Fire Safety Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]]

So, here we are again debating the Fire Safety Bill and the Lords amendments to it. The key issue here is not whether we enshrine in law the requirements on fire safety but who ends up paying for them. The reality is, as the Father of the House mentioned, that the £5.1 billion offered by the Government thus far will be insufficient to cover the remediation and fire safety costs identified not only in tall buildings but in lower buildings as well. The key issue, then, is that it is going to take some five years for the work to be carried out, and that leaseholders are receiving bills now of £50,000 or more in order for the work to be carried out. They can ill afford it.

The Government are committed to producing the Building Safety Bill, but we know that it will be announced in the Queen’s Speech and that it will probably take 18 months to two years before it is live and operational. Leaseholders do not have the luxury of that time. They are being charged the money right now. We still do not know the details of the forced loan scheme that the Government are offering for leaseholders in buildings below six storeys. We have been asking to scrutinise it, so we can see whether it is fit for purpose or whether it will even work.

I have had the honour and privilege of serving on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee for the past 11 years. We are publishing a report on cladding and the other issues tomorrow. Obviously I am not allowed to pre-disclose the details, but it is fair to say that we are critical of the way in which the Government are approaching this necessary means. I urge the Minister for Housing, who is a good friend for whom I have every respect, to let us have some commitments from the Front Bench in his answer to this debate, and to tell us what he will do to ensure that leaseholders are prevented from having to bear these unnecessary and unacceptable costs. Let us also have some commitments on when we will see the proposed forced loan scheme. Let us have some commitments on when we can expect to see the Building Safety Bill brought into operation, and some overall commitment to ensure that people living in unmortgageable, unsaleable flats are given appropriate comfort, because, frankly, without that, we will have to support the Lords amendment to ensure that the Government come back with these proposals early in the new Session.

Let us make sure that we send the message to leaseholders out there: you should not have to pay a penny piece to rectify the problems that are not your fault in the first place. I shall be supporting the Lords amendment once again today.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab) [V]]

This Bill has been passing backwards and forwards between the Lords and Commons because the Government will not do the right thing and protect leaseholders from the ruinous costs of replacing cladding and remediating internal fire safety defects during construction. By refusing to do so, the Government are making liars out of all the successive Ministers—and, indeed, a Prime Minister—who have told this House that leaseholders should not pay for building defects for which they are not responsible.

Today I want to focus on the impact of the EWS1 regulations and the callous way in which another operator, FirstPort, is treating vulnerable residents in Blackberry Court in my constituency. FirstPort has written to the 27 leaseholders in Blackberry Court, which is a two-storey block of flats, to advise them that the fire safety work will cost more than £20,000. It has not provided a breakdown of costs or issued a section 20 notice, as it is legally obliged to do for any work costing more than £250 per leaseholder. What is most disturbing, however, is that FirstPort has been demanding access to the roof void through the only loft hatch, which is located in the bedroom of my constituent, who is an elderly lady of 94 years of age. FirstPort would brook no objection to this until I intervened to forestall this intrusion and asked it to create new access to the roof void from the common parts of the building. But the fact that it had not yet been able to access the void to survey it means that it must already have been aware that there was no compartmentation in the roof space. Indeed, I have discovered that Blackberry Court, which was built in 2007, never got a completion certificate, despite being covered by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. That prompts the question of why the company had not acted on this fire safety defect before. Some may suspect that the properties were unsaleable and devalued—unless the work was done—because of the EWS1 form. The Government did change the requirements on the form, but the Minister knows that the banks and the mortgage lenders have not changed their stance, nor have the insurers.

Fire Safety Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]]

I start from the principle that successive Secretaries of State and Ministers have said from the Dispatch Box that the leaseholders are the innocent parties in this scandal and that they should not have to pay a penny piece towards the costs of remediation. I applaud the Government for coming forward with £5.1 billion of public money to support the remediation of unsafe cladding, but our problem is that it is not enough. The estimate now is that £15 billion will be required and that the extra £10 billion will have to come from leaseholders as the last resort, because building owners will naturally pass that on to leaseholders wherever they possibly can. They are the ones in situ; they are the ones facing these huge bills.

