Fire Safety Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans will have heard the strong support across the House for his amendment. He said at the beginning of his remarks that he intended to press the matter, and I would strongly encourage him to do so. It looks to me as if he will have a commanding majority across the House.

The Minister’s speech was very odd. Indeed, it was so odd that I cannot think that he actually wrote his own speech. It must have been written by some political adviser in his department, who just put together a set of remarks that he thought would basically tell the House of Lords to get lost. That was the gravamen of his argument, presumably hoping that, the third time around, we would not press this—indeed, that we would not even get into the arguments.

The Minister said—I noted it down carefully—that the proposal in the amendment in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans was “inappropriate and unworkable”. I was waiting for him to describe to the House why it was inappropriate and unworkable, but he did not. He said that he would not comment in detail at the beginning, but would do so at the end. That is not much use to us, because the debate takes place before his closing remarks, not afterwards, and we have no means of replying to them. That argument is clearly of no account, unless the Minister has such compelling arguments against the right reverend Prelate that, on hearing them, we will be completely silenced.

When we read the amendment, it is impossible to see how it could be described as inappropriate and unworkable. The right reverend Prelate proposes, first, that the costs may not be passed on to leaseholders or tenants—an argument in its absolute state, which the Minister has objected to, and I understand his arguments. However, the crucial part of the amendment is subsection (2) of the proposed new clause:

“This section has effect only until a statutory scheme is in operation which ensures that leaseholders and tenants of dwellings do not have to pay for remedial work attributable to the provisions of this Act.”


What is inappropriate and unworkable about that? The right reverend Prelate proposes simply that the Government’s own scheme, which one assumes will not be inappropriate or unworkable, must be before Parliament and subject to consideration before people are faced with costs—unless I have missed something in the arguments. The right reverend Prelate is nodding in agreement, and the Minister has not said anything to the contrary.

By definition, that cannot be inappropriate and unworkable, because we are talking about the Government’s own scheme. All that the right reverend Prelate seeks to do, which it is absolutely within the role of a revising Chamber to insist on, is that leaseholders should not be subject to these costs, which could bankrupt them and cause them enormous distress, being simply unmanageable, until there is a scheme. The scheme must have been presented and agreed before they face these costs.

We have heard harrowing stories from people with individual and personal cases at stake, but also, as the right reverend Prelate so rightly says, there are potentially—we are not quite sure what the numbers are—hundreds of thousands of people affected. What impact will that have? It is not unreasonable for this House to insist that before leaseholders are faced with those costs, we must know what the scheme is and it has been subject to proper consideration.

What makes it all even odder is that the Government themselves say that that is their intention. When the matter last came before the House of Commons, the Minister responsible, Christopher Pincher, said:

“We have been working hard to ensure that those with broader shoulders and those that should pay do pay.”


That is precisely the principle we are all seeking to establish. He continued:

“That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced at the Budget that there will be a levy on tall buildings and a tax on the sector. We do not want to absolve the industry of its responsibility. We are finalising how the levy will be calculated and the Treasury is leading on the development of the tax. Of course we want to ensure that it works effectively, and that small and medium-sized developers are not unfairly disadvantaged. We want to get it right and we want to get it done as quickly as we can … We will bring forward as soon as we possibly can the workings of the financial support scheme that we announced at the Budget that will ensure that leaseholders in buildings below 18 metres pay no more than £50 a month.”—[Official Report, Commons, 22/3/21; col. 707.]


Those commitments and statements by the Minister are completely consistent with the proposal of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, which simply says that the scheme must be ready, approved and operable before leaseholders pay any costs. The Minister’s substantive argument—that the right reverend Prelate’s proposal is inappropriate and unworkable—is clearly nonsensical and wrong.

The Minister’s other argument was that we were somehow delaying matters. The House of Commons last debated this issue on Monday 22 March. The date today is 20 April, a month later. The reason for the delay in considering this Bill has nothing to do with your Lordships, nothing to do with the leaseholders, nothing to do with the right reverend Prelate, and everything to do with the Government.

