Social Housing Standards

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes an important point; I am grateful for her support for my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and his legislation. There is a big problem in supported housing. As she knows, additional funds are provided to landlords to ensure that they provide the additional support required by individuals who are living with a variety of challenges. There is a subset of landlords who pocket the cash in those circumstances and then leave vulnerable individuals in conditions that put them at risk and lead to problems for their neighbours. We need to deal with this scam; legislation is part of that, although not all of it. I look forward to working with her to tackle it.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

While we are waiting for the improvements that the Secretary of State has promised in the regulation and resourcing of social landlords, many tenants are relying on legal aid solicitors and law centres to pursue disrepair claims. Thanks to legal aid cuts, they are already a vanishing part of the legal system, but from next year, housing claims will be subject to fixed recoverable costs, which will make it unaffordable for small firms and not-for-profits to take on housing cases. Will the Secretary of State talk to his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice about how representation can be maintained for victims of the neglect, incompetence and discrimination so tragically highlighted in Awaab’s case?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that case. The housing and planning Minister, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), is a former Justice Minister; I know that she and the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan), appreciate the importance of the issue. I hope that we will be able to make progress.

Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [Lords]

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

We do need to look again at the position. I have to be careful because the Home Office is a separate Department and I am not the Secretary of State there, but I do know that the new Home Secretary and the new Minister responsible for fire safety appreciate and understand the need to look closely at the concerns that tenants expressed on the previous position. I have to say that the previous position was taken in good faith, but we need to pay attention to the concerns expressed.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am sure that we all want social landlords, and indeed all landlords, to be held to account when they fall short. Does the Secretary of State accept that there may be a problem with some financial penalties? We may end up punishing tenants twice: once for having a bad landlord and again by having funds withheld. I can give a specific example from my constituency. A social landlord is failing financially so is penalised by not being able to bid for the building safety fund, with the consequence either that fire safety works do not get done, or that properties are not sold or developed and new properties are not built. Will he look at that specific instance and see whether we can avoid penalising tenants in that way?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman makes the fair point that there are lots of pressures on registered social landlords and housing associations. The Bill is there to ensure that all emulate the best, but I appreciate that with pressures to increase supply, pressures on building safety and pressures to deal with the poor-quality stock that many have inherited, we need to be sensitive. I am sure that the regulator will be, in the application of any fines, if the correct action is not being taken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

May I be the first to welcome the right hon. Gentleman back to his place. I very much enjoyed sparring with him over the Dispatch Box last time. I also particularly enjoy these very rare moments when the House can come together in political consensus to deliver on something of enormous importance to people outside this place. I look forward to working with him and the team to make good on the promises that we made to people all those years ago.

Apparently, when the right hon. Gentleman arrived back in the Department, he told civil servants that he was getting the band back together. The Department has now had seven line-ups since the Bill was first promised—amazingly, that is officially more reinventions than the Sugababes. I look forward to us going “Round Round” again. The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), is shaking her head. I gather that she is a Taylor Swift fan, so I promise her that I will try to get some Taylor Swift references in next time.

The Secretary of State will know that since he last held office, the job has got much harder, but the Bill, which the Labour party strongly supports, has got much better, in large part thanks to Baroness Hayman and our colleagues in the other place, who have worked together in genuine cross-party spirit to strengthen the hand of social housing tenants.

For 120 years, social housing has provided the foundations of a decent, secure life for millions of people across Britain—a home for life, handed back into common ownership to be passed down through the generations. Labour believes that that is part of our inheritance and an ideal—one that empowers people to live the richer, larger and more dignified lives that they deserve—worth fighting for.

It should, then, shame a nation that in 2020 one in seven social homes in London, along with many others across the country, do not even meet the Government’s decent homes standard. As the Secretary of State knows —he paid tribute to the incredible work of Dan Hewitt at ITV—the reality is one of children growing up in squalid, damp and overcrowded homes that would not be out of place in the Victorian era.

When people in social housing have tried to sound the alarm, they have too often been completely ignored. Nothing has brought that into sharper relief than the appalling tragedy at Grenfell Tower and the treatment of the residents who—along with many others—tried to sound the alarm over many, many years. Today, we remember the 72 people who lost their lives on that day, and those whose lives were changed for ever and who live with those memories. We pay tribute to the work that they have done to get us this far. But they want more than remembrance; they want justice and a lasting legacy. That includes setting right a system that has failed them and failed many, many others. It is a system where concerns were repeatedly ignored, where the value of lives was weighed against the value of profits on a balance sheet and could come out the poorer, and where, in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, just a few miles from the centre of power, those concerns could be rendered completely invisible by decisionmakers just a few miles away.

For far too many people in this country and for social housing tenants, the reality is that they too often hold none of the cards. That is simply wrong. When they challenge bad practices, they should not have to fight the system. They should feel the whole system pulling in behind them.

That is why we welcome and support the Bill. It is also why we believe that tenants deserve the strongest legislation that this House can provide. Let me take three areas where we know the Bill can be improved and strengthened. We welcome the establishment of an advisory panel, but tenants should be at the centre of that, setting the agenda, not just responding to it, and we will bring forward measures in Committee to seek to ensure that that is the case. We welcome, too, the progress that the Secretary of State referred to that was made in the other place on the professionalisation of standards in the social housing workforce, but we know that that could be further improved and further strengthened. I was genuinely interested to hear the Secretary of State raise concerns about the impact that that might have on smaller providers. It is a very different reason than the one given in the other place for why the Government felt that it was not possible to strengthen those provisions. Perhaps that is something that we can work together on to resolve. Finally, rights are no good without the means to enforce them. The regulator must have the resources necessary to do the job, and we will be bringing forward measures in Committee, which we hope the Government will support, in order to ensure that that is the case.

Most of all, we want to see the Government get on with the job. It has been five years since Grenfell, four years since the Green Paper, and three years since promises were made in the Conservative party’s election manifesto. How can it possibly be the case that we are approaching the end of 2022 and we still do not know when the measures in the Bill will come into force? This is a short Bill addressing an area of clear political consensus. We have a Secretary of State in post again who has a reputation for getting things done when he sets his mind to it. It took him seven months to scrap court fees, six months to ban microplastics, and three months to pass the entire Academies Act 2010, using powers normally reserved for passing anti-terrorist legislation. It has been well over a year since he was first appointed to this post. Why is this less of a priority?

The Bill is an important part of solving the housing crisis, and we need to get on with it, but it is only one piece. It seeks to address the imbalance of power in social housing and the appalling conditions in social housing that too many people have to endure, but there are 1 million people languishing on the social homes waiting list, struggling with those same power imbalances and squalid housing conditions in the private rented sector and watching their rents soar completely out of control. The only way to deal with that is to build more social homes, but the record has been indefensible. Every year since this Conservative Government took office, an average of 12,000 social homes have been lost from our housing stock. The Secretary of State knows it, and, to give credit to him, he has acknowledged that we need more social homes.

“The availability of social housing is simply inadequate for any notion of social justice or economic efficiency.”

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. As she has correctly said, the biggest problem with social housing is that there is not enough of it. The past 12 years have seen under-investment in the social housing grant and many properties being lost to the system—many associations are selling off properties because of the multiple demands of having a development programme that they cannot fulfil, of having poor conditions of properties and of having overcrowding in their stock. That means that, increasingly, they are looking at more and more desperate measures. Although the measures in the Bill are welcome, what we really need is to see social housing restored to its pre-eminence as the first port of call, rather than the last port of call, for people in housing need.

[Lisa Nandy]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for the work that he has done over many years to highlight the housing crisis in this country. He is absolutely right; it is not just that we are not building enough, but that far more social homes are being lost from the social housing stock. I pay tribute to the many Labour councils that are seeking to do something about that, even in very tough times. In Salford, Ipswich, Southwark and Doncaster, house building has continued and the social housing stock continues to grow. When Labour was in Government we built double the amount of social homes than are currently being built. When we come back into Government, whether in a few months’ or a few years’ time, we will finish that job and restore social housing to the second largest form of housing tenure, where it belongs.

The Secretary of State acknowledged the problem in his speech. I agree with him, but that was back in February and still very little has been done. That is why I press him on the urgency of passing the Bill and getting this done. There is much more to turn our attention to. He sat in the Cabinet in 2010 that cut the budget of the affordable homes programme by 60%. He has served multiple Prime Ministers who cut local authorities’ budgets to the bone and imposed social rent cuts that have hampered their ability to build and invest. It is time to finally get this legislation on the statute book so that we can turn our attention to tackling the housing crisis.

Nothing matters more than a home. Security in your own home, the right to make it your own and the right to live somewhere fit for human habitation are non-negotiable. Housing is not just the market—it is a fundamental human right. Any Government worthy of the office would take action right now to mend that deliberate vandalism of our social housing stock, restore it to the second largest form of tenure and finally get developers to sign fire safety pledge contracts. The deadline for that passed months ago.

