Holocaust Memorial Day

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Friday 2nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, I start by thanking noble Lords for their contributions to this debate, and in particular those to whom the Holocaust and anti-Semitism continue to give deep, personal pain. I know that not only speaking in but listening to this debate will cause them greater concern and pain, so I thank them so much. It is a particular honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, whom I thank so much for what they said.

Last week, it was my privilege to be at the ceremony for Holocaust Memorial Day at the Guildhall in the City, along with a number of noble Lords. Those who were there could not help but be moved by the stories that people recalled. We recalled the murder of so many people in not only the Holocaust but the other genocides since: Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia and Cambodia, to name but a few: each person loved; each person known; each person missed and each person grieved for. Their loss makes the world a poorer place, even decades later.

The Chief Rabbi reminded us of the fragility of freedom. He said that with freedom from captivity and death comes freedom to be, and that with freedom to be comes responsibility. As we have heard, the Holocaust did not just happen. Genocide does not just happen. It happens slowly, step and step, and begins with words and polarisation. It can be easy to move from, “This is my view and that is your view”, to “I am right and you are wrong. I am good and you are evil”. There is a risk that we hunker down with our own and, in consolidating our sense of belonging within our own communities—of whatever kind—we differentiate ourselves from others and set ourselves apart.

We can live on terms that set us apart from others. Dangerously, we can begin to decide to whom human rights apply and to whom they do not. Hate speech can move to the violent isolation of those who hold different views or are from different ethnicities, races and religions. Discrimination and dehumanisation can move to persecution based on identity and belief. We in your Lordships’ House know that this is not right and that we have a responsibility to play our part in preventing it.

It has been suggested that perhaps one of the most influential texts in modern political history is the imago dei. This is a theology term, applied uniquely to humans, that denotes the symbolic relationship between God and humanity, made in the image of God. The term has its roots in Genesis, chapter 1:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”.


This scriptural passage, shared by both Christians and Jews, does not mean that we are carbon copies of God—rather that humans reflect God and are in the image of God in their moral, spiritual and intellectual nature. To see others as made in the image of God means that I see them not just as I see them but in the light of God, who created them. It gives me a responsibility to see them with an inherent value and dignity. That recognition liberates us not only to reach out in support of others but to stand with them and see our mutuality and interdependence, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, spoke.

Despite the imago dei being one of the most important being philosophical legacies in western culture, it is still in western culture that the Holocaust happened and anti-Semitism continues to happen. Freedom remains fragile. It is not enough for us to mark Holocaust Memorial Day; we have a responsibility to challenge prejudice, hatred and the actions that lead to them in our communities, in wider society and, yes, in our parliamentary system. Each year, I mark Holocaust Memorial Day by listening to personal accounts of man’s inhumanity to man. However, in the midst of those accounts, I also see the best of humanity. It is the best of humanity that lights a candle in the darkness; the darkness will not overcome that. We have a responsibility to act. Let us not shrink from it.

Green Spaces

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, on the legal point, I believe the department is bringing forward legislation to address that. I am sure there will be further discussion of the points the noble Baroness makes when we discuss that Bill.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, it was welcome to see the introduction of funding for opening new permissive access in the latest update to the agricultural transition plan, released in January. According to the Ramblers, access to public rights of way and the time in nature that they provide is deeply unequal. Can the Minister explain how this funding will be steered towards routes that are most needed, and how she will ensure that these new routes are of sufficiently high quality to be accessible to as many people as possible?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will need to write to the right reverend Prelate on the specific details that she asked for. But I reassure her that making our green spaces more accessible is a key focus of government funding and programmes. For example, the Access for All programme and the woodland access implementation plan look at how we can make our green spaces, urban and rural, more accessible to all sorts of people. The Access for All programme, for example, is £14.5 million worth of accessibility improvements in our protected landscapes, national trails, forests and wider countryside.

International Women’s Day

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, it is wonderful to be able to participate in this year’s International Women’s Day debate alongside such inspirational women. It is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay.

