Fire Safety and Cladding

Debate between Steve Reed and Jim Fitzpatrick

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

I have to say, with all due respect to the Minister, that I find that comment rather complacent. It is all well and good to say that this cladding cannot be taken down overnight, but it is 19 months since Grenfell Tower went up in flames, it is 10 years since Lakanal House went up in flames, and it is eight years since the coroner told the Government that there needed to be a ban on this kind of cladding—that is not overnight. The Government have not acted with anything like the requisite speed, given the scale of threat to human life. It is completely unacceptable.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I apologise for missing the start of his speech, but I have been watching it from outside the Chamber. Notwithstanding the Minister’s defence of the position, he accepted yesterday during proceedings on the urgent question that there are 42 blocks whose freeholder is saying that leaseholders have to pay for remedial works, as my hon. Friend said. The dangers may be temporarily resolved—there are big question marks about that—but the financial distress that has been caused to leaseholders by the prospect of hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of pounds of debt has not been resolved.