Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Stephen Timms

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak so early in this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland). I thank their lordships for the tenacity and perseverance they have shown over many months in standing up for all the blameless leaseholders affected by the cladding crisis, including the many thousands who live in one of the more than 70 affected buildings in my constituency.

In seeking last week to persuade their lordships to cease insisting on amendments designed to protect all leaseholders from remediation costs, the Minister for Building Safety argued once again that such provision is unnecessary and that to continue to seek to amend the Bill in such a way would risk its passage in this Session, could increase fire safety risks and might “ultimately cost lives”. Yet it is the very fact that this crisis is already ruining countless lives that led their lordships to insist once again that this place reconsider, and they were entirely right to do so.

[Stephen Timms]

I agree with what my hon. Friend says. I wonder whether he has visited claddingscandalmap.co.uk, which maps 450 buildings with 60,000 homes affected by this scandal. It also shows the Members of this House who are voting to force leaseholders to pay towards the costs.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I have seen the site in question, and it brings home—I know he shares my feelings, as his constituency is so close to mine—the fact that certain parts of the country with high numbers of new build properties, including constituencies such as ours, are particularly badly affected. I have tens of thousands of constituents affected.

As welcome as they were, the five-point plan and the additional grant funding that the Government announced on 10 February are still only a partial solution to the cladding crisis, and they consciously and deliberately leave a significant proportion of leaseholders exposed to costs they cannot possibly hope to bear. For significant numbers of leaseholders, that exposure is not some theoretical future risk, but a reality that they are already confronting.

To take just one example, I had a lengthy exchange yesterday with the right-to- manage directors of a small 24-unit building in east Greenwich, Blenheim Court, which requires urgent remediation and is under 18 metres in height. As things stand, not only are the leaseholders in question living with the punishing uncertainty of not knowing if or when their building might be issued with a forced loan of the kind the Government propose, but because they do not have the funds to commence remediation works, they are struggling with myriad secondary costs, including a soaring building insurance premium, which has led their service charges to increase from about £2,500 a year per flat to more than £130,000—I have seen the invoice, and the figure is correct—and there is a very real risk of mass defaults as a result.

Every week that this House fails to act, more leaseholders are placed in similar situations and put at risk of negative equity and bankruptcy. I have absolutely no doubt that the Government will ultimately be forced to bring forward a more comprehensive solution that protects all affected leaseholders from the costs of fixing both cladding and non-cladding building safety defects. Seeking to pass the costs on to even a proportion of them will almost certainly mean that the works simply do not get done. Unless this House is content to follow that path and see many more lives needlessly destroyed in the interim, it must act today and take decisive steps towards resolving this crisis.

I urge Ministers, even at this late stage, to honour their commitments previously given from the Dispatch Box and come forward with a sensible concession. If they do not, I urge MPs from across the House to protect blameless leaseholders and support the amendment in the name of the Lord Bishop of St Albans in the Division Lobby shortly.