The Government say that further proposals will come forward on the forced loan scheme. We were promised in the earlier statement in February that the loan scheme would be announced at the Budget. Now, I did make the assumption that that was the Budget in 2021, not the Budget in 2022 or 2023. The reality is that the evidence given to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee and other bodies suggests that the forced loan scheme is nowhere near being available. We as Members of Parliament are not even able to scrutinise the proposal, so those who are living in blocks of flats of six floors or less do not even know how that scheme will work. My estimate is that many people will end up with a bill that will last for 100 years, therefore factoring in, almost inevitably, a dramatic reduction in the value of their properties. Equally, we know that the fire safety remediation required in addition to the remediation of unsafe cladding almost dwarfs the costs of remediating the cladding. All those costs will once again be passed on to the innocent leaseholders.

I understand that my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench has to defend this position and clearly wants to get the Fire Safety Bill on the statute book. Let us be clear. I do not think any MP wishes to prevent the progress of the Fire Safety Bill. What we do need, however, is surety and assuredness, because the draft Building Safety Bill will almost certainly take 18 months to two years to bring to fruition. The leaseholders do not have that time to wait. My right hon. Friend the Minister has made it clear on a number of occasions that he finds the amendments defective. Well, there is still time. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) that there is a solution. If the Government reject that solution, let them come forward with their own solution in the House of Lords. Let us agree that the leaseholders do not have to pay a penny and the Fire Safety Bill can go on the statute book, as we would all like to see.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab) [V]]

The Minister should be very careful. The speeches in this debate today are an example of Parliament at its best and Government at their worst. The Minister has heard Members from across the House, and from his own party in particular, criticise what the Government are doing. He would be a very wise Minister to listen to Parliament. If he refuses to listen, I think he should think about his future.

In March this year, leaseholders in Wembley Central apartments in my constituency were told that in response to the publication by the Government of the Building (Amendment) Regulations 2018, a waking watch system would be implemented as soon as possible. The cost of the waking watch patrols would be recovered from leaseholders in the sum of £91,380 a month. The cost of the remedial works to the fire alarm system across Central Apartments, Ramsey House and Metro Apartments is estimated to be in the order of £250,000 to £300,000. The owners said that they were unable to say the total cost of all four recommendations and that they therefore could not advise the liability of each leaseholder.

I find it unacceptable that the Government are imposing billions of pounds of costs on leaseholders retrospectively to remedy misconduct by others, such as the developer, the builder or those producing the Government’s own advisory documents and in particular building regulations control. The fire survey for these particular buildings said:

“There is evidence that the junctions between compartment floors were inadequately fire stopped…as there were gaps at mineral wool fire barriers at steel framing. There were no visible fire barriers at vents or around windows/door frames and it could not be confirmed that the window/door frames themselves formed cavity barriers.”

That indicates that at the time of construction the building regulations then in force were not followed. That means that these people were sold a building that was not fit for habitation, yet the Government are not pursuing the people responsible; they are making sure that it is the innocent parties who will pay. Their lives are being ruined, as Members in all parts of this House have said. It is vital that the Government address this and accept the Lords amendment. In particular, they need to focus on addressing the very real issues in building control regulations that allowed this scandal to happen in the first place.

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

The Government’s plan and funding to address this fire safety issue are a welcome start. I am not going to rehearse the points already made this afternoon, but I believe that the role of affordable home ownership schemes in this disaster has been overlooked.

Many people engulfed in this scandal are first-time buyers who took their first step on the property ladder through Conservative-backed schemes intended to boost home ownership. People use these schemes because they are not cash rich, but they are now facing unexpected bills for life-changing sums, and some are being asked to take up further Government loans to pay them. The drafting of this Bill means that despite owning only part of the value of their flat, leaseholders are potentially liable for 100% of the share of the costs. In effect, they are subsidising their landlords, who own the remaining percentage of the value of the flat but pay nothing to remedy the defects. Leaseholders have always had to pay for the maintenance and upkeep of buildings they do not own, owing to the way leasehold agreements work, but the building defects and costs involved to fix them are beyond what anyone could have contemplated.

