Planning and House Building

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), not least because it means that I am second on the grid for once. I notice that there are 55 Conservative Back Benchers hoping to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, no doubt all to heap praise on the Government’s overhaul, or shall we say overturning, of the planning system—not only in the White Paper, but in the consultation and the changes to permitted development rights.

These certainly do bring many disparate expert practitioners to the same conclusion. The president of the Royal Institute of British Architects says that

“these shameful proposals do almost nothing to guarantee the delivery of affordable, well-designed and sustainable homes… they could also lead to the creation of the next generation of slum housing.”

The Campaign to Protect Rural England says that the

“acid test for the planning reforms is community involvement and on first reading, it’s still not clear how this will work under a zoning system.”

The Mayor of London says that it

“will be a disaster for London and will ride roughshod over communities and locally elected representatives. It will mean fewer social and affordable homes being built every year, poorer quality housing and local people left with out-of-place buildings and no opportunity to have their say.”

Shelter says:

“Section 106 agreements between developers and councils are tragically one of the only ways we get social homes built these days, due to a lack of direct government investment. So, it makes no sense to remove this route to genuinely affordable homes”.

Is anyone happy? Yes, developers are happy because it slays their opponents—the provision of affordable housing and local democracy, and in the time I have I want to touch briefly on those two points.

Removing the locus of the public from individual applications destroys half a century during which local communities, either through their elected representatives or directly, have been able to influence the built environment—the very substance of where they live. I do not know about other Members, but I regularly speak at my planning committee. I am engaged with about 30 schemes at any one time. I meet—now, I Zoom—residents and I make representations to developers on their behalf. Councillors do the same, and there are the formal powers that a local authority has. However, this is not just about elected politicians. I have the most amazing amenity societies, such as the Hammersmith Society, the Fulham Society, the Hammersmith and Fulham Historic Building Group and many ad hoc groups. Between them—not only using their own skills and expertise, but through judicial reviews and planning consultants—they make a real difference, and stop the worst excesses of the state when it is brought to bear locally. I can think, in the last 10 years, of the campaigns we fought to stop the demolition of Charing Cross Hospital, the West Kensington estate—750 good social homes—and Shepherd’s Bush market. We have a history in this country of mistakes made by top-down planning. Look at the destruction of communities and charities that occurred in the ’60s and ’70s. A lot of political capital is expended on stopping things happening. I do not regret a moment of that time, but I do regret that those powers will now be taken away from local communities.

The Government have a terrible record on affordable housing. The removal of section 106 agreements, which, as Shelter says, is one of the few methods of getting affordable homes, the exemption up to 40 or 50 units allowing developers not to include affordable housing, and the permitted development rights will together destroy a majority of the very limited provision for affordable housing that we have.

We need subsidy. We need developers to stop sitting on a million approvals that should already have the green light. We need the Government to actually work to incentivise and enable the building of housing. It is a red herring to say that the planning system is preventing that.

These are appalling proposals, which will make misery for our communities, and I hope that Government Members will also oppose them.

Flammable Cladding Removal

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali]

I could not agree more. In debates on these matters I have called time and again on the Government to use their powers and stand with leaseholders and take action, because at the moment leaseholders are being expected to take legal action against powerful, wealthy developers and owners, and that is not a fair balance. To this day, the Government have failed to act, yet they could use their powers and might to help these people. These are hard-working families who worked really hard to get on the property ladder; these are people who work in the NHS; these are people who are keeping us safe and alive, and the Government should be stepping up to support leaseholders.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s response has been entirely inadequate? Not only are not all tall buildings with flammable cladding identified, but neither are medium-rise buildings above 11 metres high and those with valuable occupants such as hospitals and care homes.

[Rushanara Ali]

I could not agree more.

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee found that the £1 billion building safety fund would pay for only 600 of the buildings, when actually we need billions to ensure that all buildings in the country that are in this unsafe state can be addressed.

Planning for the Future

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am aware of my hon. Friend’s opposition to those proposals and I am happy to continue to work with him to ensure that Homes England answers his questions and refines the schemes as much as possible to try to meet the concerns of the local community. I hope more broadly that the announcement I have made today of a review of how the planning system interacts with floodplains and the increased risk of flooding that we are seeing in many parts of the country will be good news to those parts of the country that have seen floods in the last few weeks, and that we can bring forward changes in the coming months.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The money allocated in the Budget for cladding removal applies only to buildings over 18 metres, and the Government guidelines issued in January say:

“We strongly advise building owners to consider the risks of any external wall system…irrespective of the height of the building”.

Consequently, any leaseholder in a low-rise building is struggling to get approvals to sell, to get a bigger share of the property or to remortgage. What are the Government going to do about that? Those leaseholders are currently marooned.

[Robert Jenrick]

The fund that we have announced this week is for high-rise buildings, and that was on the advice of our expert panel and Dame Judith Hackitt, who has advised the Government for some time and is helping to set up the new building safety regulator. The expert advice is that height is the main factor in determining safety, but it is not the only factor, and that is why earlier in the year I set in train work on what other factors we should be taking into consideration. It is none the less the most important factor as far as we are guided by advice. For buildings below 18 metres, which will not be eligible for the fund, we will continue working with lenders and insurers to get the market working faster. The new form that has been created in partnership between the Government and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors appears to be working in some cases, but not in all, and we need to make sure that that happens faster.

Planning System: Gypsies and Travellers

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful for that helpful intervention. I am so pleased that the hon. Gentleman has raised the issue of educational attainment in Gypsy and Traveller communities, because it is a national disgrace that so many Gypsy and Traveller children do not get the education that they deserve and are statutorily obliged to receive. That is the fault of local education authorities, but it is also the fault of the Gypsy and Traveller communities themselves, and we need to do far more to address that issue.

Another important thing in the hon. Gentleman’s intervention was the two key words, “mutual respect”. Mutual respect works both ways. Gypsies and Travellers demand respect from the settled community for their needs, but do not seem to respect the settled community when they park up on land illegally or build pitches without planning permission, often terrifying local communities with their presence. Of course, there are arguments on both sides of the debate, but the issue needs to be addressed. We are at the beginning of a five-year Parliament. By the end of the parliamentary Session, there will be no excuse for not dealing holistically with all the issues that Gypsies and Travellers pose for all of us.

It will be helpful to give some figures to identify the scale of the issue. The latest figures that I have are from July 2018; if the Minister has more up-to-date figures, perhaps he can supply them. In July 2018, the number of Traveller caravans in the country was just under 23,000, up something like 30% from July 2008, of which 3,100 were on unauthorised sites. Of those 3,100, just over 2,100 were on land bought by Travellers. We are talking about 3,100 caravans on unauthorised sites, 2,100 of which were on land bought by Travellers and the remainder on land that they do not own.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out that it is a small minority of Gypsies and Travellers who are on unauthorised encampments. As he said, three quarters are in bricks and mortar, even if they do not wish to be. Does he think that the failure of local authorities to provide sites, whether they are transit or permanent, and the lack of provision of social housing, is a factor in the necessity for Gypsies and Travellers to stop in unauthorised areas or on land without planning consent?