I was recently fortunate to have a participant from the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Programme spend a day with me and the Bishop of Stepney as we visited the Stepney area, which is part of the diocese of London. The House may know that the programme was set up in Jo’s memory and in recognition of her leadership and the empowerment of many women. I commend the programme and its recognition of the need for women leaders to spend their time with other women leaders.

The participant and I have very different backgrounds and experiences, but I was struck by the overlapping challenges that we face. Over my life, I have found that many of those challenges are common to women working across different areas. That has certainly been true of the worlds that I have worked in: the NHS, higher education, the Church and government. I was the youngest woman to be appointed the Government’s Chief Nursing Officer in England, the fourth woman to be ordained a bishop in the Church of England and the first Bishop of London to be a woman. By virtue of that position, I find myself among the 28% in the House of Lords who are women. Yet, across all these spaces, there are common challenges, which persist. Often, they have their root in our education system. In spite of growing female representation in leadership and the widely enshrined equality in key legislation, the job is not done.

Nursing has historically been seen as a female profession, with an ongoing perception that care is a female characteristic. The Royal College of Nursing believes that this has contributed to the suppression of wages and the downgrading of working conditions, which are fuelling current workforce issues. Worldwide, the World Health Organization found that, on average, female healthcare workers earn approximately 20% less than their male counterparts—at worst, that figure is 24%.

As I have already mentioned in this place, in 2019 a report by the Royal College of Nursing and the Office for National Statistics found that in the UK women make up 90% of all nurses but fill less than a third of senior positions. It is paradoxical that nursing could be perceived as a female profession yet not enough for women to hold even half of senior positions.

There is much to say about the way in which the composition of senior staff in health impacts health outcomes for those more likely to experience poor health. I have spoken in this place before about the statistic that in the UK black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. There are ongoing issues with the lack of GMH midwives and senior staff in the midwifery sector, including stereotyping of pregnant women, pregnant women not being listened to, a lack of awareness of rights, inconsistency in the allocation of finances and a lack of cultural competency within the service.

Not only is working for greater representation in senior positions good for those holding them but it encourages and develops a more diverse workforce and informs a way of working that produces better outcomes. In nursing, the job is not done.

In the Church of England, women have been ordained to the priesthood only since 1994, and the decision to allow women to be consecrated as bishops came only in 2014. In 2015, Libby Lane, now the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, was consecrated and installed as the Bishop of Stockport in the diocese of Chester, becoming our first female bishop. Last month, I had the joy of welcoming Emma Ineson as the Bishop of Kensington in the diocese of London. It was a momentous day, as Emma is the first female Bishop of Kensington. It is easy to miss the impact that this has not just on the Church but on the wider community. A leader from the Sikh community, a long-standing friend of the Hounslow Deanery, expressed her delight and encouragement at seeing two women bishops in the same room. The truth is that it is still not a common sight, despite the experience of your Lordships’ House.

I often underestimate the impact of my role in visiting girls and young women in schools. They do not all want to be the Bishop of London, but the sight of a woman in a senior leadership position is significant and does not pass them by, and maybe enables them to be slightly closer to their dreams.

The proportion of the Church-stipended or paid clergy in London who are women is still only around 20%. The Church also has more to do; the job is not done.

Many think that this is about helping women to be more confident, and that is not wrong. However, we need to change our schools, universities and workplaces to become spaces where women can thrive. So many of those spaces have been shaped by one gender for decades and sometimes centuries. How can we be dynamic and effective if we do not change the shape of our organisations to embrace and learn from people of difference? It will mean that we do not change women in leadership.

Of course, this is not just about women. This is an intersectionality of which I do not have a full understanding. There are greater diversities that I have not touched on which must be fundamental to our attempts to embrace equality. However, that day in the Stepney area and this day in your Lordships’ House are steps towards change. To be holding a debate of this nature, tone and celebration in this House is, I am sure, a day that many of our predecessors would never have believed could happen. It is a joy to participate.