We must get on with this and release people from the misery of not knowing whether they live in a safe home. Leaseholders face appalling charges and uncertainty, trapped in homes that they thought were forever homes but have become a prison. We must abolish the feudal, archaic leasehold system and replace it with a commonhold system fit for modern Britain. We must make good on the promises to hand power back to private rented tenants, starting with abolishing section 21 no-fault evictions and proper, decent home standards fit for the 21st century.

Families across this country are desperate to escape their housing conditions. Many are desperate to get on to the housing ladder, but a few weeks ago their Government crashed the economy and mortgage payments were sent through the roof. For hundreds of thousands of people, the dream of home ownership has gone up in smoke.

Surely, the absolute bare minimum that any Government worth their salt ought to deliver is for every single person in this country to have a decent, safe, warm home and the power to drive and shape the decisions that affect their lives—and nowhere more so than in respect of the housing that they inhabit. The Government have recognised the need to empower social housing tenants and to improve safety and standards in social housing, and they will get no complaints from us about that.

There is, finally, political consensus that the scandalous conditions in which far too many families are forced to live are not just unacceptable but a stain on modern Britain. We welcome that recognition, even though it has taken too long to get here. There is so much more to do. We need to now get on with the job.

Section 21 Evictions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Ms Nokes, to speak with you in the Chair. I realise that when you are in a minority of one, although you are not necessarily wrong, it probably increases the chances of your being wrong, so I will probably swim against the tide of some of the speeches in this debate.

Before I go any further, I should say that there is no doubt that there is a problem in the private rented sector. Everybody would like to see a solution so that people who want to live in accommodation for the longer term are able to. However, let me take Members back to 1985, if I can. I was a relatively young estate agent in York. If someone wanted to rent a property back then, they had a very limited choice—it was probably between three or four quite dark and shabby two-bedroom terraced houses off Bishopthorpe Road in York. There was so little choice back then because we did not have section 21, so if someone invested in the private rented sector and rented a property out—if they were a landlord—and somebody occupied their property, in effect they did so permanently, if they wanted. Members might think that is a really good idea and the solution to our problems; I fear it would lead to many unintended consequences, as it did back then.

Back then we had rent controls. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) may say that having rent controls is a really good thing, but it would end up putting layer upon layer of legislation on top of what the Government are currently thinking of doing in terms of the abolition of section 21. That will lead to more and more regulation, which will lead to less and less supply. Ultimately, that is very counter—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but that was the reality of the mid-1980s.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I know we are not here to talk primarily about rent controls, but they go back to at least 1915. On section 21, the hon. Gentleman may be flogging a dead horse. I do not know whether he has seen the briefing from the National Residential Landlords Association, but it says that 70% of landlords could envisage operating without section 21 and another 8% say that it had never been important to them in the first place. The hon. Gentleman may be defending the landlords’ cause, but they may have accommodated the Government’s position and our position already.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I have seen that briefing. That means that in effect somewhere between 20% and 30% of supply might go overnight, or go very quickly, and we have seen that in Scotland—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman can shake his head, but it is a reality. We have seen in Scotland a reduction in supply on the back of the abolition of section 21, followed by rent controls.

Back in York in the mid-1980s, what the Government are saying will happen is—

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms Nokes, and to take part in a debate instigated by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden).

I will start by trying to agree with the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on this point at least: it is a complex matter to get rid of section 21. Just doing so is not going to be an answer to all our problems in the private rented sector or the housing market as a whole. He took us back to 1985—somewhere I am always happier, politics apart. The housing market was very different in those days. We had just had the Housing Act 1985, which introduced secure tenancy for local authority tenants. A few years later, the Housing Act 1988 introduced assured tenancies, which are still the default tenancy, and are the main—should be the exclusive—tenancy for other social landlords, such as housing associations. We also had protected and controlled tenancies. Other Members with constituencies such as mine, with large private rented sectors, will still come across some protected tenancies, which predate that Act. Generally speaking, those tenants have had, by definition, decades-long good relationships with landlords, fuelled by the fact that they not only have security but a degree of rent control—a fair rent, though not entirely.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

That is an interesting point, but the hon. Gentleman will concede that when trying to sell a property with a protected tenancy, the value is usually about 30% below market value. If he is suggesting that that would be the effect of abolishing section 21, that would have a very detrimental effect on property values throughout the country.

[Andy Slaughter]

I will develop my argument and hope to take in that point.

I was giving the background to saying that the one thing that dramatically changed—one of the most fundamental changes in housing law, in the Housing Act 1988—was the ability to opt out of an assured tenancy and create an assured shorthold tenancy. Some social landlords do that; I deprecate it, but they do. Certainly, most private landlords would do that. That was a real change: introducing the free market, changing the relationship between landlord and tenant, and treating people’s homes as commodities for the first time. It is not that most landlords are not well intentioned or do not look after their tenants or, indeed, that they are not entitled to make a return on their investments, but I fundamentally believe there is a slightly different relationship because we are dealing with someone’s home.

The dramatic effect of that is disguised by the fact that—even in 1989, after council house sales had been going for most of a decade but had not really taken off—we still had a thriving social housing market in the 1980s. It was the first port of call for people who wanted a secure home in the rented sector. That disguised the full effect of assured shorthold tenancy and section 21. The briefing we have from Crisis for this debate tells us that 1.3 million families with children now live in the private rented sector of nearly 4.5 million households. I am sure that most of them would prefer the security and affordability of living in the social housing sector, but that is simply not open to them.

The dramatic decline in social housing really began with austerity in 2010, with the almost complete eradication of the social housing grant, after which more and more pressures and misery were piled on social landlords. Post Grenfell, we now have essential work on fire safety, but it is costing individual landlords tens of millions of pounds and they are getting very little of that back from the building safety fund. There is also retrofitting to comply with environmental standards. There are all those issues, along with the lack of resources among housing associations.

I have a major housing association in my constituency that has no build programme until at least 2030. It is selling off hundreds of its properties as they become void, just to make ends meet. The social housing that was the first port of call for people who wanted secure, affordable rented accommodation is no longer there for many people. As for the other source, which was through planning gain, I am afraid we are still—despite the best efforts of the Mayor of London and others, along with individual councils—subject to viability assessments. Therefore, we are not in any way delivering the degree of social housing that we need to.

Such is the context in which we see the private rented sector. It will take time and a Labour Government, I am afraid, to turn that round. I wish the last Labour Government had done more on building social housing and possibly on reforming the private rented sector. Yet as I say, the problems were not as apparent then; they are now. It will take years to build the properties we need. To make the substantive changes in the law, we probably need another major piece of housing legislation. In the time it takes to turn that round, the private rented sector has to be reformed; that is a quicker option. That includes getting rid of no-fault evictions to give people that basic security, but that will not be sufficient in itself. It has to be done in the round.

We have to look at rent levels; if landlords can put rents up as high as they want to, that will just be another way of evicting people without due cause. We have to look at disrepair, which is worse than I have seen it for 20 or 30 years. We have to look at what the exemptions and exceptions are that would allow a landlord to evict. Clearly, there have to be some, but if there are too many and they are too vague, we will simply be replacing one type of no-fault eviction with another.

I do not say all that to get the Government to say, “We will take this away and bring it back in a couple of years’ time.” We would like the Minister to keep the promise that has been made. I know it was a couple of Prime Ministers ago—I think it was last week—but I think we heard from the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) that this was still part of the legislative agenda. I hope it still is and I hope they get on with it and do it. What they must not do is think that that is the end of the matter. We will have to wait for a Labour Government to have wholesale housing reform, but if the Minister is going to surprise me on that, I will be very grateful.

This is my last point. I mentioned earlier that the National Residential Landlords Association had given a very thoughtful briefing for this debate. As a body, it is helpful in engaging with people, including with tenants’ organisations and trying to represent decent landlords in that way—all their members probably are decent landlords, because indecent landlords would probably not be members of the NRLA. It specifically mentioned improving tenants’ access to legal support. That is absolutely vital, whereas other things that the Government are doing are not.

If tenants want to challenge matters—even section 21 notices can be challenged if they have not been properly served or executed, or if there are other matters, or if there has been harassment—legal advice is very important. Next April, the Government will impose fixed recoverable costs, which means that not-for-profit organisations such as law centres and those few solicitors who still operate under legal aid will not be able to subsidise their housing work by recovering costs inter partes in that way. I have nothing against fixed recoverable costs in principle, but in practice they will mean a further collapse in the housing legal sector, which in turn will mean that it will be increasingly difficult for people to challenge matters.

The other issues that the NRLA raised are local housing allowance and universal credit, including the delay in paying universal credit, and the gap between what housing allowance gives and the actual cost of properties. Those are all legitimate points. If the Government think they will get a big tick from the private rented sector—any part of it—simply by dealing with the section 21 issue, I need to disabuse the Minister of that notion. Nevertheless, we would like to hear a little more confirmation about what the Government are going to do to about the situation—most of these people, whether they would prefer to be in social housing or to be owner-occupiers, increasingly do not want to be in the private rented sector.