[Mr Hollobone]

There are two issues. We will probably disagree, but I struggle with the idea that local authorities should be obliged to provide such sites. I do not see why the public purse should purchase land for a particular group of people to live on. If Travellers were to purchase land and then apply for planning permission for a Traveller site—a suitable site in the right location—the local authority should give planning permission for that, but personally I do not see why the public purse should subsidise sites specifically for one ethnic group.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

Yes, there are two additional sites for Gypsies and Travellers with up to 16 plots that are not occupied. The problem is that more Gypsy and Traveller families are arriving from other areas all the time and are overloading the existing sites. It is simply not fair on the local community in Kettering to have to provide ever more provision for Gypsies and Travellers from across the country. That is why we need the planning system to work effectively, and why we need Gypsies and Travellers to respect the law.

The Government should ensure—I would like the Minister’s response to this—that someone in breach of an enforcement notice cannot apply for retrospective planning permission until that initial breach has been remedied. The Gypsies and Travellers who have moved into the site near Loddington, who have had a temporary and permanent stop notice served on them, should not be allowed to apply for retrospective planning permission until they have restored the field to its original state when they moved in on that Friday afternoon. That would be a real disincentive and would stop Gypsies and Travellers abusing the planning system in that way.

[Andy Slaughter]

Is it the hon. Gentleman’s view that such a change in the law should apply to any planning situation? We hear examples all the time of illegal structures being put up, alterations being made to buildings and even new buildings being built, against which the local authority takes enforcement action. Is he saying that the change should apply in all cases, not just to Gypsies and Travellers?

[Mr Hollobone]

Yes, I would like that to be the case. It seems to me that if someone is intentionally seeking to build an unauthorised development and is subject to a temporary or a permanent stop notice, they should do what that notice says—stop the work and restore the land to its original state. To my constituents, that would seem a sensible way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir George. I congratulate the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing the debate. As he said, we are often here to debate this subject. My view is that he looks at the issue down the wrong end of the telescope, but then he probably thinks the same about me.

The hon. Gentleman quotes statistics, and I will probably quote some of the same statistics, but he draws the opposite conclusion from the one that I draw. I do not think there is any dispute that Gypsies and Travellers are not just a deprived community in this country, but possibly the most deprived community. Some of the statistics that apply to Gypsy and Traveller communities are quite horrific. Only 3% to 4% of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller population aged 18 to 30 go into higher education, compared with 43% of the general population; 90% of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller population have experienced racism; life expectancy at minimum is 10 to 12 years shorter than that for the general population; and the suicide rate in the Traveller community is six times higher than in the general population. Those are really shocking statistics.

The hon. Gentleman said that there are different people on whom the blame could be placed, or to whom the explanation could be ascribed, but that Gypsies and Travellers would need to bear some responsibility themselves. He said that planning policy or planning law discriminates in favour of Gypsies and Travellers, and he called for harsher remedies, including the implementation of the current consultation, which would criminalise trespass. I think that is the wrong analysis. Both the history of the planning process and the current situation suggest that the opposite is true: that there is discrimination against Gypsies and Travellers in the planning process; that it is more likely that applications from Gypsies and Travellers will be refused than from the general population; and that there is a large level of discrimination and hostility, which goes into the statutory sector as well. That is what needs to be challenged, first of all. Then, perhaps, we can come back to whether there is a continuing issue.

It is right that three quarters of Gypsies and Travellers are in bricks-and-mortar accommodation. A lot of those, even if not necessarily all, would like to continue with a nomadic lifestyle but do not have the opportunity. One reason why that has become institutionalised is a relatively recent change in definition, which effectively says—it is a Catch-22—that even if someone’s ethnicity is Gypsy or Traveller, if they stop travelling and end up, against their better wishes, in bricks-and-mortar accommodation, perhaps for reasons of health, perhaps because they need to settle in an area for education for a while, or perhaps just because of a lack of pitches or stopping sites, they are no longer counted for that purpose. Suddenly the assessed needs in any local authority area go down, because of that statistical change—perhaps by 60%, 70% or 80%. The issue is suddenly no longer there. It reminds me of how my local authority, when it was Conservative controlled, solved the housing issue by abolishing the waiting list. It is not a long-term solution; it simply hides a continuing problem.

We do not have time to go over the whole history of the provision of sites and the different policies adopted by different Governments over the past 50 years, which go back to the Caravan Sites Act 1968, but the change that was introduced in 1994, which for the first time removed a requirement for local authorities to provide sites, was a game changer. Without any national requirement, and now with the encouragement of national Government not to provide permanent or transit sites, local authorities simply do not provide those sites. There is a shortage. Whatever the hon. Gentleman may say, there is a lack of such provision. Until that is remedied in some way, stopping at sites that are not authorised will continue.

I have never met members of the Gypsy and Traveller community who want to stop on unauthorised sites where facilities are not provided, and who would not prefer negotiated stopping, transit sites or the ability to use permanent sites. It seems to be commonplace to say that that must be the case. Local authorities that take their responsibilities seriously and have tried to provide a remedy—most local authorities try to escape their obligations—have found that they have either no problem or a much reduced problem with that kind of stopping.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Let me give a pointed example. Since Brighton opened a transit site and expanded the permanent site, the number of encampments in unauthorised locations has reduced by almost half. Where they do happen, a negotiated move is often done within a day. That is an example of how we can solve the issue with a carrot rather than a stick.

[Andy Slaughter]

I could give a number of examples, but I am conscious of time.

The long debate, which is wearisome for everyone but particularly for Gypsy and Traveller communities, is about how we solve what is not a huge problem once it has been broken down by local authority area. The need for additional pitches and sites in this country will no doubt continue until we have a Government who can grasp that nettle. I am concerned that, while that rather sterile debate is going on, there is an increased attempt to vilify and criminalise the actions of Gypsies and Travellers. We saw that in the cross-borough injunctions that the Court of Appeal found to be unlawful, in a landmark judgment only last week—that was the Bromley case. It was no longer possible to stop anywhere in entire boroughs, some of which are very large. That was effectively a blanket ban that would have extended across parts of the country.

The attempt by the Government, through their consultation, to criminalise trespass in a way that goes far beyond what happens in Ireland, and without the compensatory duties to provide sites, is a regressive and intimidatory step. We need a change in approach, and we need to be constructive and positive. The last thing we need to be doing is further victimising Gypsy and Traveller communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Hall]

I would be absolutely delighted to do so.

In our response to the consultation, we committed to introducing guidance making it clear that the Secretary of State is prepared to review cases where concerns are raised that there are too many authorised Traveller sites for the local community to support effectively. The guidance will also assist local authorities in making better decisions about whether to approve Traveller site applications, and sets out a range of circumstances for planning authorities to consider when determining such applications.

Let me touch a little on enforcement in respect of unauthorised encampments. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) has particular concerns about this issue, and I thank him for putting his points on the record. On trespass, we are absolutely aware of concerns about the effectiveness of powers available to tackle unauthorised encampments. Local authorities can of course use temporary stop notices when they are concerned that unauthorised development has taken place. Those require that any activity in breach of planning control must be ceased for 28 days. However, we want to go further, so we are minded, following consultation, to extend the 28-day temporary stop notice period.

Furthermore, on 5 November, the Home Office launched a consultation seeking views on criminalising the act of trespass when setting up an unauthorised encampment. I know that hon. Members had questions about some of the proposed amendments, which include increasing from 3 months to 12 months the period for which trespassers directed from land are unable to return, lowering from six to “two or more” the number of vehicles that need to be involved in an unauthorised encampment before police powers can be exercised, and enabling the police to remove trespassers from land that forms part of the highway. That follows the Home Office’s commitment to consult on a specific set of measures to enhance the powers police have to direct trespassers to leave unauthorised encampments. That consultation closes on 5 March 2020. A couple of colleagues asked who will have responsibility for leading that work. I can confirm that the Home Office will lead, and the Government will respond to the consultation in the autumn.