Women and Men: Pay Gap

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the UK has some of the highest-quality child provision in the world. We know the sector is facing economic challenges, but challenges are being faced across the whole economy. By the end of 2024-2025, an additional £510 million will have been provided for that sector, but we are not complacent and continue to look at ways to make childcare more affordable and to encourage families to use the government-funded support to which they are entitled.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, in 2019 the Royal College of Nursing found that 90% of all nurses in the UK are women and that they fill less than a third of senior positions and earn on average 17% less than men. That is despite the fact that the Royal College of Nursing also noted that nursing is a gendered profession seen as a woman’s role. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that female nurses progress to senior positions?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will talk to my colleagues in Health about that issue. I was not aware of it, but it is important and I will take it forward and come back to the right reverend Prelate.

Renters Reform Bill

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is right that we need a balance in this, and the way we are going to get a balance is through good debate on the Bill that is coming forward in this Parliament. We will have all those discussions and, hopefully, we will get something at the end which is balanced—for landlords but also, most importantly, for tenants.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, rents in London are up to double the level of rents elsewhere in the UK. Crisis has warned that the number of people sleeping rough in London has risen by a quarter in just one year, and more than half of those spotted on the streets are sleeping rough for the first time. What are the Government doing to prevent those who are struggling to pay their increasing rents from falling into homelessness?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

My Lords, we have a number of interventions that can be used that the Chancellor brought in, both for people that are struggling with their rents and people who are struggling with household bills as a whole; that was all laid out in the Chancellor’s Statement last week. As far as homelessness is concerned, we are providing local authorities with £316 million in the homelessness prevention grant funding, and we are encouraging local authorities to use that flexibly, because it will not be the same in London as it is in other areas of the country.

Levelling-up Report

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of London]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what metrics will inform their annual Levelling Up report.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

The annual report will use metrics listed in the levelling-up White Paper technical annexe. There are 22 headline metrics for describing the specific disparities and monitoring progress against the 12 missions, and 27 supporting metrics which capture information relevant to, but broader than, the specific missions. These are selected based on their relevance, availability, frequency of updates and geographical coverage. New and improved data sources may be added as metrics to relevant missions.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

I thank the Minister for his reply. Within the levelling-up White Paper and Bill, there is a lot of planning for housing and communities. Will Her Majesty’s Government commit to planning communities with resources that account for community-level healthcare interventions that are designed around health and well-being, as well as their measurement, without which the levelling-up agenda will not succeed?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

It is important that we look at some of these missions in the round. In that question, the right reverend Prelate brought together three specific missions: we have a health mission, a well-being mission and a housing mission but it is important that we find ways of ensuring progress on all fronts. We have set up an advisory council to do precisely that.

Building Safety

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, who was a distinguished Minister in the very same department in which I find myself. He has been at the Dispatch Box in the other place and has great experience. He is absolutely right that we need to see movement from the insurance industry. I have had many meetings with the ABI. In fact, most recently, I have had a series of individual meetings with primary insurers—you get more out of a meeting when you have one of them in front of you; they speak more candidly to a Minister than if you have a group of them together. The new chair of the ABI is my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes, and I have engaged with her about how we can get a more sensible approach. Some of these hikes in insurance are not just 100%; they are 1,000%. The Father of the House in the other place, Sir Peter Bottomley—a distinguished parliamentarian—has raised the prospect that, if insurers are not going to be sensible about this, let us get the Competition and Markets Authority looking into some of these practices. There is carrot and stick to this, but of course I will continue, as I have been asked—in the Statement yesterday I was namechecked once—to follow up and make sure that we get a sensible and proportionate response from insurers; that is my job.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, like many others, I welcome this Statement, because clearly, it is a move in the right direction. I too pay tribute to those who have campaigned with tenacity to try to resolve what is an awful situation for people’s lives. I may just be slow, but I would really appreciate the Minister clarifying whether the Government will bring forward legislation in the Building Safety Bill to ensure that the polluter pays, and not the taxpayer or the leaseholder.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is not being slow; if you are the Bishop of London, you have to be pretty quick. As a backstop, we have committed to look at solutions that involve tax, which is a Treasury matter—it has been very clear about that—or legal means to do these things. I am well aware of the work that has been done by Steve Day, supported by many experts, in bringing forward the polluter pays proposal. My personal view, as a humble Minister, is that we need a building-by-building assessment of liability if we are to ensure that the polluter pays. But that is down the road, and the sequence is: voluntary contributions first, and some of these other things are being positioned as backstops.