If we had a decent and thriving private rented sector, then some people would make it their first choice, but many people are in the sector because they have no other option. They have run out of options in terms of their living conditions, their overcrowding, their security and the amount of rent they have to pay. The sector needs a proper look. Since the Housing Act 1988, we have declined into a society in which people’s right to a decent home—that is a human right, although if we are going to have another change of Lord Chancellor, perhaps it will not remain one for very long—has declined. The Government need to look at this sector in the round. They cannot just say, “We will do one or two piecemeal things”. They cannot tinker with the housing market; it needs full, wholesale reform.

Private Rented Sector

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

The hon. Lady raises an incredibly important point. Obviously, the Government are committed to spending £2 billion on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping in the next three years, but I completely accept the point she makes about the LGBT community. We work very closely with charities in that sector to ensure that we understand the challenges they face, and they certainly inform our policy formation to make sure we are offering the support we can.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It would be good to see some security restored to the private rented sector, 35 years after a Conservative Government introduced no-fault eviction, but housing in the UK also has a crisis of affordability and disrepair. The social housing sector, although far from perfect, is better placed to tackle all these issues, but it has been weakened in favour of the private rented sector over many years. What plans does the Minister have to rebalance the housing market and restore social housing to its previous role as the leading provider of decent homes?

[Eddie Hughes]

The hon. Gentleman refers to the fact that a Conservative Government introduced the legislation 35 years ago. Perhaps he has forgotten that, just occasionally, the public vote for a Labour Government, so they have had the opportunity to repeal it during their time in power. I know it does not happen very often, but when they occasionally get the levers of power, they could pull them. However, the hon. Gentleman will also be aware that we have introduced the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill to the other place. That is going to make its way through Parliament and make significant changes to how the social housing sector is managed and regulated. Our intention is to drive up standards across the social and private rented sectors. Our ambition is to reduce by 50% the number of non-decent homes by 2030, across all tenures.

Sharing Economy: Short-term Letting

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is right to emphasise both the scale and the commercial nature of the problem; a lot of people think it is marginal when, in fact, in some areas it is endemic. Last week, I talked to a local headteacher who said that her school’s intake had been affected by a local mansion flat area changing from being long-term accommodation for homeless families into luxury accommodation with a substantial proportion of short-term lets, changing the character and demographics of the entire area. That is why the Government need to act.

[Nickie Aiken]

I do not often agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I certainly do on this.

We are aware that, in Westminster and across central London, landlords can often skirt around the 90-night rule by posting their property on multiple sites or re-registering it in a location a few metres away. In turn, I am deeply worried that we are witnessing a hollowing out of central London, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) referred to regarding his local area, as properties convert all too easily from homes to holiday lets.

At the start of 2022, the number of properties listed to rent across London was 35% lower than in pre-pandemic times. As I am sure hon. Members will appreciate, the housing market in my constituency and across the capital is already squeezed on both affordability and availability. We currently have over 4,000 households on the Westminster social housing waiting list in the same area that has 7,230 available properties on Airbnb. The average house price in the two cities has risen by £32,000 a year over the past 25 years. The most troubling issue is that, according to SpareRoom, average rents have now risen in the capital by 13% in the last year alone. That is why I find it increasingly frustrating that, while I can easily find plenty of examples of hosts with 50 or even 100 properties available, I cannot find a home to rent on a long-term basis in my constituency in the same areas.

The dramatic increase in the number of properties converting to the holiday accommodation market and away from the private rented sector is ensuring that people are forced out of central London. It is getting so bad that I fear the only realistic possibility of the young finding a property in central London is by playing Monopoly. I do not mean to be flippant, but it is getting that bad. For those lucky enough to be able to find a property, there is an increasing likelihood that they will still find themselves living close to short-term letting properties, no matter where they are. As I am sure it is for many of my colleagues, that is reflected in my mailbag by constituents who find themselves having to live next door to short-term letting properties.

Grenfell Tower: Fifth Anniversary

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

When I think of Grenfell, which I often do, I think first of the people who died; not just that they died—72 people, including 18 children—but how they died. I forced myself to read the accounts of what happened—the phone calls made that night, the people waiting for rescue that never came. It is harrowing. They are well documented, partly through the inquiry and partly through what the families themselves have done. I cannot look at the pictures of the building in flames, but nevertheless I cannot get them out of my head because they were everywhere when the fire happened.

Next, I think of all the thousands of people whose lives were changed by the fire: the survivors and their families, and the wider community. It was a very mixed community in Grenfell, with many people of middle eastern and north African descent, often second and third generation, who had settled in the area and had wider families not only across Kensington but in my constituency of Hammersmith and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who spoke so well earlier. These are big, close communities and this has had an effect on the whole area, and indeed the whole of London and beyond.

I also think of the scandal of the negligence that has been revealed, in its infinite complexity, leading up to this one event. The breadth and depth of the mistakes that were made and the things that went wrong are affecting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people across this country. Too many people have insulted all these groups of people by the way in which they have responded over the last five years. That includes the Government, the building industry and other industries involved, local authorities and other social landlords, and private landlords. Everybody has failed on a catastrophic level by causing the problems that now have to be dealt with, but the Government bear a particular responsibility, not only because they created the climate that enabled much of this negligence to happen but because they have not stepped up to the plate in tackling it.

When I say that people have been insulted, I mean, for example, why did we not have a full-day debate in Government time on the anniversary? I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) for securing this debate, but it is a Backbench Business debate on a Thursday afternoon, and I think that a full-day debate on the anniversary is the very least that could have been done. People have also been insulted by the response in terms of rehousing—or failure to rehouse—people from Grenfell and the surrounding damaged properties. People have been waiting for years in temporary accommodation or hotels. Other examples include the lack of a proper memorial and the pace at which the inquiry has gone. None of this shows respect, in my view, and at the end of it, people have not been held to account.

Also, we have not what I would call a permissive response from the Government, and that is what I want to spend most of my speech talking about. The Government have been asking experts to tell them the full extent of the problems, and then responding. Every step of the way, everything has had to be dragged out, whether it is money, concessions or legislation, in order to get only a very little distance down the road to where we need to be. Let me just run through some of those issues on which we are failing.

We know a lot about cladding and insulation, but determining the types of cladding that have been banned—whether they have been banned in the sense of being removed from existing buildings or not being allowed to be put on to new buildings—and what types of buildings are affected has been done in a very slow and erratic manner, and the most recent changes are pretty de minimis, frankly. The Government have now decided that hotels, hostels and boarding houses over 18 metres should be included in the ban, but what about residential and other buildings that are under 18 metres—and indeed, under 11 metres? What about other buildings that might be at risk, possibly because of their function or because of the people who live in them or go to school in them, such as hospitals or hotels? There is no comprehensive response.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The hon. Gentleman is completely right in what he is saying. The 18-metre limit is a completely arbitrary distinction. Far more people die in fires in low-rise buildings, especially houses of multiple occupation, than in high-rise buildings. The 18-metre limit is a media-driven preoccupation, and I could even say that the preoccupation with cladding is a media-driven preoccupation. This whole process has been driven by public pressure, not real risk assessment, which is what we need. That is why we are proposing the reform of building control.

[Andy Slaughter]

I very much thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; he has put it very clearly and succinctly. I started with cladding and insulation—I have quite a long list—because that is where we have seen some activity. As I said, it is not the correct activity and it has not been done quickly, comprehensively or logically enough, but there has been a focus on cladding, then on cladding and insulation, and then on other matters that relate to cladding. It has spread out very gradually and slowly from there, but I just make the point that when we drill down, we find that there is still a long way to go, and it is impossible not to conclude that the reasons for that are partly financial and partly that the Government are overwhelmed and do not have the support they need.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I guarantee that owing to the panic to designate certain buildings unsafe because of their cladding, a vast amount of cladding has been removed, at vast expense, that it was probably not necessary to remove, perhaps because it was installed differently or it did not have an air gap or it was associated with flammable windows. There are all kinds of reasons that have not been taken into account because there was a blanket categorisation of cladding and height. That was understandable very early in the crisis, but it is not understandable five years on.

[Andy Slaughter]

Again, I entirely agree. Every month, more comes to light. That is true in my constituency, as I am sure it is in other Members’ constituencies. I am dealing with one case at the moment where the cladding is not flammable but there are no fire breaks behind it. That cladding still has to come down, at huge cost. These things are interrelated. The solutions that have been suggested are really inadequate. We are an outlier—in a bad way—in terms of international practice, because the standards that we were enforcing and those that we are now enforcing are not of the best.