A number of Members touched on the importance of improving outcomes, so let me update the House on the work we are doing to improve outcomes for the travelling community. We are working to address the disparities faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities to ensure that they have the same life chances as other members of the community. As we heard, on almost every measure, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are significantly worse off than the general population. We have been working on that, and we recognise that we need to go further. We are committed to developing a cross-Government strategy to tackle inequalities faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities across a range of outcomes highlighted by the race disparity audit, including housing, education and health.

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the Minister give way?

[Luke Hall]

I am afraid I cannot, because of the time.

We are in the early stages of developing that strategy and will engage extensively with policy makers, practitioners and, of course, the communities themselves as we take the work forward. We will provide regular updates on progress in the coming months.

I thank hon. Members again for their contributions. I understand the importance of some of the issues that were raised. I am happy to work on a cross-party basis with colleagues across the House as we take this work forward, and I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss it.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 1 Report

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

rose—

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I had better make some progress, but I will return to my hon. Friend in a moment.

The Bill we will bring forward later this year will be the first step towards the new regulatory framework that will implement the recommendations of the phase 1 report’s legislative requirements. Under the Bill, building owners and managers will be required to share information with fire and rescue services on external wall systems, and undertake regular inspections of flat entrance doors. The Home Office will consult on the detail of the proposals in spring this year.

That legislative action will address many of the inquiry’s recommendations and forms part of the wider Government response to ensure that action is taken against unsafe cladding. My Department has already introduced a ban on combustible materials on the external walls of new buildings over 18 metres, and, as I have said, made available £600 million in Government funding to support that work.

Sir Martin’s report concluded that it was not just the materials of the building that contributed to the tragedy: more people could have survived the fire had the London Fire Brigade conducted a full evacuation earlier in the night. He recognises existing Government guidance stating that fire and rescue services should have contingency plans for when a building needs full or partial evacuation, and noted that the London Fire Brigade policies were in this respect deficient.

[Andy Slaughter]

In the Minister’s statement yesterday there was not anything that I saw about evacuation and changes to the stay-put policy, which would be a huge change that would have implications for means of escape, alarms, sprinkler systems and so on. When can we expect the Government to pronounce on that?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will come on to that point in just a moment, if I may.

Sir Martin recommended that the Government produce national guidelines for carrying out the evacuation of high rise residential buildings. I am now working closely with colleagues in the Home Office on those guidelines. My Department and the Home Office have formed a steering group with the National Fire Chiefs Council and other experts, which met for the first time in December. The group agreed on the scope of an evidence review into stay put and evacuation. Let me reiterate, however, that the advice from the National Fire Chiefs Council is that stay put remains an appropriate policy providing compartmentation is maintained. In fact, Sir Martin highlighted that effective compartmentation is likely to remain at the heart of fire safety and the response to fires in high rise buildings. I think that that is an important point that we should all bear in mind in how we communicate on these issues to members of the public.

A number of recommendations made by Sir Martin were for the London Fire Brigade, and for fire and rescue services more widely across the country. The firefighters serving that night showed exceptional bravery and dedication. I would like to pay tribute to their courage, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did last year. However, the report made very clear that there were failures in the London Fire Brigade’s response. Significant changes are needed in its policies, guidance and training, including on evacuation procedures. We know that fire and rescue services across the country need to have the training and processes in place to be able to respond as effectively as possible to fires in residential buildings. The control rooms that co-ordinate emergency responses must have the processes in place to deal with all incidents effectively.

I am pleased that London Fire Brigade has already rolled out fire survival guidance training, and is reviewing its policies and guidance in the light of the inquiry’s recommendations. It is important that all our emergency services have proper protocols in place to ensure that they can work together and communicate effectively in an emergency. The Home Office is working with the interoperability board to ensure that those lessons are learned. While these recommendations are not aimed directly at the Government, clearly the Government have a role and we will not sit back.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I will begin by expressing my admiration and respect for the survivors and families of the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, many of whom I have had the honour of meeting over the past two and a half years. I also pay tribute to my friend and colleague, Emma Dent Coad, former MP for Kensington, who made Grenfell the focus of her two and a half years in this place. She will continue to do that as a local councillor, resident, and champion of Grenfell. In a way, it is not surprising that Grenfell became the focus of Emma’s life, because it is such an all-encompassing tragedy with so many aspects to it, some of which we are trying inadequately to explore in this debate.

I know that one of the first things Emma would say is, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) mentioned, what about the residents who have not been permanently and properly rehoused? What about the future of the site? What is going to happen to the tower? From my constituency a few hundred yards away, we see it every day. It is a very visible part of the landscape. I do not know why it was not mentioned by the Secretary of State in opening the debate. Perhaps the Minister, in closing, will deal with those points. We need to know, for the whole area and indeed for the whole country, how we are going to move forward.

I felt, with due respect to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), that yes, she is right to talk about issues of cladding and responsibility for those who manufactured, fitted, commissioned and so on, but that is only one aspect. We all have to share blame. The Government have to share blame, as well as local authorities, tenant management organisations, cladding companies and everybody else who has been engaged in this situation. I do not want to take too much time, so I will focus on just three issues—building type, evacuation policy and the cause of fires—but clearly there are many more.

The Government have only scratched the surface of what needs to be done. Perhaps in the first few months or even the first year it was not clear exactly what remedial actions needed to be taken, but I think it is becoming increasingly clear now. We have talked about height and the fact that there are types of high rise buildings that are not included. Yes, in terms of either the removal of cladding or a ban on combustible materials for new build, but what about offices, schools and hospitals? What about high risk buildings, of whatever height, such as care homes? Should we not be looking at all types of building with dangerous forms of cladding where there is a substantial risk? Should we not be looking at other forms of cladding beyond ACM and HPL—high-pressure laminate? Other dangerous building materials are in use at the moment.

There is a constant feeling that the Government are taking things very slowly and step by step, and perhaps getting there but not getting there nearly fast enough. Should we not look at the testing regime? There has been a lot of criticism of the BS 8414 test, because it does not necessarily replicate the conditions that exist in buildings as they have been constructed. Buildings sometimes have faults in construction, but also features such as vents and windows that are not reflected in that test. Why is the Euroclass classification system, which clearly differentiates non-combustible from combustible materials, not the driving force in deciding what is and is not fit for purpose? Why are we concentrating only on new build when there are so many existing buildings that have different types of materials with different degrees of combustibility? Yes, it is a huge task. As soon as one begins to look at it in detail, it ramifies in every direction. But surely if we are going to ensure the safety of the hundreds of thousands of people who live and work in high rise buildings—or stay in them, if they are hotels—we have a duty as a society to do that? There is a feeling that this is not being done at the speed it could be by the Government because it is too difficult, too complex and too expensive.

I mentioned earlier in my intervention the issue of evacuation. The Government have accepted the recommendations in part 1 of the inquiry report. They include, under evacuation, the development of

“national guidelines for carrying out partial or total evacuations”

and that

“fire and rescue services develop policies for…evacuation”.

It also recommends that owners and managers do the same and that there are alarm systems that can be used to alert residents about evacuation—indeed, that policy can specifically be developed for managing a transition from “stay put” to “get out”. Two and a half years on, I want to know when that will be done. When are we going to have that response from Government?

