Building Safety Bill

Debate between Judith Cummins and Karen Buck

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

As others have said, the Bill represents progress in implementing the recommendations of the Hackitt review, but it will not come into effect until a full five years after the Grenfell tragedy. In those five years, hundreds of thousands of leaseholders have lived their lives under the fear of fire, under a threat to their own personal safety and under the fear of being trapped in unsellable, non-mortgageable properties and bearing costs that they are completely unable to fund. In a number of cases, those costs exceed the value of the property when they purchased it.

What we know—we will obviously be digesting the contents of the written statement as well—is that the Bill will not do enough to overcome the damage that has been done to leaseholders or to compensate them for the costs they have already borne and will continue to bear, and that further amendments will be essential before the Bill passes into law. I was particularly struck, during the Secretary of State’s opening speech, that the waking watch has now been dismissed, in many cases, as a scam and as being unnecessary. It is a bit rich of the Government to say that, when the waking watch has been the principal means of protection that has been relied on to ensure the safety of those living in high-rise properties. People who have been paying for such waking watches over these last years will listen with amazement to what the Government are now saying and to their glib dismissal of a scheme that they themselves have been relying on.

Even five years after Grenfell, there is still clear evidence that the necessary culture changes in the building industry have not taken place. As the London Fire Brigade says, there are still developers who are gaming the system and cutting corners, and there is clearly still not a level playing field to protect the interests of the only people—the tenants and the leaseholders—who are entirely blameless in this.

I want to make a particular point that does not get covered enough. Although the fire safety and building safety problems have been a catastrophe in terms of their personal impact on leaseholders, there are also significant implications for the social housing sector. Housing associations have faced remediation costs of £10 billion, and the consequence of that is a dramatic fall in the house building programme and in the investment that is necessary to deal with other safety, repair and maintenance issues in that sector. Those tenants and those people in housing need should not also be the victims of a crisis that they had no part in, and the social housing sector must be fully compensated for its actual costs in the months and years to come.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Paul Maynard, by video link.