Gypsies and Travellers

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of London]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the availability of places for nomadic Gypsies and Travellers to legally and safely stop; and what plans they have to address any identified shortage of places.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

The Government do not undertake an assessment on the availability of places for nomadic Gypsies and Travellers to stop. It is the responsibility of local planning authorities to make their own assessment of need for both permanent and transit site provision and to identify land to meet this need in their local plan. Authorities are best placed to make decisions about the number and locations of sites locally.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. He may be aware that, in areas such as Leeds and Durham, a model of negotiated stopping has been piloted. This is where there an agreement between Traveller communities, local authorities and other agencies that allows temporary stopping on sites, having discussed the duration of their stay and, sometimes, a contribution towards costs. Will Her Majesty’s Government consider implementing a negotiated stopping programme across the country to enable this community to retain their cultural identity? If so, what department will be responsible?

Leaseholders: Safety Remediation Costs

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, for securing this debate, and I thank the noble Lord who will speak after me. It has been four years, four months and 20 days since the Grenfell Tower fire. On the 14th day of every month, Grenfell survivors and their loved ones walk around the remains of Grenfell Tower to signal that they are yet to receive justice for what has happened.

Many in the other place allowed the Fire Safety Bill to pass on the promise that the issues relating to the remediation of unsafe buildings would be dealt with comprehensively and thoroughly in the Building Safety Bill. However, the Bill has just completed Committee in the other place and the Government have yet to set out how they intend to deal with the unaffordable costs faced by leaseholders for interim safety measures and the remediation of unsafe buildings.

The Government’s reannouncement of £5 billion for the removal of unsafe cladding only raised concerns for those affected. The Red Book notes that £3 billion will be spent over the spending review period up to the end of March 2025. Can the Minister tell the House when he expects all dangerous cladding will have been removed?

The residential property developer tax provides little comfort for leaseholders. Rather than helping those struggling to pay for interim safety measures and non-cladding remedial costs, the Government have chosen to use the £2 billion as a funding source for the building safety fund. As we have heard already in this debate, unless more funding is found, leaseholders will be forced to pay bills running into tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pounds for non-cladding remedial costs. In many cases leaseholders cannot raise these sorts of sums and will therefore lose their homes and be forced into bankruptcy. Of course, this is already impacting on their health and well-being through no fault of their own and will continue to do so.

I understand the Government’s reluctance to commit additional taxpayer funding to resolve this crisis. The taxpayer should not be required to pay for the failures of an industry that has paid out billions in dividends over the past decade. I am also aware that there are multiple efforts to develop a feasible solution to this, but the issues around housing and inequality in this country are a state of emergency. As it stands, the only comprehensive solution I am aware of is the “polluter pays” amendment, already mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Young. As he said, it would require developers and builders who constructed blocks of flats that did not comply with building regulations in force at the time of construction to pay for their remediation. This amendment is supported by a range of UK stakeholders and has also attracted international attention. Ted Baillieu, the former Premier of Victoria, Australia, and co-chair of the Victoria cladding task force, sees it as a way of ensuring that those responsible for the crisis pay, and as an opportunity to restore trust. It would be an opportunity to serve as a model for other jurisdictions across the world. Other noble Lords will be better qualified than I am to comment on this.

If the Government are not satisfied that the polluter pays Bill represents a solution, I know that many in this House will be eager-eared to hear the Government’s own solution that will deliver us from this crisis. I know that the Minister is entirely well intentioned and that he is committed to navigating a way out of this issue, but it is true that Members of your Lordships’ House are becoming impatient at the lack of action, and I hope that next time this matter is discussed in the House, the Minister will have something new to present.