The situation is complicated and it has, as I indicated, many implications. If a building is going to be evacuated, residents clearly have to be alerted, there has to be an alarm system, and there has to be a secure means of escape. The problem at Grenfell was that there was one relatively narrow staircase. High rise buildings are being constructed now with one fairly narrow staircase. When will we get new design guidelines that allow for the possibility of secure evacuation?

I heard what was said about compartmentation. “Stay put” may well remain the general policy, but even if there are one or two exceptions a year, we have to be prepared for and be able to deal with them. It is unthinkable that another Grenfell could take place in this country in our lifetime, and that will only be the case if we deal with all the issues that have arisen.

Are we going to have sprinkler systems fitted, and not just, as the Minister indicated—I hope he will stick to this—for buildings of 11 metres and above? Are we going to retrofit? I spent the morning at the all-party fire safety and rescue group. We had an interesting presentation from the chief fire officer of Staffordshire, who said that there are 47 high rise residential buildings in Staffordshire—that is not very many; it is perhaps not a county that is renowned for its high rise buildings. Nevertheless, that has been taken sufficiently seriously, and by the end of this year—I think this is right—30 of the 47 will be retrofitted with sprinkler systems. Why is that not being done across the country? Why is that not being led by the Government?

There is no example in which, when sprinkler systems have worked in residential buildings, they have not worked to suppress fire. There are complications where there are leaseholders who decline to have sprinkler systems fitted in individual flats, but they can be fitted in communal areas and where leaseholders allow, or in tenanted properties. It is perfectly possible to have that done, at no great cost. I think it is unforgivable not to—that goes back to the point made by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead. We will wait to see what is in part 2 of the report, but it is very likely that flammable cladding and insulation—which had been put on the outside of Grenfell—was the primary cause of fire spread and that without that we would not have had the tragedy. However, if there had been evacuation plans and sprinkler systems in that block, it is also likely that a number of those deaths would have been prevented. We have to take every possible step that we can.

Finally, I think it is now accepted that the cause of the fire in Grenfell was a fridge-freezer. The cause of the major fire in Shepherd’s Court, a tower block in my constituency, the year before was a tumble dryer. We now have the second major recall within a year of electrical goods: over 500,000 Indesit washing machines have a fault and there have so far been nearly 80 fires —that we know of—or “thermal incidents”, as they are known. There is increasingly a trend where electrical goods, whether this is due to poor design, poor manufacture or faults in the way that they are operated, are causing huge numbers of fires. These can lead—particularly in high-rise buildings or buildings with dense populations—to tragedies of the type we have seen. It is not the Minister’s Department—it is the responsibility of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy—but it clearly needs work across Government. When will we see firm actions such as the compulsory registration of electrical goods so that recall can be done effectively? These issues are the responsibility of Government. The buck should not be passed on to anyone. We need not just firm but quick action. I hope that some of the lessons in part 1 of the inquiry will be learned and that the Minister and the Government will take action quickly.

Building Safety

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Yes, I think we may all welcome that in the coming months.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

There is confusion about the “stay put” policy and tall buildings being approved with single staircases. What has happened to the review of means of escape?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman with an answer.

Social Housing

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on his tireless work and campaigning on this incredibly important issue. I am sure that, as it is for me, 50% to 60% of the casework of every Member is on issues of social housing and the lack of it.

We can look back at Labour’s record and think that we could have and should have done more, but let us not take any criticism from those on the Government Benches. Under Labour, between 1997 and 2010, there were 2 million more homes, there were 1 million more homeowners and we saw the biggest investment in social housing in a generation. Fast forward to the present day and there are now 1.2 million people on housing waiting lists throughout the country. What was the Government’s response? Just 6,464 social homes in 2017-18—the second lowest total on record. At this rate, it will take 172 years to give everyone on the current waiting list a social rented home. That is simply a diabolical rate when compared with the 150,000 social homes that were delivered each year in the mid-1960s, or the 203,000 council homes delivered by the Government in 1953. The evidence is clear: it has been done before and it can be done again.

My constituency is in the London Borough of Merton —a borough that had just 255 lettings in the past year, including just 146 one-beds, 65 two-beds, 43 three-beds and, amazingly, just one four-bed. With figures like these, what hope do any of the 10,000 families on Merton’s waiting list have of ever finding a place to call home? I would be the first to criticise Merton for the level of importance it places on social housing—I do not believe the council concentrates on it enough or is innovative enough—but the Government cannot get away with just blaming Merton.

In 2010, George Osborne cut funding for social housing by more than 60%, leaving us reliant on private developers to provide social housing—the most expensive way to provide a social housing unit that could ever be dreamed up—or on housing associations developing on the basis of the new affordable rents. Surely we must all agree that it is a criminal act to the English language to use the word “affordable” in this context. I am not sure about other Members’ constituencies, but 80% of market rent is not affordable to the vast proportion of people in my constituency. This left housing associations with the dilemma: did they continue to endeavour to fulfil their historic mission to provide housing for people in need, placing themselves under the financial risk of having to charge those rents and to borrow so extensively on their assets; or did they simply give up the ghost? That was a really difficult choice to make and I criticise no housing association in that regard.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has made a very good point. Some housing associations behave well and some behave badly under those circumstances. This was not only about new build, but about the conversion of more than 110,000 existing social rented homes to affordable homes, taking them out. Was that not a deliberate policy by a succession of Conservative and coalition Governments not just to not replace social housing, but to diminish the quantity of social housing?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I think that had many motives. One motive was to diminish social housing, but it had the consequence of putting housing associations at financial risk, leading to a terrible crisis and an expensive crisis. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) informed us of the amount we are currently spending on housing benefit. If we reduce grant rates, we increase the rent and simply place more demand on housing benefit.

Let me give as an example a London and Quadrant development on Western Road in Mitcham. I met my constituent, Tracey. She was desperate to move for many reasons. She had got to the top of the list. I said, “Tracey, bid for this lovely new place, which has been built by L&Q on Western Road.” She said, “I would love to, Siobhain, but the problem is that my partner and I work and the rent is £1,000 a month. We simply could not pay it.” The very people for whom these properties were intended cannot afford to rent them because they go to work.

It is people’s real experiences that motivate me to be interested in this topic. It is about the hundreds of my hard-working constituents who are living in overcrowded conditions at private sector rents that leave them with little to live on and some without even enough to eat. Those families cannot afford to get on the housing ladder. There are not enough social homes to go round. For those who do make it into the private rented sector, they are always just one step away from finding themselves without a home. Not a week goes by when I do not meet yet another hard-working family who have been evicted from their privately rented property and threatened with homelessness just because the landlord can collect more rent from somebody else.

Ms A, with her two young sons, lives in a privately rented property. She pays £1,200 a month, less than the market rent. The landlord could get £2,000 a month. Her young son found his dad dead in bed. The importance of their staying in that home is paramount: so the kids can get to school; she can get to work; and they can get the support from our local church, Saint Joseph’s. She cannot afford to lose that home. When she came to see me, she said, “Siobhain, it’s in a terrible state of repair, and the landlord just told me to think myself lucky. Will you get environmental health involved?” Over the weekend, I thought about it. I know what the consequences will be if I get environmental health involved: six months later, that lady will lose her home. My alternative is to go back to my church to see whether I can find people in that church who will do some of those repairs for her.