Another example is the design of buildings. It is only in the last few weeks or months that the issue of single staircases in new build high-rise blocks has really taken hold, and planning authorities have begun to look at that. Directly abutting Grenfell Tower and the Lancaster West estate in Kensington and Chelsea are my constituency and two major opportunity areas: the White City opportunity area and the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation. I mention that because high-rise buildings are mushrooming across that area. How high are they? In the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation area, which is just outside my constituency to the west, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), there is one 55-storey block already being built and three more in planning at the moment. So four buildings over 50 storeys high with a single staircase are being planned.

In my constituency, there were similar applications for 46-storey blocks, and I am pleased to say that some of those developers are now lowering the heights, perhaps by 10 storeys, and putting in additional staircases. But this has involved catching things in the nick of time, and some single staircase blocks are still being built now. Why is this important? It is important because of the failure of the stay-put policy. It is not just a question of design and how the buildings are constructed. Almost every high-rise residential building in the UK in recent decades has been built on the basis of the stay-put policy.

Office buildings with more than five storeys are required to have a second staircase, but a 55-storey residential block can be built with a single staircase because we rely on stay-put. Well, stay-put is undoubtedly a cause of the number of fatalities at Grenfell. More pragmatically, people will not stay put any more—I have encountered this with fires in my constituency since Grenfell—and I do not blame them. If we do not have a stay-put policy, we need evacuation plans, we probably need alarm systems and we definitely need a second staircase if we are to evacuate buildings. The excuse for having a single staircase is that everyone will stay in their flat while the fire service deals with the issue. Sometimes that works, but who would now rely on it working?

Personal emergency evacuation plans have been in the news again recently. They simply are not being done, and the Government do not intend to implement them. Yet, as the Mayor of London said in his briefing, 41% of disabled people in Grenfell Tower died in the fire.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I am alarmed by what my hon. Friend says about a 55-storey building having a single staircase, which I believe would make it impossible both to fight a fire and get people out. Why was the building given permission, and who authorised it? Was there a fire assessment in advance of permission being granted?

[Andy Slaughter]

Most of these buildings are in the planning process, and some have been withdrawn and resubmitted, as I hope is the case with this one. Fifty-five storeys and a single staircase is the proposal as things stand. There are many other examples across west London and the country, not necessarily of that height but 40, 30 or even 20 storeys. Grenfell Tower had 24 storeys, so we are talking about buildings of more than twice that size.

[Marsha De Cordova]

My hon. Friend alluded to the number of disabled people in Grenfell Tower. If the recommendation on personal emergency evacuation plans is not implemented, and the Government have chosen to reject it, what impact will it have on the many disabled people living in high-rise buildings? What trust and confidence does it give them if their Government are choosing to reject such an important recommendation to ensure they are safe and secure in their homes? The Government are saying these people’s lives do not matter by saying they do not need personal emergency evacuation plans.

[Andy Slaughter]

I could not agree more. The truth is that the Government have put it in the “too difficult” column, along with other things. It is not that they have an argument for why they do not need such plans; it is because they are saying, “Well, it will be too difficult, too expensive or take too much time, and we have other things to do.” That is extraordinary. I have long-term concerns about disabled people, or indeed young families, living in high-rise blocks, which are unsuitable accommodation. There is a much wider debate about the type of housing we build in this country, but this issue seems to be glaringly obvious.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The Government can be forgiven for one reason, which is that there is no systemic safety risk management in the building sector that differentiates between different forms of safety mitigation. In the Manchester airport fire, in which an aircraft caught fire on the runway and many people died, the initial reaction was that there had to be better evacuation from burning aircraft, but nothing changed. One or two extra over-wing exits were built into aircraft, but nothing fundamentally changed. The problem was that the probability of a fire was much too high, and that is what had to be addressed. Until we have a totally comprehensive safety management system, which does not yet exist in building control, we will never have the safe buildings we want.

[Andy Slaughter]

I agree that we need safer systems and that we need to plan. There has been a free-for-all for too long in the building industry, where there has been a gold rush to acquire sites and build whatever it can get away with—the envelope has been continually pushed.

I slightly disagree with the hon. Gentleman because a lot can be done. My local authority has done about 1,000 PEEPs. Anyone can ask for one. They are not proactively given but, nevertheless, they are quite effective in assessing people’s needs, providing equipment, linking people with neighbours and making sure they have proper notifications, alarm systems and things of that nature. A lot can be done, and it would save a lot of lives. It just needs to be institutionalised across the board.

I will speed up a little. I have mentioned cladding and insulation, design, construction and the height and use of buildings, but I have a couple of other points. One is the cause of fires, and the predominant cause is electrical safety malfunctions. We see that in everything from lithium batteries to white goods. The Grenfell fire was caused by a fridge-freezer. There is a lack of electrical safety all the way down the line from manufacture to retail.

The Minister will be pleased to hear me speak favourably of his Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, which makes provision for five-yearly electrical checks on social housing in the same way as for private rented housing. That is important, although I am not quite sure what it means. Does it mean checks on appliances, wiring or systems?

Secondly, there seems to be a lacuna because a single block could contain different types of flats. The first flat could be rented out by the local authority, and such flats are not covered at the moment but will be in the future, as I understand it. The second flat could be a private flat rented out by the leaseholder, which is already covered, and the third flat might be owned by a resident leaseholder who does not have any checks at all, as far as I can see. There is inconsistency and a failure to nail down what the problems are.

Regulation has failed. Desktop surveys are another horror we have encountered, but they are still happening. In their most recent announcement, the Government said they will rely on the discredited BS 8414 test, so regulation is still not working properly. Management and maintenance is not working properly, and it certainly did not work in Kensington and Chelsea through either the council or the tenant management organisation. Even simple things such as fitting door closers and making sure fire doors are of an adequate standard are still not being done.

A lot has rightly been said about how non-cladding costs are still falling on leaseholders, but they are also falling on social landlords. The National Housing Federation and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, have made this point time and again, but the Government never respond—perhaps they will today. If we require social landlords to bear the extraordinarily high costs, billions of pounds, of remedying defects in the buildings they own, that money will simply come out of their capital resources, whether borrowing, balances or rents, that would otherwise go towards maintaining their existing properties and building new properties. There is a crisis in the social housing market, as even fewer social homes will be built over the coming years because the money has to be diverted into fire safety.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Slaughter]

I will allow one more intervention. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s speech arrived late, so I am letting him deliver it paragraph by paragraph.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The point I wanted to make is that this is partly a problem of building control. In particular in relation to high-rise buildings, the problem is that the Building Safety Regulator will draw on established building control bodies to carry out its function. The Select Committee pointed out that this creates a new conflict of interest, because the BSR both regulates and then carries out the building control inspections. The danger is that we do too much defensive regulation, which costs a great deal of money and is not of public benefit, and then we do not do the right regulation, which actually mitigates the biggest risks. All that gets lost in the wash in the present system.

[Andy Slaughter]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments, because he is going through the practical steps that need to be taken rather more methodically than I am. I accept his concentration on getting the regulation right, but it is not the only thing we have to get right. As I began my speech by saying, this is a real crisis across the whole industry, government, the regulation and the tone that has been set. I hope that, coming out of things such as the Hackitt review, that will change, but I do not see sufficient change yet. The progress has been glacial on correcting the many, many defects. Nobody says that it is easy; its complexity and extent mean that it will be very difficult. However, I do not see that sense of urgency, because hundreds of thousands of people still live in unsafe buildings.

I pay tribute to the all-party group on fire safety and rescue, of which I am a member. I pay a particular tribute to the late Sir David Amess, its chair for many years. It warned about many of these problems time and again. It is not right to say that the Government have not been warned. Unfortunately, they ignored much of this. There has not been justice for the Grenfell families. We know which companies were responsible—Rydon, Arconic, Celotex, Kingspan and many, many others. These companies continue to manufacture and make great profits, and, as far as I know, they have not paid a penny in compensation. I would like to know what the Government are doing about that and what is happening in terms of civil damages for the people who suffered as a result of Grenfell, and I would like all this to happen a little more quickly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North mentioned Peter Apps and Inside Housing. They have done a fantastic job and, frankly, the Minister could do a lot worse than simply reading through the articles it has published in the past few weeks. The one that sits most firmly in my mind is the one that asks, “Could it happen again?” I know it is well intentioned but, “We must never let this happen again” has become a cliché. I would rather the Minister focused on that article and read it. It is a long article, but it goes through, step by step, all the problems that there are with high-rise buildings, and even not so high-rise buildings, in this country, which mean that Grenfell could happen again, any day. It could happen again and we have to come to terms with that.

I have not done this for some time, because of the covid emergency, but I recently took part in the silent walk, which was an incredibly moving event. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North, the sponsor of the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), the shadow Minister, the shadow Secretary of State and others were there to witness the thousands of people who monthly walk through the streets in absolute silence around Grenfell Tower not only to remember people, but so that the Government know they are not going away. Somebody else who is not going away is the former Member for Kensington, who is in the Gallery and who of course was there with most of the Kensington Labour councillors on Tuesday. I know that she continues to take just as strong and powerful an interest in this as she did when she was the Member of Parliament for the area.

