance. The regulation of insurance is not something that we are able to intervene in through devolved powers. Insurance premiums are obviously a matter for individual insurers. We are working with the Association of British Insurers through the cladding stakeholder group and, through that forum, we are seeking fair treatment for home owners by the insurance industry.

The answers to all the issues lie in working together to reach solutions that will work for people, and that will include insurers and lenders. As for what we believe would help people most, where developers or others step up to carry out remediation work, the insurers should trust the single building assessment process to deliver a safe building and return the market to acceptable premium levels.

I was pleased to hear from the committee’s meeting last week that the ABI and many of its member companies welcome the single building assessment approach and what it can deliver.

The compliance plan manager would have responsibility for all aspects of compliance—not only for the fire safety issues that we have talked about, but for wider compliance with building regulations

It might be worth our while to write to the committee with an update on the pilot that Stephen Garvin mentioned, and to let members know how it is developing and when we expect to be able to evaluate it more fully.

It is pretty clear that building standards are continuously under review and evolving. Since I have been a member of the Scottish Parliament, there have been regular updates and continuous incremental improvements to building standards.

As Stephen Garvin indicated, there are differences in context between Scotland and England. We need to ensure that we hear from the widest range of stakeholders about the Scottish situation, and we need to continue to develop and improve based on the challenges and requirements here, rather than to echo actions that are taken in England, for the English context.

Throughout all this—and I am afraid to say that this happens quite often—it has been difficult to get clarity from the UK Government in a timely way either on the consequentials that are available or, indeed, on other ways in which we might have worked together more closely and more collaboratively to address this entire issue. Miles Briggs will recall the frustration that the cabinet secretary expressed in the statement about the inability of not just the Scottish Government but the Welsh Government to successfully make the case for the UK to work constructively and around the same table with us on a shared and coherent response to this situation. I also point out that some of the approaches that the UK Government is taking for England alone make use of the availability of UK-level reserve powers. There is a great deal in this entire situation about which one could have made a very strong case for collaborative working between the Governments in the UK, and it is not for want of trying that that has not happened.

As for the work that needs to happen now, we clearly have to continue with the single building assessment to identify where specific changes need to be made and to work not only with home and building owners but with the developer community to ensure that this activity can be funded.

The new building regulations are broadly in line with the proposition that was consulted on, and the response to the consultation was supportive of the general approach that we are taking.

Dr Garvin might wish to add something about the origin and why 11m was considered as part of the development of the proposal.

The current standards resulted from a specific review of the type of cladding materials that have been causing the most significant concern since Grenfell, and the specific changes in this set of regulations will address those issues. Nonetheless, it is clear that the wider transformation of the energy performance of our homes needs to be undertaken in a way that is not only safe in terms of fire risk, but which contributes to healthy air quality in buildings and addresses direct energy issues. I do not know whether Steven Scott or Stephen Garvin wants to add anything from an energy or fire perspective.

The standard introduces a requirement to mitigate the risk of summer overheating in new homes and new residential buildings that are used in a similar way. We are aware that that is a lower risk in Scotland than in other parts of the UK, but it is important that we establish that overheating can be considered a risk in new build, and that we examine how to mitigate the likely impacts of our future climate.

The initial provisions take a fairly simple approach, focusing on the issues of heat gain through windows and the removal of heat build-up through effective ventilation. There is also an option to model the risk for more unusual or highly glazed building types. Designers will address that by limiting excessive heat gained through the location and specification of windows and by improving the ventilation of buildings. Those measures will provide occupiers with more assurance that their homes are warm and easy to heat, but also comfortable in the summer months.

Our proposal is that, under the 2024 new-build heat standard, direct emissions heating systems will no longer be permitted in new buildings. A further consultation this summer will set out details of plans to remove gas, oil and biofuel boilers as options from 2024. The 2022 regulations still permit the construction of new homes with those heating systems, but they set more challenging overall emissions and energy performance targets. The 2022 standards will ask for any building with a direct emissions heating system to be designed for a simple future retrofit and the installation of a zero direct emissions source, with information on that option to be provided to the owner.

From this year, wet heating systems in all new buildings should be designed to operate at lower temperatures to optimise the efficient operation of zero direct emissions systems such as heat pumps in the future.

Once again, I turn to my officials for support on the detailed aspects of that question.