Another lady, Miss P, has been a tenant of her privately rented home for the past 14 years. She has never owed money. She has three children and her husband has learning difficulties and a number of health problems. She has received her section 21 notice. It has expired and she faces two years in temporary accommodation at the moment. In two years’ time, who knows how much longer she will be in temporary accommodation. She is desperate to find a property in the private rented sector, but nobody is going to rent to her and she finds it unimaginable that she is in this position.

At 7.30 last Friday, a lady and her 17-year-old son came to see me in a distressed state. They said they were a homeless family from Lewisham who had been housed in Morden for the past year. They had received a phone call that day from Lewisham to say that they must leave their property next Thursday and move miles away. So the eldest son cannot continue his A levels, the middle son cannot continue his GCSEs, and the third son is going to have to move away from his school. This is a vulnerable family who are in temporary accommodation as a result of domestic violence.

Thankfully, Lewisham has changed its mind and it is leaving the family there, but how many families are uprooted, with children having to leave their school? As other hon. Members have suggested, a housing problem is an education problem, is a mental health problem, is a family breakdown problem, is a crime problem.

I am tired of the endless reports, the countless debates, the fruitless words and the lack of action. The Government have a house building target of 300,000 new homes per year, and they cannot simply keep willing the end of more homes without finding the means to provide them. So what will it be? Will we back here at the next debate offering the same ideas and hearing even worse statistics, or will this Government finally open their eyes and see the devastating reality of Britain’s 21st century housing crisis?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

May I add my thanks to my hon. Friends the Members for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), and for Stroud (Dr Drew)—the real midlands engine behind this debate? The fact that we have had speeches from Members from around the country shows that this is a national crisis. The problems are different, but housing supply goes to the heart of them.

In high-value land areas such as my constituency, the problem is particularly intense. House prices are more than 20 times earnings, and the average rent of all properties is more than £2,000 a month. The lowest quartile of house prices, which are the properties we would perhaps expect people on low incomes to be able to afford, reaches well over £500,000. Indeed, the only type of accommodation that is affordable to anybody on the London living wage, let alone the minimum wage, is social rented housing. That is why I am very pleased we are having a debate specifically on this issue. Yes, we need a greater supply of many different types of housing, including in the private rented sector, of good quality and at affordable rents, and we obviously need owner occupation, but the real crisis that has developed over the last 30 or 40 years is in the supply of affordable housing.

I do not want to talk too much about statistics, but there are two or three that I find particularly pregnant. One is the 165% increase in rough sleeping since 2010. There is no good reason for that to have happened, other than Government policy and neglect. Another is the number of social rented homes being built. I think the number was about 6,500 in the year for which figures are most recently available, compared with 40,000 in the last year of the previous Labour Government, but in the decades after the war, the figure was regularly 120,000 a year, year after year. Those disparities show exactly why it is no surprise that we have a crisis.

I would add another statistic. It is slightly more esoteric, but it is an indication of how Government policy has gone off the rails. The London Assembly member Tom Copley did a very good report recently on permitted development—in other words, the conversion, without the requirement for planning consents, of office blocks to residential accommodation, or the slums of the future, as they are now being called. I suppose a silver lining to that cloud is that none of those will actually be social housing slums, because not one of those properties is likely to be a social home. Of the 300 converted in Hammersmith since the policy changed five or six years ago, not one will be a social rented home.

That is one method by which the Government ensure that social housing is always the poor relation, and is never delivered. It is why, rather than talk about the statistics, I will talk in the few minutes I have about the politics. Unless we confront the political differences between the two parties, we will not deliver on social housing. There are obviously big differences on other areas of public policy—the NHS, education and so forth—but there is deeply ingrained in the post-Thatcher era Conservative party an antipathy to and a manipulation of social housing, which has ensured that it has declined over those 40 years.

It is interesting that we now hear Conservative politicians—I do not know whether these are the beginnings of an apology—talking about the stigma of social housing. I have never felt that there was any stigma attached to social housing. That may be because it accounts for a third of my constituency, so it is prevalent. It may also be because it is absolutely in demand, because of its affordability. There has not been such a thing as a hard-to-let property in Hammersmith since the 1970s, and there are long waiting lists for any particular type of home. That is also because, as in the case of many London boroughs—I do not know about the situation outside London—a large proportion of our stock is what are called acquired properties. These are on-street properties that are now very valuable—Victorian and Edwardian houses that were bought up when they were cheap in the 1970s and 1980s—and they are giving life to the mixed communities that we enjoy in London, and which have been imperilled, as I say, by Conservative Government policies.

We heard the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) refer to the policies of the Thatcher Government and the right-to-buy policy. However, if that had been just about home ownership—about enabling people to buy their home, which is a popular and perfectly justifiable policy—we would have had the replacement of those homes. The demand for social housing did not suddenly go away overnight in 1980s; it continued. However, that replacement has never happened, and it does not happen now. Even now, despite a lot of attention being drawn to the issue, only two social homes are replaced for every five that are sold off.

The policy was actually about politics and social engineering. It was about trying to outwit the Labour party through what was perceived to be a part of its own electorate, by saying to people, “We will give you a very valuable asset for way below the value of it”, and that is perhaps why in Basildon it became popular on all sides. The policy was about something else as well. It was about saying—going back to the point about stigma—“You can do better than that,” and, by implication, “If you don’t buy your own home, but stay in a council house or housing association property, there must be something wrong with you.” The policy was taken up and developed in a more and more aggressive way, particularly in London, by Conservative politicians in the 1980s and 1990s.

I am thinking of the era of Shirley Porter—that was about straight political advantage as well, but it was not just about that—and about what Wandsworth Council did, as well as what was later done with my own council houses and those in Fulham. These cases are prime exponents of how to manipulate what should be the most important asset in people’s lives for political, social and, in some cases, moral purposes. People were told that council housing created a dependency culture, and that people should be paying market rents. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said in an intervention, we saw that extraordinary and damaging shift from subsidising land and building to subsidising private landlords, primarily through the extraordinary increase in housing benefit, with billions of pounds every year being wasted in that way.

There is a document that I often refer to, and will go on referring to until it is better known. It was written about 10 years ago by the then Conservative leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, and it had wide currency and gained a lot of favour with the coalition Government. In effect, it proposed the end of council housing based on four principles. The first was that we should have near-market rents, and not have below-market rents. The second was that we should have no subsidy to allow the building of social housing. The third was that there should be no security—no more lifetime tenancies, only fixed-term tenancies that were renewable. Finally, there should be no legal duty on local authorities to rehouse people, as there is under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 for those who fall into vulnerable categories.

The explicit aim was to reduce over time the volume of social housing to about 5% to 10% of what it currently is. That may sound like fantasy, but three and a half of those four principles were quickly adopted by the coalition Government, and we have seen the effect of that in the 10 years since then. There are now affordable rents that are 80% of market rents, and short-term tenancies that mean that families grow up in insecurity, not with a home, but with temporary accommodation for that period.

The cut in subsidies that my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) referred to cut away at a stroke the ability of councils to build new homes, and led to the massive decline that has been mentioned. We did not quite get no duty towards homeless people, but we got a duty that could be discharged in the private rented sector. The effect of benefit cuts and other measures introduced by the coalition Government was that people were placed in temporary accommodation or in the private rented sector and were often—because of the cost of renting in high-value areas—sent a long way from home. Those policies may have been dreamed up in policy forums in west London, but they got the ear of the then Minister of State for Housing and Planning, now Chairman of the Conservative party, and quickly became policy, and that has led to the parlous situation that we are in.