With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to read out a case study of a future constituent —someone hoping to relocate to my constituency. This individual owns a one-bedroom flat in the Olympic village in London, in which she has a 35% interest, and is seeking to move to Penzance, in my constituency, to be with her fiancé. The flat was sold to her as a low-risk investment; she was encouraged by the shared ownership Government scheme, as part of their affordable housing directive. Her block was found to have missing fire cavity barriers, rendering it a B2 rating, warranting remediation, with the bills potentially being in excess of £50,000 for her flat alone. The housing association is trying to bring the developers to account, something that legally it is not required to do. Failing that, this will result in a lengthy legal battle, during which she may well be presented with the bill for remediation work in order to make the block fire safe and adhere to the Government’s new guidelines. Applying for a grant under the Jenrick announcement for remediation works is an extremely slow and complicated process. If the housing association does not succeed in getting the perpetrators to fix their mess, she will get the bill, and as a shared owner she will be liable for the full 100% of the bill, not 35%, which is the share she owns of the property. In any case, it is highly unlikely she will be able to sell property for years to come and buy into the Cornish economy by purchasing a house.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) has put forward very pragmatic proposals to unlock the deadlock and improve the fire safety of homes across our nation, and I would welcome the Minister’s response to these sensible proposals,

Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab) [V]]

Residents trapped in unsafe buildings are fed up with sympathy; they want action—certainly those in Elizabeth House, Damask Court, Capitol Way, and many other developments in my constituency do. They know that this debate should not just be about who pays. Lord Greenhalgh has admitted that the Government’s building safety fund will not even cover one third of the cladding defects, and residents in Capitol Way know that this debate should not just be about cladding. This is about a whole range of fire safety defects that have turned their homes into a building site for the past three years, and threaten to do so for three years more.

The Minister started the debate by saying that the Government “absolutely expect” building owners to do the right thing. Three and a half years on—really? The Government hold developers responsible. The developers hold the construction companies responsible. The construction companies hold the building control inspectors responsible, and the building control inspectors say that the Government privatised the system of building control, creating a downward spiral of monitoring and control, as inspection became a competition about who would let the builders get away with the most short cuts. Nobody blames my constituents, yet they are now paying for all those mistakes. They are unable to move house, unable to sell their homes, and unable to get on with their lives. They are trapped in unsafe accommodation, with no end in sight.

In advance of this debate I was sent documents that show that many of the fire safety defects that exist in the Capitol Way development were not mistakes. I have reason to believe that that was known by the construction company, Shepherd Construction, by the approved inspectors, Head Projects Building Control, which is now in liquidation, and by the project managers for the development, who were from CBRE. Those defects were known about and recorded in reports that were prepared for CBRE by its quality assurance agent. Those reports were then doctored. Evidence suggests that that took place before residents were moved into those unsafe properties.

Given that there was full knowledge of the statutory breaches of the fire safety elements of building regulations, it is clear that life was put at risk. I believe that therefore constituted a criminal offence, and that withholding such information from leaseholders, who purchased their apartments in good faith, was fraud by false representation. There was a duty to disclose that information, but no such disclosure was made. In my view, that means my constituents were victims of fraud.

In July 2019, the then Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government issued a written statement to say that all cladding remediation would be completed by June 2020. Seven months on, instead of expecting building owners and the construction industry to do the right thing, the Government should wake up, impose a windfall levy on the industry, and get this work done.

Leaseholders and Cladding

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

As I said earlier, I cannot commit that there will be no costs that a leaseholder will ever have to pay with respect to some historical defect. We want to make sure, through the building safety fund and the ACM fund, and through our work with developers and owners, that the costs of cladding issues that confront many people and which are the subject of great debate in the House are protected for leaseholders.