Let me conclude by saying to the Minister that I hope he will come on the silent walk one month. I hope he will talk directly—[Interruption.] I think he should listen. I am happy to wait until he has finished his conversation, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was addressing my comment directly to him. I was saying that I hope he will visit Grenfell and the families. I hope he will come on the silent walk. I hope he will understand not just the absolute thirst for justice, but the fact that what they want to come out of the terrible events that happened to them is that, sooner rather than later, everybody living in a high-rise block in this country, be it social housing, private housing or whatever, can feel safe when they go to sleep at night and feel safe for their children. Is that honestly too much to ask? It is not what we are getting from the Government’s policies at present.

Homes for Ukraine Scheme

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), might have considered some of those matters during the previous urgent question. The amount of resource that is being committed to this is increasing by the day. The fluency of the process is improving by the day and, hopefully, the answer to the hon. Lady’s question will be: very soon.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am really proud of how my constituents, council and local refugee groups, such as West London Welcome and Refugee Action, are working together to welcome Ukrainian refugees. We had had 80 into the borough by Tuesday and that will more than double by the weekend. That includes welcome packs, cash and mental health support, as well as homes. However, will the Minister address the issue of temporary accommodation and people declaring themselves homeless? As a result of his Government’s policies, particularly in London, we do not have temporary accommodation available. What will he do? People cannot go into hotels, because hotels still have Afghan refugees from last summer. Please sort this problem out.

Building Safety Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is happening now on a very large scale. This is what one of my major social landlords said about remedial works:

“The cost of this…is in the tens of millions of pounds and has led to us having to significantly reduce our development plans and slow down some of the investment work that we had planned to complete in our existing homes. If we were to try and fund the costs of this work for our leaseholders…this would effectively mean that social housing rents were being used to subsidise costs for leaseholders.”

It is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[Mr Betts]

Absolutely. We have those immediate problems with the costs that are being borne by social housing providers.

If, in the end, the Government cannot get the money from the industry on a voluntary basis, and the Treasury is saying that there will be no extra money from the central pot and no extra taxation or levy, then there will be a cut to the Department’s own programmes, which effectively means the social housing programmes for the future. That will be another cutback to the badly needed homes that should otherwise be built. I say to the Minister and to my own Front-Bench colleagues that, in the end, these are the principles that we have to achieve: no costs on leaseholders, no costs on tenants, and no cuts to the future social house building programme either.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

Scintillating they may not be, but it is still a pleasure to respond for the Opposition to the remaining proceedings on consideration. I will first deal briefly with several of the non-Government amendments selected, before taking the opportunity to ask the Minister several specific questions relating to Government new clause 19, new schedule 1 and various other amendments relating to special measures and protections against forfeiture. I hope he is able to answer at least some of them.

New clause 1, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), who sadly cannot be in her place today because she has contracted covid, is a straightforward amendment that would place on the Secretary of State an obligation to review the effects of behaviour in the construction industry that have a negative impact on building safety, such as contract terms and payment practices that prioritise speed and low-cost solutions, and to report findings to this House. We support the new clause fully and urge the Government to give it due consideration.

New clause 18, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), would establish minimum standards for property flood resilience measures in new-build homes. In response to my hon. Friend last week, the Secretary of State made it clear that “more could be done” on this issue. I hope my hon. Friend gets a chance to make her case in more detail in due course, and that the Minister will give serious consideration to her new clause and to what might be done through future planning legislation to drive up standards when it comes to flood mitigation and resilience.

New clause 15, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), would extent the electrical safety inspection duties that currently apply in the private sector to social landlords. It is straightforward and we believe it warrants support.

New clause 16 would extend the same duties to leaseholders. Although we do not want extra burdens to be placed on leaseholder-occupiers—those who sub-let are of course required to have the relevant certification anyway—and we do want further assurances that the provision would not duplicate powers and duties that the Bill confers on the building safety manager, we support in principle steps to ensure the safety of electrical installations in high-rise buildings and to reduce the risk of fire spreading between flats.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is a logical and fair man, and he will appreciate that there is an anomaly here. If a leaseholder rents out their property, as we have heard some are forced to do, they will be a private landlord and will be obliged to carry out these checks, but they will not be if they are living in the property themselves. In the name of safety, there has to be consistency. Not only landlords of high-rise blocks but social landlords and resident leaseholders need to do this, and the cost is estimated to be about £30 a year per flat.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Just a minute of happiness—very good.

[Andy Slaughter]

I will speak briefly to new clauses 15 and 16, which are in my name and which relate to electrical safety. They seek to extend the requirement for five-yearly checks on electrical equipment to resident leaseholders and to social landlords, where these already apply and in fact apply more widely than just to high-rise residential buildings and private landlords.



We have quite rightly spent a lot of time this afternoon talking about the effects on leaseholders, and we have strayed into other territory and exposed other deficiencies in the Bill in relation to the requirements for social landlords and tenants, what types of building are covered and, indeed, as we heard from the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), how certain types of buildings now being constructed are still being constructed with many of those faults.

--- Later in debate ---

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 73, tabled my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and amendment 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). The Bill renames “private approved inspectors” “building control approvers”. Not just amendment 73 has touched on the issue; other Members have done that through other new clauses and amendments. I wish to express my support for the Fire Brigades Union’s opposition to those private inspectors, which, as it argues, undermine professional local authority building control and weaken building safety regulation.

Amendment 1 is about the Building Safety Regulator. Again, I share the alarm expressed by the Fire Brigades Union that the Building Safety Regulator would be permitted to seek private sector involvement if the fire authority cannot assist. Surely it is obvious why private firms cannot be given licence to sign off on fire safety matters relating to higher-risk buildings. Fire safety is a matter for professional firefighters, not profiteers, and it is not clear how the new Building Regulations Advisory Committee will be constituted. I would be grateful if the Minister could say more about that.

Many of us would like to see the Government re-establish a statutory fire safety advisory body, with guaranteed representation for trade unions and residents. As the Bill progresses, I would like to see legislation and provision that apply to all residential buildings above 11 metres in height, an idea that has been echoed by Members of all parties. Any new regime should apply to other multi-occupancy institutional or residential buildings, which was also touched on in various amendments.

It would be helpful to hear from the Minister whether the Government have any plans to introduce a threshold height at which two staircases are required in order to provide means of both resident escape and firefighter entry. As he will no doubt be aware, concerns were raised that the plans for Ballymore’s proposed 51-storey development in Cuba Street in my constituency included only a single fire escape for a building that would have been two and half times the height of Grenfell tower.

Elsewhere in my constituency, the recent fire at Ballymore’s New Providence Wharf, where the fire spread between multiple floors and the ventilation system failed, led to smoke spreading throughout the building. That demonstrates the potential shortcomings of relying on stay put evacuation policies, so it would be helpful to know whether the Government have any plans to commit to addressing that in the Bill.

[Andy Slaughter]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work that she has done to draw wider attention to the Ballymore application, and indeed it has now been withdrawn. That is happening everywhere, however: on the border of my constituency, one over 50-storey block is already under construction and three others are in planning with, again, one staircase each. It is ridiculous to say that the stay put policy is the answer to that, because post Grenfell, people will not stay put and we understand exactly why.

[Apsana Begum]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point strongly. I share his concern that there is too much of a free pass in that situation and such buildings should just not be allowed to be presented. On his point, the Cuba Street development has been withdrawn for now, but it is only paused. It will come back and there is no guarantee that all the problems will be addressed, so it would be helpful to know whether the Government have any plans to address that issue and, if not, whether they will commit to a national independent review of stay put policies, particularly given that the Cuba Street proposal was allowed under existing building regulations.

At present, there are insufficient fire safety inspectors after decades of cuts and increased workloads. It is urgent that the fire and rescue service is properly funded and resourced, because people have a right to be safe in their own homes. The Bill is a small step forward, but it does not resolve the overall building safety crisis across the UK. In the words of the Fire Brigades Union, it is at best

“a sticking plaster over a gaping wound unless the whole regime rebuild around need rather than profit.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

There is not an issue before this House that causes me as much concern as the safety of residents living in high-rise blocks from the risk of fire. That has been the case since August 2016 when there was a very serious fire at Shepherd’s Court in my constituency, which I spoke about earlier today. Fortunately, there were no casualties, but a full evacuation of an 18-storey block was required. Then, 10 months later, we had the fire at Grenfell, the absolute horror of which stays with me every day. Grenfell is only about a mile from where I live, and for 72 people to lose their lives in those circumstances is just so appalling that we cannot spend enough time, or do enough, to ensure that that never happens again in the future. Yet we have had other serious fires since that time.