Let me be a little more specific and concrete by describing what happened in my area when there was a change of political control. We had eight years of the Conservatives running Hammersmith. Social housing was not only a low priority, but was sold off as it became vacant. More than 300 council homes, which tended to be the larger, more expensive three and four-bedroom street properties, were sold off, so that they were no longer available to rehouse people. In most cases, there was no requirement on developers to provide any social housing. There was a policy not to build any more, and to reduce the quantity of social housing in an area that had more than 10,000 people on the housing waiting list—a problem that was resolved by abolishing the housing waiting list.

Let me contrast that with the current situation in Hammersmith under a Labour council whose first and clearest priority is to resolve those problems, and whose second priority is to provide decent-quality, affordable social housing for a new generation. In partnership, it is building 440 new affordable homes, with the possibility of another 300 on top of that. Through development deals, and as a result of the council pushing developers hard to ensure that a large proportion of new housing is affordable, there could be another nearly 2,400 homes. Over the current four-year planning period, we expect more than 3,000 new affordable homes to be built in a borough that has some of the highest land prices in the country. At least a quarter of those will be new social homes—the first to be constructed for many years in the borough.

That development will make a profound difference to the lives of my constituents. The difference between living in insanitary, overcrowded and insecure housing, and having a proper, secure, assured tenancy of a property that is well constructed and maintained, cannot be overestimated. That should be a priority for this Government, but it simply has not been a priority for Conservative—and indeed Liberal Democrat—Governments over the past few years.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman’s point about safe, decent housing goes to the heart of the concerns of my constituents in Deans South. Decades ago, they were sold substandard housing by West Lothian Council, and many of them have had to live there for many years. They include a constituent who has bronchial issues, as does her son. We are close to a resolution, but it will take the will of the council, the developer, social housing, and local politicians. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when there is an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past, we should work across the political divide and do everything we can to do that?

[Andy Slaughter]

I agree, and it is good to hear that message coming from different parties, regions and countries. I hope that we will also hear it from Conservative Members. Hon. Members might have gathered that I am not entirely persuaded of the bona fides of the Conservative and Unionist party on this matter, but if it genuinely wishes to change its spots there is now an opportunity to do that. That must, however, involve a large-scale building programme of social housing in this country. Frankly, I do not see that aim among the current incumbents responsible for the job, but I would be delighted to be proved wrong.

Even in the past few years, the Housing and Planning Act 2016 attempted to allow the sale of housing association homes; I am glad that attempt has been abandoned. The prospect of means-testing for council tenants created more insecurity and led to the treatment of social housing as second-class housing. That idea has also been abandoned. We have seen a change in recent years, in that the Government are less willing to take up extreme right-wing and radical policies, but we have not seen any alternative. I am sure that when the Minister responds to the debate, he will have statistics prepared by his civil servants, but such statistics never persuade anybody. We will believe there is a commitment to social housing when the Government start to build it, enabling and motivating local authorities and housing associations to build houses at an affordable rent. Without that, everything else is rhetoric.

Grenfell: Government Response

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I can say to the hon. Lady that I have been to Manchester and met some residents previously in relation to this very serious issue and the profound impact this has on people’s lives. It was why I did make the decision to commit to fully fund the remediation of private sector high-rise residential buildings with ACM, except where a warranty claim has been accepted.

The hon. Lady rightly says there is a need for certainty as quickly as possible. That is why we did write to all relevant building owners on 17 May to set out the initial steps, the documentation and all the aspects, so that we are able to move quickly on making decisions in relation to this. The point about non-ACM is also very relevant, and it is why we are undertaking the relevant steps that we are with the different testing and, indeed, the advice and guidance that were being provided. I am certainly happy to talk to her and other colleagues about the impact, which I know is significant in a number of different ways, and about support for local authorities or what other action can be taken to assist.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is always humbling to meet the Grenfell survivors, because often they want to talk about others who are in a worse condition than themselves or to ask what the Government are doing to prevent further tragedies in relation to cladding and other matters. Often, however, as I am sure the Secretary of State found today, if we talk to them in some depth, we find that they themselves are still suffering. After two years, despite the fact that there is an appearance of a full support structure, it often breaks down and people are being forced—or, at least, given ultimatums—to go into accommodation that is not suitable, and they do not know whom to turn to. What advice does the Secretary of State have for me and other Members when they are confronted by survivors of that kind, and where can they go to get justice, because not in every case is that being done at the moment?

[James Brokenshire]

I would be very interested to hear any further details from the hon. Gentleman in relation to cases he is pointing to. I know the Minister for Housing has had regular surgeries with a number of the families involved about the decision process and the support they are receiving, and indeed from the taskforce itself with the challenge and the information it gives me. I would be very pleased to meet the hon. Gentleman and talk to him about those cases. He is right: it is hugely humbling to meet the survivors and the bereaved, and see the dignity and humility that they show. I think many of us who were at the Speaker’s reception earlier today will have felt that very keenly, with the profound impact it certainly had on me and I know on others in this House, too.

Grenfell Tower Fire

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) on securing the debate and on the work she has championed since she was elected. She was plunged into this catastrophe just days after being elected—probably one of the biggest challenges any Member of Parliament has had to face. She knows how much it matters to me, too. My previous constituency boundary included Grenfell Tower. As the neighbouring constituency, many residents in my constituency watched in horror from tower blocks around Harrow Road as the fire claimed those lives. The trauma affects my constituents, too.

The night that Grenfell burned and 72 people died in a modern, refurbished tower block, at the heart of one of the wealthiest communities in one of the most prosperous cities the world has ever known, is seared into our national consciousness. It is a defining moment of modern British politics. It should have been the event that changed everything. It should have brought about a wholly new attitude to housing, social housing and meeting housing need, the duty of care we have to people in high-rise accommodation, risk and deregulation in housing. I let myself believe that that would be true. It should have been a defining moment and it has not been.

Of course, some action has been taken, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee, said: the inquiry is under way; we have had the interim report from the Hackitt review; and the Government have today launched a consultation. I am grateful for the fact that the Government backed my private Member’s Bill, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, which allows tenants legal recourse when their homes, including the common parts of flats, are unfit and threaten their health and safety. That includes fire risk. We have also had the £200 million fund for cladding removal in private blocks.

What has not happened, however, is a seismic shift in attitude and action from the Government. That falls into two parts and I will briefly refer to both of them.

The first is the meeting of housing need relating specifically to Grenfell. On the day after the fire, we convened in Westminster Hall—Parliament was still prorogued; it was just after the election—and a number of us spoke to Ministers about the aftermath. I recall saying to Ministers that one of the things that needed to be understood was how many of the residents in Grenfell Tower and around Grenfell had direct or close experience of homelessness, and how critically important it was that immediate action was taken to provide permanent accommodation for them. In addition to the trauma of the fire, the dislocation of moving from one home to another and the experience of being in emergency or temporary accommodation would only compound what they had experienced. I remember placing that in the context of rising homelessness across London and the importance of not making other vulnerable families in housing need wait longer for a home because of the demands posed by Grenfell. Heads nodded.