Indeed, on the same day as the House of Commons considered our amendments to the Fire Safety Bill, they also considered our amendments to the Trade Bill. Those of your Lordships who multitask—some of us do more than one Bill at a time—will know that the amendments to the Trade Bill were dealt with in your Lordships’ House within a matter of days. It was, I think, three or four days later, because it was still the twenty-something of March when we dealt with them. The reason why we have not considered this matter until 20 April, very close to the end of the Session, has nothing whatever to do with your Lordships, and everything to do with the Government.

We still have time between now and the end of the Session. As the right reverend Prelate so rightly said, if the Prime Minister can spring into such dramatic action in response to developments in the Football League, he and the Government can certainly get their act together to consider and put forward proper proposals in respect of a scheme. Much more pertinently, if they say that the full resources of the Government, drafting and all that, are not available, because the parliamentary draftsmen are on holiday or whatever and so cannot do it—the noble Lord, Lord Newby, could read out more “Yes Minister” excerpts on this—all he needs to do is to accept the amendment in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. That is what we are urging him to do. It would give him the time to do it, because its key provision is that leaseholders will not be faced with these charges until the statutory scheme is in operation, so he will have the time that he needs.

However, it is not just that the reason for the delay is the Government and not this House; we are dealing with a situation that is nearly four years old. It is not as if Grenfell happened a few months ago, we are still trying to estimate what the impacts were, and we are being rushed into legislation and the design of a scheme. It has been four years, and there is a whole public inquiry, the first stage of which has already reported. Again, the reason for the delay in this respect has nothing to do with the leaseholders, nothing to do with this House and everything to do with the Government.

What was the special adviser who wrote the Minister’s speech actually seeking to do? I think it is pretty clear, because most of us here are seasoned politicians. They were seeking to see that the Fire Safety Bill becomes law before the impact on the leaseholders is fully known. We need to get to the heart of what is happening here. Obviously, in response to the urgent and compelling safety crisis that we face, there had to be changes in the safety regulations. More precisely, we had to see that the existing safety regulations were actually enforced. That is what we are really talking about as the fundamental point of principle here.

The Government do not want leaseholders, who may face large bills of potentially tens of thousands of pounds and who in many cases may not be covered by the schemes, which are only in outline at the moment in their descriptions, to be faced with those costs or any knowledge of what they might be before the Bill becomes law. However, that is all the more reason why Parliament should not be prepared to play the Government’s game, because this is not a political game or a script of “Yes Minister”; these are the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who face bills of tens of thousands of pounds. It is perfectly reasonable that this House and the House of Commons should at least know what the schemes are, in respect of which people are going to have to pay these sums, and should have given their assent to them before they become law.

The Minister said that the right reverend Prelate’s proposal was inappropriate and unworkable. There is nothing inappropriate and unworkable whatever about ensuring that a statutory scheme must be in operation before leaseholders face bills that could, as I say, run into tens of thousands of pounds. The only reason for the delay in the past and now is because of the Government. This could all be sorted out in the next few days, before the end of this Session, if there is a will to move.

For that reason, I strongly urge the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, on behalf of hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens who have a right to expect fair play from Parliament, to press this amendment to a vote.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, having heard so much this afternoon, I do not think that I really wish to add to the powerful arguments that have been advanced.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, first, I draw the attention of the House to my relevant interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, a non-executive director of MHS Homes Ltd and chair of the Heart of Medway Housing Association.

It is most disappointing that we are back here again, because the Government have neither listened to nor recognised the plight of the people trapped in their homes. For me, that is extremely disappointing. I have spoken to a number of the innocent victims over recent weeks. Think of the stress, worry, concern, costs and lives on hold. For many, there is no end in sight. It is not good enough, and we must ask the other place to think again on this issue. We must stand with the innocent victims, the leaseholders and the tenants. It is a disgraceful, monumental scandal, and the Government cannot be let off the hook today. We hear lots from the Government about levelling up; it is one of their new phrases that we have heard over the last year. What about some levelling up for the victims of the cladding scandal? That is what we need to hear today.