We are gathered here today on 4 November 2021. In the next 10 days, Grenfell survivors, sympathisers and their loved ones will walk again. Let us find a response that is sufficient enough to not be complicit in the prolonged injustice and eyesore that this issue and housing standards in this country have become.

Fire Safety Bill

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard
Wednesday 17th March 2021 Lords Chamber

We are right to seek protection for leaseholders, but that must sit alongside government funding to remediate all buildings in need, including social housing. Otherwise, tenants and people who need social housing will suffer needlessly now and for years to come. As the right reverend Prelate said, the Government are the only agency that can do this, and I hope that the Minister will confirm today that the Government will provide up-front funding for all remedial works and recoup the costs to the taxpayer by establishing liabilities later.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, I wish to support the Motions in the name of my friends the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, which provide a more comprehensive solution than is already in this Bill.

As the 133rd Bishop of London, it has been my privilege to serve this city for the last three years. Unfortunately, I have seen how inequality of outcome is built into our city. As I have followed this debate, it has moved me to speak today. It is almost four years since the Grenfell Tower disaster. Hundreds of thousands of citizens in London and other cities across this country still lie awake at night wondering whether their homes are safe and they can weather the financial hardship of the life-changing remediation bills that they face.

This is having a major impact on the health and well-being of our communities, the communities in this city. My work on the ground with the Bishop of Kensington has meant that I engage with people who are bearing the real cost of this: costs not just financially but to their health and mental well-being, with some facing suicidal thoughts. While they may bear the cost today, they will also do so in the future and there is no doubt that the NHS will bear the cost in the years to come.

We have heard from the Government and substantial sums of money have been cited, but I fear that they do not really go far enough. The amendments of my right reverend friend the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, exist because each month, people edge closer to bankruptcy and struggle to sell their properties with debts attached from the exorbitant remediation and interim fire safety costs. Due to these financial pressures, some will pay almost 60% of their annual salary on those costs.

The Government’s current approach of a levy on developers has some weaknesses. If the scope of the levy was extended to cover other responsible parties, such as major contractors and suppliers of defective products, greater sums could be raised. The amendments attempt to distribute responsibility fairly, because it is a shared responsibility of the developers’ community, testing and regulatory guidance communities and major contractors to ensure that those who bought their homes in good faith and understood them to be safe, be they high or low-rise, do not face the burden of cost to refit their properties and make them safe. It is our responsibility as representatives of your Lordships’ House to make sure that we do right by the people of this country, even if it is complex. That is the role of government.

The Church of England is quite clear. In a recently published Archbishops’ housing commission report, we recommended that the Government should cover remediation costs and recoup their initial outlays from those responsible. We are looking to the Government to develop a simple, fair and comprehensive solution to the current crisis, but this solution must be clear and cost-effective. It also must be quick. Any solution should be based on “polluter pays” principles, with those responsible for unsafe buildings being required to put them right.

I therefore press the Minister, first, for assurances that the Government will implement a comprehensive solution, to ensure that leaseholders living in blocks more than 18 metres high and blocks between 11 and 18 metres do not pay for any remediation or interim fire safety costs through the building safety Bill, and that they will be compensated for their losses so far. Secondly, I press him to improve the Government’s current approach, which consists of a levy on developers, and distribute the responsibility for these costs as far as possible to all those responsible for the current crisis, and so protect leaseholders and taxpayers. Finally, I press him to create a legacy for the future of buildings and houses that are fit for purpose for those in our community and in a UK post Covid.

If these commitments cannot be given today, will the Minister meet me and representatives of the Archbishops’ housing commission to discuss how we can take forward these solutions in the coming building safety Bill? I support the amendments in the names of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the most important work this House does is to legislate and, within that work, to assert its view and opinion against the Government and the other House, because that is where we are acting independently, as opposed to acting simply either as a rubber stamp or a deliberative assembly. It always amazes me how little time and attention we spend on our most important function. Many noble Lords are in Committee until 11 pm or midnight, day after day. We discuss amendments a first time, refine them for Report the second time and may come round to them again at Third Reading.

