§ Mr. Michael Lathamasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will identify the specific nature of the legal difficulty which he has discovered 699W in making building regulations to conserve energy and which was referred to in the reply by the Minister for Housing and Construction to the hon. Member for Melton on 6th July 1976; and what progress he is making in his study of methods of overcoming it.
§ Mr. ArmstrongThe legal problem was one of the timing and interaction of provisions. To activate the relevant amending provisions in the 1974 Act so as to enable formal consultation on new regulations about, for instance, energy conservation, might for a time have distorted the application of the existing regulations. The difficulty did not affect the development of energy proposals, since preliminary informal consultation was desirable. The legal problem has now been resolved and I expect an activating order to be laid in the next few weeks.