The hon. Gentleman asks me about affordability, which is a very subjective matter. I want to make sure, through the funds we have made available and the work Michael Wade is doing with the sector, that people are able to get on with their lives, restore value to their properties and live as normally as possible without the spectre of costs hanging over them.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government blames the building control inspectors. The building control inspectors blame the construction company. The construction company blames the developer. The developer blames the lack of proper regulation. What is clear is that no one blames the thousands of leaseholders in my constituency who are now trapped in their homes, paying for everyone else’s mistakes. So will the Minister accept that the buck stops with him to get those who are responsible to pay up, if necessary with a windfall tax on the industry, to sort out the regulation and to keep my constituents safe and solvent?

[Christopher Pincher]

The buck stops with those responsible for the development of these buildings, the owners and the warranty holders, and that—getting them to pay—is what we are working to make sure they do.

Rented Homes: End of Evictions Ban

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. I have had several conversations with the NRLA, I have had conversations with the judiciary and I have also spoken to Baroness Kennedy of Generation Rent. I have made those points to them and I make them to the House.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I dread the autumn. Even before covid, my borough of Brent had the second highest level of evictions in London; a third of households live in poverty and more than 30% of employees earn below the living wage, and many face redundancy. This will mean that after paying their rent, the average family with three children in my constituency will be left with just £38.46 a week to feed and clothe all five people, and pay all their utility bills. The Minister may say that local authorities have been given £50 million to help families in hardship, but that works out at less than £1 million per constituency, and this is not about one-off hardship; it is about structural inequality and poverty. So will he increase housing benefit to cover the real cost of average rents and will he introduce fair rent controls so that the taxpayer is not paying out to chase ever-escalating rents and ever-rising property prices, which are distorting our economy?

[Christopher Pincher]

The best way to help the hon. Gentleman’s constituents—and all our constituents—out of this crisis is to get the economy back on track and people into work so that they can pay their bills and enjoy their lives again. As for the specifics of his constituents’ cases, in fact, we have not given £50 million—we have given £500 million in council tax relief for the most egregious cases and £63 million for the non-shielded food vulnerable to help them. We have protected, as I have said, 8.6 million people as a result of the other changes that we have made. I am confident that we have done the right thing, and we continue to do the right thing—for example, by adding a further £40 million to discretionary housing payments, bringing the total to £180 million, to help the sort of people he talked about in his question.

Financial and Social Emergency Support Package

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I thank the hon. Lady for her suggestion, which will have been heard. I can confirm that free school meals ought to continue to be available during this time. Schools have discretion to make sure they find the appropriate way to do that, but I take her point on board. Costs will be higher for families at a time like this.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Minister said that only children of parents who are engaged in essential services should be going to school. Earlier in his remarks he talked about “essential” construction. Can he confirm that the children of construction workers working on an essential site will also be included?

[Mr Clarke]

It is key workers only. I have to correct the hon. Gentleman. It is only those who are doing the jobs specified in the list we have issued.

To conclude, the Government have responded rapidly to this crisis. An enormous amount has happened in the past two weeks. I am proud of what we are doing. We are ensuring the long-term protection of public services and businesses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that this is a time for the parties, and indeed the country, to come together, but that requires us to share information, which is also part of my role as a Member of Parliament. After the Prime Minister’s announcement on closing pubs and the lockdown, and the Chancellor’s announcement about support for jobs, I received hundreds of emails asking for clarification—indeed, I received hundreds of emails about help for the self-employed before any announcement. What is your advice, Mr Speaker, about how I can perform my role as a Member of Parliament and share information, if we do not have the Prime Minister here to share it with the House?

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Would the hon. Gentleman like to make a point of order?

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it within your powers to suspend this sitting while an urgent request is made to the Prime Minister or Chancellor to come and announce what he has already said he is going to announce tomorrow?

[Mr Speaker]

I suspect the answer will be that the Prime Minister is not ready to tell the House. I suspect that—I could be wrong. [Interruption.] The Leader of the House is indicating that he wishes to comment on these points of order, and it might be beneficial to listen to him. As I said, the House has got it upon itself to decide whether or not it wishes to accept the dates for the Easter recess. That is a course of action that the House may wish to take. I am not encouraging or saying it, but it is an option.