However, when it comes to the most controversial issues in a Bill, which, by definition, are those which we send to the other place, we are expected to hurry them all through. Very inadequate notice is given of matters coming back to this House. There are no proper structured arrangements for discussion, in the way that there are for the ordinary consideration of legislation. We are faced with reasons on hugely weighty issues from the House of Commons as to why it will not accept our view, which usually consist of one or two lines of the utmost banality: statements like “Because the Government has announced it intends to bring forward its own legislative proposals”, full stop.

That is supposed to be a reason why we should set aside all the hours of deliberation by this House, as well as its votes, and simply accept a government assurance. We are always put under great time pressure, and then the Salisbury convention is brought in telling us why this House, having spent hours—and having had many votes—on these issues, should not even spend the proper time and consideration required, including using our undoubted powers to continue to ask the House of Commons to consider these matters again.

Other legislatures with two Chambers deal with these matters much better. They have arrangements for joint sittings on issues that are contested between the Houses, which I believe that we should have. Our arrangements are due only to historical reasons dating from the Middle Ages. One of the right reverend Prelate’s 133 predecessors probably devised these arrangements in the 13th century, even before “Yes Minister”. They are absolutely not fit for purpose in the 21st century. We inhabit the same building; we have electronic means of communication; we can consider these matters better. By definition, when we come to this stage of a Bill, these are always weighty and substantial matters. We would otherwise not be engaging, for the second or third time, in a conflict with the House of Commons.

These are hugely important issues. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said that we needed to be objective rather than emotional. But the objective thing to be on this issue is emotional because we are dealing with people who face, as the two right reverend Prelates and the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said, potential bills of £40,000, £50,000 or £60,000 apiece. This will drive them into bankruptcy and cause them huge mental anguish. In some cases—let us be frank; we have all heard of such stories—it can lead to suicide, since these are absolutely catastrophic impacts on individuals. We, as legislators, have a duty to take account of that and reach the best possible arrangement. I stress that we should not be railroaded on issues of this kind into either having to cave in or taking quick decisions before there has been proper consideration.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London referred just now to the Archbishops’ Council. I know that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury has been leading work on this issue, with a number of extremely distinguished experts on housing, and would like to meet the Minister. The very least that the Minister should say in response to her, assuming that this amendment goes back, is that before it comes to this House again he and the Secretary of State will meet the right reverend Prelate, the most reverend Primate and their advisers—who I happen to know include a former Permanent Secretary and other very senior and expert people—to discuss these issues. These are matters of huge anguish and importance.

It is very important that we play fair by people who, as everyone has accepted, are not facing big charges which were expected. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said that in respect of property one has duties, responsibilities and risks, but these are not normal risks. People should be expected to bear normal and reasonably foreseeable risks but these were completely abnormal, of a scale they could not have been expected to foresee or budget for.

Their other consequences have not even been mentioned in the debate so far. This is leading to a substantial seizure of the entire property market at the moment. Large numbers of people with leasehold properties simply cannot sell them at the moment. Until these risks are properly quantified, and the allocation of the burdens is properly determined, people cannot sell. It is a huge problem in the property market, and this will continue until it is done.

When the Minister, for whom we have great respect and who knows these matters at first hand, as the former leader of a local authority with large numbers of leaseholders, said that the Government were seeking to crunch through these matters bit by bit and deal with them, that goes straight back to “Yes Minister”. The Grenfell Tower fire was on 14 June 2017. That is, by my calculation, three years and nine months ago. We are not exactly rushing with indecent haste to deal with these issues. It is perfectly reasonable to expect that the Government should do their job, which is to safeguard the community on matters of huge public importance, including putting schemes in place. It took 20 years to build the great wall of China, and we are saying that after four years, the Government still do not have a proper scheme in place to deal with these issues.