Grenfell led to the identifying of many faults, including external cladding, poor management, poor construction and maintenance, and the people who live in social housing in particular not being taken notice of. It also made us look at the whole issue of fire safety, which is what the Bill purports to do, and in that way Grenfell opened the door on many other issues as well. If the speech of the Minister who opened the Third Reading debate was reflected in the Bill, I would be delighted, because he announced it as a tour de force, or a tour de raison, and said that it would resolve all the issues, but it just does not. The Government’s approach has been piecemeal. It is the proverbial Swiss cheese, still full of holes, and there is a great lack of clarity. I say that with no pleasure at all. Let me give, in just a few minutes, a non-exhaustive list of the issues that I either still cannot comprehend or know are not properly covered in the Bill.

We started off with the building safety fund applying to buildings over 18 metres tall, and that was extended to one type of cladding, aluminium composite material cladding, and then to another, hydraulic power unit cladding. We have now had a recent announcement from the new Secretary of State—I hope I have understood this correctly—that there will be a request to private developers to provide £4 billion, with a veiled threat of enforcing that in some as yet unspecified way, in order to deal with buildings between 11 and 18 metres. I am not even sure whether this covers all types of cladding and external wall issues. Does it cover wooden balconies or wooden panelling, for example? I do not think that it does.

The issue has been raised several times, including today and in the statement, of non-cladding defects in buildings above 11 metres. I am not clear whether these will all be covered, yet all these things represent clear and present dangers of fire and fire spread. What about tall buildings that are not specifically residential, such as hospitals and hotels, but still pose risk to people, including vulnerable people, who sleep in them? What about buildings below 11 metres, which, either because they are of a particular construction or because of their use—for example, care homes and schools—also pose risk? We have heard nothing of that either.

This is an example from my own borough, and it is not a rare example. There are often developments where there are interlinked buildings above and below 18 metres. What has often happened is that, quite rightly, the landlord has got on with remedial works, probably because they have to do so in order to apply to the building safety fund within the time limit. They have obviously also done work on parts of the structure below 18 metres, but now they are told that leaseholders will not be able to recover the funds. That is a Catch-22 that has not been addressed in the Bill.

Earlier we touched on the issue of social landlords and tenants, and on the fact that they are both being made to pay through the nose. That money is coming out of those landlords’ other funds, which would otherwise be used for new home developments or the repair, maintenance and management of existing homes, and there has not been a clear response from the Government on that either.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) spoke of the fact that, every day, planning applications are going forward that do not comply with best practice. We heard the extreme example of blocks over 50 storeys tall that have a single staircase. What about the issue of stay put evacuation policies? What about alarm systems? What about sprinkler systems? What about ensuring, as I mentioned in dealing with electrical safety matters earlier, that all dwellings in a high-rise block are dealt with equally? Those are all pregnant questions, which I do not see being answered in the Bill at all.

Until we start to deal with this issue comprehensively, the Bill will only begin to scratch at a real problem. Yes, it is a real problem. I do not say it is a party political problem; it has developed over many decades. I think we are all shocked to find out that building standards are so low in this country, but now we know that, we have to do something.

My final plea is this: can we have transparency from the Government? I have followed organisations such as openDemocracy. Ever since Grenfell, a whole series of freedom of information requests have been resisted and pushed back, first through the inquiries unit in the Cabinet Office, and secondly through the now notorious clearing house that used to be run by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up. Last Friday, I saw an article published by openDemocracy that showed that they are still doing this—they are still trying to withhold information that is being legitimately requested. The irony is that the person to whom they went for assistance on how to withhold that information was a lady called Sue Gray. I hope that the practice of advising colleagues on how not to be frank and full in displaying information on such a subject will not carry over into other aspects of her work, but that is one further illustration of how we are so far away from dealing with this problem. I cannot sleep easily at night knowing that my constituents cannot sleep easily at night because the risk to them of, at worst, a repetition of Grenfell, or of something less dramatic but still problematic, is still there and has not been addressed by the Government over the last five years.

Building Safety

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on and that is what we will seek to do.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has been asked by both sides of the House about protecting social landlords and tenants from remediation costs. Will he answer that point, bearing in mind that the biggest social landlords have said that their new housing programmes will be cut by 40% over the next five years if they have to cover fire safety costs themselves? Affordable housing is at particular risk, as yesterday’s fire in New York showed. Will he study the lessons from that fire, especially as some of the victims were on the lower floors, which he appears to say are at lower risk, and that lack of compartmentalisation rather than cladding was the cause of most of the deaths?

[Michael Gove]

I know that the hon. Gentleman, not least as a former council leader, has considerable experience in this area. He is right that the fire in New York reminds us of the range of risk, and he is also right that we need to take appropriate action to ensure that registered social landlords, housing associations and others are not hit adversely. We need to balance a set of competing goods, but ultimately—as he will appreciate—the most important thing is to make sure that people are in decent, safe homes and that there are more decent, safe homes built where people need them.

High Rise Social Housing: Reducing Fire Risk

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. Members should send their speaking notes by email to [e-mail]. Similarly, officials should communicate electronically with Ministers.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered reducing fire risk in high rise social housing.

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairship, Ms Rees, and to speak about the subject at last, because I have been trying to obtain this debate for some time. It is a shame it clashes with the Building Safety Bill evidence session, but that shows how important these issues are to the House, and they will remain so for a considerable time.

The human tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire was apparent from the morning of 14 June 2017 as the world woke up to the horrifying images of people killed in their own homes in a particularly savage manner. Four years later, the scale and depth of that tragedy are only now being explored. The Grenfell inquiry is still years from resolution, however, interim investigations, such as the Hackitt report, have provided some clue to the comprehensive failures in the building industry. The Government have been slow to legislate, but earlier this year the Fire Safety Act 2021 was passed and Parliament is currently considering the Building Safety Bill.

Much focus has rightly been on the priorities for action, such as the removal of flammable cladding from the exterior of tall buildings and who will pay for the huge remedial costs, in particular whether the costs should fall on leaseholders given they had no knowledge of the risks they were taking on and do not have the means to meet bills that, in some cases, are higher than the price they paid for their homes. Members may wish to raise these issues and others today, but my purpose in requesting the debate was to highlight two aspects of the crisis exposed by Grenfell that have not received sufficient attention. It is not by coincidence that they both relate to social housing.

Anyone who watched Daniel Hewitt’s distressing documentary, “Surviving Squalor: Britain’s Housing Shame”, on ITV on Sunday night and saw some of the conditions social housing tenants are living in in 2021 would have been sickened by how far the sector has fallen from its post-war pride and ambition. I am sure every Member present has horror stories of neglect, under-investment and poor service to relate, but Grenfell has exposed how the failure of some Governments to invest and of some landlords to show a duty of care has become a threat not only to the quality of life of millions of tenants and leaseholders, but to life itself.

In the second part of my speech, I want to deal with the causes of fire in social housing, especially electrical fires, and why more is not being done to prevent them. First, I want to comment on the consequences for social housing landlords and tenants of the costs of undertaking fire safety works. This morning, Inside Housing—all of us, particularly the Government, should be grateful for its investigative work throughout this crisis—published a story that One Housing, one of the G15’s supersized housing associations, recorded a deficit of £25 million for the last financial year. In the same year, it spent £27.3 million on fire safety work to its stock.

Over the next five years, One Housing expects to spend £200 million on such works. Clarion, another of the G15, estimates it will spend £150 million in the next four years, and in total the 12 biggest housing associations will spend an estimated £3 billion over the next decade. Yes, that is right: 12 housing associations will spend £3 billion when the Government’s total building safety fund stands at £5 billion, and the National Housing Federation says the total bill for the sector will be £10 billion. Clarion told me that it expects to receive £5.4 million from the BSF of the £150 million it will spend. That shortfall is significant, not only for the association as a housebuilder and landlord, as we shall see, but for its leaseholders. Like most associations, it will try every other source of revenue, including builders, developers and the BSF. If all else fails, it will bill the leaseholders. Tenants lack even that mitigation; there is no BSF for them. The majority of the costs social landlords must bear will come from their existing income streams—mainly rents—or from diverting funds from other services, from repairs to new developments. Expect more Daniel Hewitt documentaries in the years ahead.

I contacted the main social landlords operating in my constituency that are tackling significant remedial works with a series of questions, including how much they were spending on remediation. The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham said it will apply to the BSF but

“the remainder is from the Housing Revenue Account.”

To its credit, it added that

“leaseholders are not being charged”.

Catalyst says that

“overall, we expect to invest over £109m remediating our high-rise portfolio”.

It has secured £22 million from the BSF, but will charge leaseholders where grants are not available. Shepherds Bush Housing says that

“the total cost of our building safety programme is estimated to be over £40m”.

For buildings under 18 metres, or where grant is not forthcoming, it is concerned that it may have to pass on costs to leaseholders. Notting Hill Genesis estimates a bill of £41 million for the last financial year, and will pass on costs where third-party funding is not forthcoming.