We know now, two years later, that not all those housing needs have been met. Of the 202 households from Grenfell, 14 remain in temporary accommodation. Of the 129 evacuated from the wider area, 41 are still in temporary accommodation. That is unacceptable. It sits in the wider context of homelessness across London, which is detailed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington said, by the Shelter commission. That should also have been a wake-up call and a demand for immediate action to tackle housing need.

We have seen very little action. There has been a collapse in social housebuilding under this Government. It was inadequate beforehand—I am happy to say that—but there has been a collapse since then, with record lows in housing delivery and an acute homelessness crisis. The needs of the Kensington and Grenfell families should be seen in that context. In a new era for social housing that Grenfell should have generated, we have not seen action from the Government.

The second legacy, as we have heard, is the Government’s commitment that such a catastrophe should never happen again and that people should not fear that it will happen again. They should not live under the shadow of safety concerns in their own blocks, yet two years on that is exactly where we are. We know that 60,000 people live today in blocks with potentially dangerous cladding. We know that eight out of 10 of the blocks that had cladding have yet to have it removed. We know that 16,400 private apartments are wrapped in potentially dangerous cladding. In a question to the Mayor of London two weeks ago, Assembly Member Andrew Dismore found that London Fire Brigade paid 1,200 visits to high-rise premises with suspected flammable cladding, of which 316 confirmed flammable cladding. That is at its most acute in three boroughs: Tower Hamlets, where there are 65; Greenwich, where there are 45; and my own borough of Westminster, where there are 26.

The £200 million the Government recently announced is welcome—it came just under the wire for the second anniversary—but it is clearly not enough to ensure that either the ACM cladding blocks or those in potentially non-ACM flammable cladding can be dealt with.

We have heard from the Select Committee about the generally deregulatory attitude of the building industry. It was very, very concerning to see a survey in Building, which showed how little the business industry had risen to the challenge of safety concerns and how little change there has been in the way it works.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the industry has not taken responsibility. It is a shame that past Ministers are on record as putting the onus on industry, saying it is not for the Government to regulate but for the industry to self-regulate. Does she agree that we have to end that, and that if industry will not take responsibility the Government will have to act?

[Ms Buck]

I totally agree. People living in high-rise blocks wrapped in cladding find it inexplicable that the Government still have such a deregulatory approach and expect the industry to take responsibility.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The horrific image of Grenfell is still very fresh in all our minds, almost as if it happened yesterday. I am sure that is true for every Member here, but it is particularly true for those of us who represent neighbouring constituencies. In many ways, the community across north Kensington, north Westminster, White City and Shepherd’s Bush is one community, and people there feel this very deeply. I would like to add my thanks and praise to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad), who has had the difficult and traumatic job of trying to represent that community. She has done that brilliantly over the past two years, and indeed for many years before that. I would also like to thank the shadow Housing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), who has doggedly pursued this issue and tried to ensure that there is action on the subject.

The truth is that Grenfell did not happen yesterday. It happened two years ago and, as we have heard from many Members today on both sides, there has been dragging of feet. Let me say a few words about the concerns being expressed about the inquiry. There are concerns about the order of issues and the fact that the inquiry has not even got on to looking at the building material, among other aspects, and will not do so until next year. The tone of the inquiry has also raised concern. We have other major inquiries, such as the contaminated blood inquiry, going on at the moment, which might have got that better. There is also the issue of cost. I have heard—I do not know whether this is absolutely right; I ask the Minister confirm or deny it—that the police costs for the Grenfell inquiry are not being covered by the Government and that up to £30 million may be coming out of the Metropolitan police budgets. If that is true, it is a disgrace that adds insult to injury.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am happy to provide some clarity. As I understand it, on costs, the Metropolitan police service was awarded £11.4 million in 2018-19, of which it has spent £5.9 million. The expected costs in 2019-20 will be around £6 million, which will be provided from the special grant budget. So there is no intention that there should be any shortfall on investigatory costs.

[Andy Slaughter]

I am grateful to the Minister for intervening, but I would like to feel absolutely certain on that. I would be grateful if he could to write to me to guarantee that any additional costs for the police will be covered from central funds and not from their own budget.

The key point I want to make on the inquiry relates to its longevity. The fact that it will take time means that it is being used as an excuse. We are not short of good advice from people at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Fire Brigades Union and the London fire brigade about what needs to be done now, but actually things are not being done now. An example is the fact that a consultation has just been published in the middle of this debate. In fact, I was tipped off by the fire brigade about five minutes before the debate started that there was a 200-page document to be read. Why could that document not have been published yesterday, or even the day before, to inform the debate? The terrible suspicion is that this has been done in order to capture a headline, so that, rather than the Government’s inaction on this subject being highlighted, they appear to be doing something.

I had a chance to read the written statement and the Government’s press release, which contained the welcome comment that

“too many in the building industry were taking short cuts that could endanger residents in the very place they were supposed to feel safest—their own home.”

I could not agree more, but who is responsible for this? Within the last five years, Ministers have said in relation to the important issue of sprinklers:

“We believe that it is the responsibility of the fire industry, rather than the Government, to market fire sprinkler systems effectively and to encourage their wider installation.”—[Official Report, 6 February 2014; Vol. 575, c. 188WH.]

The right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) has stated:

“The industry itself has an opportunity to make a case. I am not convinced at the moment it is for the Government to make a case for private industry”.

That is typical of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman said that when he was the Housing and Planning Minister, but I am sure I could have quoted many others. We have to get rid of this ideology, and the Government have to face up to their responsibility on this matter.

In the short time I have, I will cover a number of topics, although necessarily very briefly. Individual Grenfell survivors are not being well served. I am not going to name her for reasons of privacy, but I have a constituent who escaped with her daughter from a high floor in Grenfell Tower on the night. She then spent a year in hotel accommodation and a year in temporary accommodation in my constituency. She appears to be no nearer to getting rehoused. I may pass that case to the Minister, because he may want to intervene himself, because this clearly is not working. It is not working generally for survivors. I would like to see an open book approach to how the rehousing has been dealt with. It happens that Kensington and Chelsea was the richest council in the country; I wonder what would have happened in Northamptonshire or somewhere of that kind. To some extent, the Government have been let off the hook there. We still hear reports that people are not in permanent or suitable housing, or that housing has been purchased but is in such a state that it still needs to be got ready. People have gone into permanent housing because they felt pressurised to do so and have then had to come out of it because it turned out to be unsuitable. That is entirely unfair.

Issues of causation have not been addressed, such as that of the fridge-freezer—the plastic back is still legal, despite the fact that it is prone to fire—the fridge-freezer, manufactured by the Whirlpool company, who have a terrible reputation for white goods of this kind. We will not find out until the end of this year exactly what the cause of the fire was. Everyone suspects that the cladding was the major form of spread, but we are no further forward in knowing the exact sequence of events in relation to that. On all the other fire safety issues around regulation, means of escape, fire doors, and building security—fire alarms and matters of that kind—we are really as in the dark now as we were two years ago.

There were issues around what happened on the night, and the fact that clearly—not just Kensington and Chelsea, although they were utterly, utterly abysmal, to the extent that they could not even accept offers of help from other authorities, but generally speaking—we were not in a state to deal with a major emergency of this kind. If it happened again tomorrow, would we be any better off? I would like to know the answer.