Almost every landlord said the unrecovered costs of fire safety works will impact significantly on core functions and other duties. That means fewer, slower repairs and fewer staff to manage properties and to liaise with residents. Members who already have a full inbox of housing casework will groan, as will tenants and leaseholders, at the prospect of a continued rapid decline in the resources and services available.

The most shocking effect will be on development programmes and new home building. Shelter estimates the need for 90,000 new social homes a year. Last year, 6,000 were built. Earlier this year, the Financial Times carried a report based on evidence from Clarion, Peabody, Network Homes and the L&Q group—four of the biggest landlords—that the number of affordable homes built over the next five years would fall by 40% as a direct consequence of fire safety works. Small and medium-sized associations have even less room for manoeuvre. Shepherds Bush Housing estimates a 50% cut in the development budget and less planned maintenance spend.

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

My hon. Friend is quite right to focus on the implications of these costs and how they will affect the repairs and development programmes. Does he also recognise an additional issue that the Government have not addressed over a number of years? Local authority housing contains a high proportion of leaseholders within that stock. Even where a local authority wishes to carry out fire safety works, as was the case in mine, the fact that there is no clarity about the right to go into leasehold properties and to require leaseholders to have the works done means that it does not even get the fire safety works carried out, and many tenants are left at risk as a consequence.

[Andy Slaughter]

As always, my hon. Friend is on top of her brief. That is a very important point that the Minister and shadow Minister may wish to address. Many people who looked at the Building Safety Bill think that the provisions for access are inadequate or overly bureaucratic, and simply will not work. We have already seen that happen with the problems that Wandsworth Council has had with retrofitting of sprinklers, where there is resistance from leaseholders. There has to be a way, as with gas safety and so on, of ensuring that where the safety of the occupants of a block as a whole is at risk, it is possible to carry out works in a comprehensive way.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I want to make a point about mental health and the impact of the cladding scandal. I would like to read something from one of my constituents who lives in a dangerously clad building:

“When I look outside my window, I see Grenfell Tower on the horizon. I have lived in this area for years and what happened on that night pains me very much to this day...And now to think that I, like them, live in an unsafe building and that I face an unknown but certainly very high bill to fix it gives me great anxiety.”

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a hell that no one should go through?

[Andy Slaughter]

That is absolutely right. It is a triple whammy. There is the fear of living in an unsafe building with one’s life potentially at risk; there are the huge, unaffordable costs I have already mentioned; and there is the extra feeling of being trapped because one’s property may have a nil value, so it is impossible to move on with one’s life, start a family and so on. It is difficult to imagine a previous crisis with such an impact on so many people, and frankly that is why the Government’s response so far has been inadequate.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

As usual, my hon. Friend is making some excellent points, and I totally concur with the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) about the mental health impact—I have heard similar things from my own constituents. In that regard, I praise the work done by Cardiff Council, particularly Councillor Lynda Thorne, in responding very quickly to the crisis in the council-owned blocks by taking action and carrying out the additional tests necessary to identify the problem; I also praise the Welsh Government for making £10.5 million available for social housing, which has benefited 12 blocks, including some in my constituency. But the problem remains, in that the Welsh Government still do not have clarity from the UK Government on the available funding for consequentials. As a result, they are unable to move forward with the wider building safety and fire safety funds that would operate for other social clients and those in the private sector affected by the same mental health difficulties as those social clients.

[Andy Slaughter]

That is another excellent point. I realise I am being quite critical of social landlords. We have to be, because sometimes they fall down on their duty quite spectacularly, as the documentary showed. However, I am glad that my hon. Friend has reminded us that most social landlords—councils and housing associations—are trying their best for their tenants and leaseholders, some of whom are very poor or have particular vulnerabilities. Whoever their tenants are, those landlords can only work with the tools at their disposal. The systematic cut in the housing subsidy over the last 10 years and the additional pressures that will continue, not just from fire safety, but from retrofitting in relation to carbon reduction, mean that we are often asking them to do the impossible—you cannot get a quart into a pint pot.

It is very easy for the Government to pass the buck, and that is exactly what the Housing Secretary did in the Hewitt documentary. “Nothing to do with me, guv”, he said, when asked about the fact that he, or his Government, had cut the budget of local authorities by 40% over the past 10 years.

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that the sources of anxiety that others have referred to inevitably lead to mental health problems? And does he agree that it is time to bring this to an end by introducing a scheme to address all of the concerns people have as comprehensively as possible?

[Andy Slaughter]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We are talking about very large sums of public money, but we are also talking about both a moral duty and resolving a practical problem, which we seem to be very bad at in this country; look at the contaminated blood scandal, and how it took decades for the inquiry to take place and, hopefully, to reach an outcome. The Grenfell inquiry is under way. I hope that the Government will accept its recommendations and that they will provide a full response not only to that individual tragedy, but to the problems we are talking about today. However, there is a lot that the Government can do in the meantime. The Building Safety Bill is supposed to be a major tool in that respect, yet there are major gaps in it.

I said I would have very few questions for the Minister. The deal is that he answers them, but we will wait and see what happens. I have just one question in closing the first part of my speech. What will the Government do to prevent the effective collapse of the social housing sector as a provider of new homes? That is what we are looking at over the next five to 10 years if the full costs, apart from the small amounts that are payable from the current building safety fund, fall on to social landlords, tenants and leaseholders.

Electrical safety is an issue that has particularly concerned me for some years. Grenfell Tower, Lakanal House, Shirley Towers and Shepherd’s Court—the last in my constituency—were among the worst fires in high-rise buildings in the past 12 years. All were social housing, and the first three led to the deaths of residents or firefighters. They had something else in common: they were all caused by electrical appliances—a fridge freezer, a television, a light fitting and a tumble-dryer. That should not be a surprise. Each year in England, 54% of all household fires are caused by an electrical source of ignition. This is not unique to social housing. Private sector rental property also has a poor history of providing and maintaining safe electrical items. Fires in the home can be fatal for the people who live there, but they can quickly turn into a catastrophe when they happen in high-rise blocks.

Increasingly, hard-pressed families across the UK rely on cheap or second-hand electrical items in their homes. They seek out deals for electrical goods online. Retailers such as Amazon, eBay and Wish host independent sellers, some of which have been found to be selling fake or faulty electrical goods. Just as Grenfell exposed the poor standards of building regulation and inspection, events such as the recall of more than 5 million Whirlpool tumble-dryers have shown that consumer safety in this country is in a parlous state.

With trading standards services cut to the bone and almost no national co-ordination, in 2018, mainly as a result of the Whirlpool fiasco, the Government set up the Office for Product Safety and Standards. However, that body has a budget of only £14 million a year. In the words of the recent National Audit Office report,

“There are gaps in regulators’ powers over products sold online, local and national regulation is not well coordinated despite improvements, and the OPSS does not yet have adequate data and intelligence…Until it establishes a clear vision and plan for how to overcome the challenges facing product safety regulation and the tools and data needed to facilitate this, it will not be able to ensure the regime is sustainable and effective at protecting consumers from harm.”

That simply is not good enough. Consumers are put at risk at every point by unsafe electrical goods, and less well-off people suffer the most as they rely on cheaper models and second-hand or reconditioned equipment.

The Shepherd’s Court fire on Shepherd’s Bush Green on 19 August 2016 was caused by a Whirlpool tumble-dryer being used according to the manufacturers’ instructions, despite a serious known fault. We need better standards of manufacture. Plastic-backed fridges like the one that started the Grenfell fire had long been banned in countries such as the United States. We need registration of electrical goods to allow effective recall when faults are discovered. Typically, only about 20% of goods are recalled in that way. In the absence of those policy changes, which I am afraid the Government show no sign of making, we need regular inspection of electrical appliances.

Private tenants are protected by a legal requirement that landlords ensure all electrical items are tested for safety every five years, but social tenants are not. That needs to change. Given what I said earlier, I am not advocating inflicting additional costs on social landlords. I know from its brief for this debate that the Local Government Association is concerned about that, and thinks that the onus should lie on manufacturers. I do not disagree with that—if we manufactured safer products, we would not have so many failing inspections and so many recalls—but in the absence of that happening, the Government must support social housing providers to carry out these essential tests. They must make that a legal requirement and recognise the costs involved.

I am pleased to say that there are some positive signs here. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee recommended five-yearly checks in its prelegislative scrutiny of the Building Safety Bill, and the Government’s social housing White Paper last November conceded that,

“Safety measures in the social sector should be in line with the legal protections afforded to private sector tenants.”

That is all we asked, but the Government did not accept amendments to the Fire Safety Act 2021 on those lines when I proposed them in Committee. Undaunted, I introduced a presentation Bill earlier this summer—the High-rise Properties (Electrical Safety) Bill—and no doubt we will try again in the Building Safety Bill. When I say “we”, I mean in particular Electrical Safety First, which has led on this issue, but I should add my thanks more generally to the London Fire Brigade, Which?, Leigh Day Solicitors, and the all-party parliamentary groups on fire safety and rescue and on online and home electrical safety, which have also been active and vocal on many of these issues.

All I ask from the Minister today is an indication of the Government’s intent, or otherwise, on introducing electrical checks in social housing to prevent future Shepherd’s Courts or, indeed, future Grenfells.

Much more could be said about the type of modifications needed for social homes that go beyond cladding. Many tower blocks were built in the 1960s and 1970s. Social housing providers recognise that those homes must be brought up to current standards, but they need support to do that. Fire doors need to be replaced, sprinklers installed, windows inspected, fire alarm systems updated and new evacuation routes for disabled people established.

It is also important to think about the people who live in social homes across the UK. Due to the stability that social housing can provide, along with affordable rents and adaptable properties, elderly and disabled people make up a large proportion of social tenants. Evacuating a burning building is difficult enough, but for tenants across the UK who are elderly or disabled, it can become impossible.

Much social housing is overcrowded, especially in London, which is also the location of 55% of buildings over 11 metres in height. Where someone lives and who their landlord is should not be risk factors when it comes to fire safety. If the Government do not increase the building safety fund to include funding for all necessary remediations, including to social housing, the cost of such remediations will primarily fall on leaseholders and tenants, and social housing providers will be forced to use money that would have been ring-fenced for the building of new social homes.

At a time when the housing crisis is growing, it is scary to think that some of our biggest providers of social housing may not be able to afford to build homes in the future. It is clear, therefore, that the issue of fire safety in social housing is not an isolated one; it will have far-reaching consequences if we do not get this matter right.

On behalf of the tenants and leaseholders of Factory Quarter, Sharp House, Ainsworth Court, Oaklands Court, Invermead Close, Fraser Court, Kelway House, Sulgrave Gardens and many other blocks in my own constituency and many, many more around the country, I ask the Minister, and indeed the Government as a whole because this issue goes across several Departments, to ensure that we are at least moving in the right direction—that is to say, to ensure that social housing provides good quality, affordable and safe housing for people across the UK.

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

I do not think we need concern ourselves at the moment with time limits for speeches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry]

I will come to that and am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that issue, because I will address the position in Scotland. Before I do, I would lastly like to refer to the speech by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) and say what a pleasure it is to see him back, fully restored to health and making his usual thoughtful contribution on how we avoid exacerbating the housing crisis—again, mentioning the importance of sprinklers.

I now turn to the position in Scotland, where housing and local government are a devolved matter. Decisions on building materials, the removal of cladding and fire safety are the remit of the Scottish Government. This has enabled Scotland to require that buildings are constructed in a certain way that will aid the prevention of fires, which has contributed to Scotland’s having fewer properties with Grenfell-style cladding. Nevertheless, the Scottish Government are not complacent around the issue of cladding and have recently made a series of announcements in that regard.

On 19 March, before the general election in Scotland, the Scottish Government announced that subject to winning the election, which, of course, they did, homeowners whose flats had external cladding would be offered free safety assessments to determine which properties had material needing to be removed. This proposal, which was intended to pave the way for public funding for remediation, was a key recommendation in a report published last March. All the recommendations in that report were accepted by the Scottish Government, who are committed to invest all the funding received so far in consequentials from the UK Government to address cladding problems. Future consequentials are yet to be clarified and I would like to raise that with the Minister, but they will also be put to this work.

The single building assessment programme in Scotland was launched in August and safety assessments are commencing on a number of properties. It has been welcome across the board, particularly because the cost for the assessments is to be borne by the Scottish Government, not homeowners. The assessments will be undertaken by suitably qualified professionals working to a common standard and will encourage collaboration between individual owners, residents and factors.

On 19 August, the current Scottish Government Housing Secretary, Shona Robison, explained that 25 buildings deemed to be most at risk have been identified for the assessment scheme, which will be delivered free, as I said. Physical inspections are under way to identify buildings that may need dangerous cladding removed or highlight other potential issues, such as flammable insulation or missing fire barriers. The Scottish Government have said they are fulfilling their commitment to support homeowners and improve building safety. Their priority is to ensure the safety of people in their homes.

These assessments are available for all buildings, regardless of tenure. That includes local authority and registered social landlord buildings, although the remediation of local authority buildings is a matter for each individual council. Clearly, this assessment procedure and the funding available will cover the social sector. As I said, the Scottish Government have not yet been given clarity about how much or when they will receive further funding promised by the UK Government. I would like to press the Minister for any clarity that he can give on that today.

Finally, before I leave the floor to other speakers, as we have heard there is far more to fire risk than cladding alone. We must have a holistic approach to address the overall issue of fire safety, particularly in high-rise buildings. That is an approach that my colleagues in the Scottish Government have endeavoured to follow.

In October 2019, the Scottish Government introduced new regulations that lowered the height at which combustible cladding could be used from 18 metres to 11 metres, to align with firefighting from the ground. They tightened controls over the combustibility of cladding systems on hospitals, residential care buildings and entertainment and assembly buildings, regardless of building height. They introduced a regulation requiring two escape stairs, evacuation alert systems and floor-level indicator signs in all new high-rise domestic buildings.

They have also recognised the importance of the installation of sprinkler systems. A requirement to install sprinkler systems in all new-build flats, new social housing and certain multi-occupancy dwellings was introduced from 1 March 2021. Funding was put in place to assist social landlords in meeting the new standards for fire and carbon monoxide protectors in Scotland by February 2022. The Scottish Government have provided an interest-free loan fund, repayable over five years, which has paid out over £15 million.

[Andy Slaughter]

The hon. and learned Lady is coming to the end of her speech, but she is making a very strong point about the factors that are missing—the lacunae—in what the Government are proposing at the moment. Maintaining the height at 18 metres allows new buildings to be constructed that are already potentially dangerous. I have 20-storey buildings being constructed in my constituency that have a single staircase. We must get all these things right. As she correctly says, this is not just about cladding.

[Joanna Cherry]

I entirely agree. We must get these things right and we must base new regulations on evidence. In particular, the Government need to liaise closely with the fire service, which has happened in Scotland. The Scottish Government have provided funding of £870,000 per year for the last two years to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to support its home safety visits to ensure that vulnerable and high-risk people can get the necessary alarms installed at no cost to them, so that they are safe in their homes.

To draw to a close, it is grossly unfair and unjust for any tenant or leaseholder to be left with the burden of removing cladding that they were not responsible for installing and to be left with the weight of fear and worry, and the impact on mental health that hon. Members have described, particularly since the horrors of the Grenfell fire. The UK must deliver the necessary funds for the remediation of cladding for all, and not leave tenants and leaseholders responsible for paying for the removal of this dangerous cladding. I look forward to hearing from the Minister in his summing up about the consequentials of funding that will be available for the devolved Governments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

I genuinely thank everybody who has contributed today, including the Front-Bench spokespeople, for the thoughtful, measured way in which these issues have been addressed. We are not going to agree on everything, but I hope we can find some common ground. Perhaps, in the few minutes I have left to wind up, I will say, politely, where the areas are that still need some work and that are currently not being addressed by the Building Safety Bill, whose consideration is running in parallel with this debate.

I will just mention three areas. First, we need a more holistic approach to building safety, very much as the SNP spokesperson, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) said. This is not just about cladding or about buildings over 18 metres; we must look at medium-rise buildings as well. Responsible landlords, which includes most social landlords, are looking at those and making no distinction in relation to them, and it is artificial for the Government to continue to make that distinction for no other reason than additional costs.

The same is true for other defects. It is about not just cladding but, as we have heard, the way buildings are constructed, escape mechanisms, alarms, compartmentalisation, sprinkler systems and other things. There is a whole range of defects, and fixing those must be funded in some way. This is not even just about residential buildings; it is about schools, care homes, hotels and other places where people, for one reason or another, will find themselves vulnerable.

Secondly, we do not have, and neither has there been proposed, adequate law or enforcement of that law, whether we are talking about building safety or electrical safety. This is the opportunity to get those things right so that people can feel safe and secure in their homes. The most poignant thing that came out of the documentary on Sunday that we have all been talking about was people feeling that they were vulnerable in their own home, whether through extreme disrepair or lack of fire safety.

Finally—I hope everybody would share this view, including those on the Government side, but I noted it particularly in the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) and the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier)—we should really champion social housing. Let us no longer have the Conservative party as the party that bashes social housing. If the Conservatives genuinely care about levelling up, they have to care about social housing.

That means housing conditions, planned maintenance and housing development cannot be the victims here. It cannot be that they have to fail in order for fire safety to be addressed. That is vital for millions of our fellow citizens. I hope the Minister understands that; from the tone in which he as addressed the debate today, he appears to understand it, and I hope that is true of him and his colleagues. If so, we will not have wasted an hour and a half in Westminster Hall today—although in any case, Ms Rees, it has been a real pleasure to be here under your chairship.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered reducing fire risk in high rise social housing.