I am grateful that the Chair of the Select Committee and others have dealt with some of the complex issues of fire safety; I do not have time to do so. I am glad to hear from the chair of the all-party group that they are pursuing this matter as well. To have dealt with ACM cladding only, and not with high-pressure laminate cladding—which can be twice as combustible as ACM cladding—over the last two years is negligent. Not to have heeded the advice of the fire brigade and others in relation to sprinkler systems is negligent. Not to have looked at the testing processes, and the combination of materials—not just cladding but insulation, and how they work in situ, not just in test circumstances—is equally negligent. I am afraid there is still a terrible stench of complacency from the Government, even after two years.

[Mr Reed]

My hon. Friend is making some important points about the inadequacy of what the Government are proposing, but in the written ministerial statement that they have issued—during the debate rather than before it—they are proposing not to consult on whether 18 metres or six storeys is the appropriate height, and therefore they are not even going to consider whether a ban on flammable cladding below that height should be looked at. Does he think that is acceptable?

[Andy Slaughter]

It is absolutely not acceptable, and my hon. Friend has made some points in his excellent speech about the lacunae—all the missed opportunities to deal with existing buildings, including other types of high-risk and high buildings, which are not even within the Government’s purview here, despite many experts’ having pointed out the necessity of that.

Let me say a few words about housing. In the decades following the second world war, we were building an average of about 125,000 social homes a year. In the past year, we built 6,000. I would like to know what will happen on the site of Grenfell. The sooner the building goes, the better. Yes, we can have a consultation on what should be on the spot. It is a sensitive matter. Why are we not specifically replacing the hundreds—it is not just the tower itself—of social homes that have been wrecked by the fire?

The year before the Grenfell fire there was a serious fire in Shepherd’s Court, a tower block in Shepherd’s Bush, in my constituency, and the fire spread; so I am only too aware just how traumatic fire can be for residents. Thankfully, there were no injuries. But incidents like that should have been warning signals; they were not heeded. Grenfell is a nightmare. I can think of no worse way to die—waiting for rescue, hoping for hours that it was going to come, and then the slow realisation that it was not going to, and that you were going to have the most horrific death. If that is not a wake-up call to this Government, I do not know what is. I would like to see much, much more action to ensure that this never happens again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

Yes, indeed, and that is the case.

Although I understand the concerns about the speed of the remediation, I hope that Members will be aware that this work requires significant amounts of engineering and construction work, which will necessarily take time. On numbers, at the end of April, of the 175 residential buildings, 15%, or 27, have finished or started their remediation, and a further 116, or 66%, have plans in place. I have asked the Department to report to me as soon as possible on what a timetable might look like to ensure that we can reach completion of that programme within a reasonable length of time. I hope that Members will appreciate that, while there is a requirement or a desire to press me for an end point, it is more complicated than just fixing a date and time, because there are obviously capacity issues. There are planning and engineering issues that need to be taken into account, but I would like to get to that place in pretty short order. The money has only just been provided, and what I would like to get to in pretty short order is a sense of what the industry is capable of achieving and some benchmarks for performance that we can hold it to.

A number of Members also asked about the testing regime for other materials and that work is now under way. We hope that that will be completed before the summer, and that we can publish the results shortly thereafter. As I have said in previous debates in this House, we have a commitment and a strong imperative to investigate the materials that are being used in these circumstances in a systematic and methodical way. Although there is a range of cladding products, they are used in a range of circumstances and in combination with a range of other materials. That matrix of possibilities creates many dozens of combinations that will need to be assessed over time. We have to start with the cladding itself, and, as I have said, that testing is under way at the Building Research Establishment, and we should be able to publish results soon.

The fourth area of work is obviously the building safety programme itself. After the tragedy at Grenfell, it became obvious that things had to change around building safety and change very significantly. The Government responded quickly with the Hackitt review, and it has given us an important root and branch look at building safety. We have been vociferous in calling for a culture change across the industry and backed it with serious action. We have consulted on a clarified version of Approved Document B and issued a call for evidence as the first step towards a technical review. As part of that review—a number of Members raised the issue of sprinklers—we obviously can review the requirement for sprinklers in buildings.

We have also established an industry early adopters group made up of key players in the construction and housing sector who have just this morning launched a new building safety charter calling for all of industry to commit to putting safety first.

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the Minister also tell us what the Government will do about the “stay put” policy? According to Inside Housing and the FBU briefing for this debate, 209 residential buildings in London alone have changed from “stay put” to evacuation, which has all sorts of implications for guidance, alarm systems and so forth. What are the Government doing to make sure that these matters are addressed and are clear to everyone?

[Kit Malthouse]

As I am sure the hon. Gentleman understands, fire safety policy does not fall within my remit and is effectively a Home Office issue. I did recently meet representatives of the fire service, who said that this policy is under constant review but remains valid. However, I am happy to write to him with details of what the Government are doing with regard to “stay put”. I understand the concern that that policy has produced in the light of the Grenfell disaster and it is important that we are transparent about it. As I have said, I am more than happy to write to him with some details.

On building safety, we are determined to bring forward meaningful legislative reform. Just today, we launched a consultation on the new building safety regulatory system. The written ministerial statement was not actually laid, as the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) said during the debate. It was raised at 10.30. I asked Doorkeepers to distribute it if they could, and it is now available for Members to read if they wish. In that review, we have accepted all 53 of Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommendations and in some areas we intend to go further. What we are proposing is a radically new building and fire safety system—a system that puts residents’ safety at its very heart. It will be a challenging but essential step to help drive the long-term culture change that we need and restore confidence in our country’s building safety system.

Housing

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

On no issue save housing is the chasm more evident between the platitudes we heard from the Dispatch Box and the reality that MPs experience every week in their constituencies. One in seven homes in my borough is overcrowded, and housing conditions are the worst I have seen in 30 years, in particular in the private rented sector. That is why we needed the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), to call out those absolutely disgusting and appalling conditions in which families are living every day in my constituency.

As for affordability, for the bottom quartile of homes—that is, the ones that should be most affordable—the average price is more than £500,000 in my constituency. Average monthly rent is over £2,000, and the ratio between house prices and earnings is over 20:1. And yet, because of the way in which the Government implement policies like the benefits cap, the reality is that people simply cannot afford to live in areas where they, their families and their communities have lived for decades. The only remedy is the sort of radical programme that my right hon. Friend the shadow Housing Secretary has set out.

It is possible to make a difference locally. We do not have local elections in my area this year, but for those who do, I will just outline the difference between having a Labour council and a Conservative one. My council was Conservative until 2014. In its last four years, it sold off more than 300 empty council properties because they had become vacant. That included three and four-bedroomed houses, and many two-bedroomed houses and flats. These properties were sold off on the open market, putting them out of reach of families forever and a day. Cynically, that council then took a housing waiting list of over 8,000 families and reduced it to over 1,000, simply by knocking families off the list. In many cases, the council did not even have the courtesy to tell them. That degree of cynicism and that type of social engineering has gone on not just in my borough, but in many boroughs across London and elsewhere—and it is a moral crime, not just bad policy.

I contrast that situation with the position of my council under Labour. This issue is one of the reasons that Labour was elected in Hammersmith and Fulham, and was then re-elected with a landslide last year. Labour-run Hammersmith and Fulham Council stated this month that it

“has recently secured more than 1,600 genuinely affordable homes in the borough at zero cost to taxpayers after negotiating a series of deals with developers.”

That is the difference that Labour makes in local government, and I believe that in national Government—with this sort of programme of housebuilding, and the crackdown on poor landlords and poor conditions—we can actually tackle this crisis. It is not just that this Government are complacent; as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) said, they simply do not care to solve the housing crisis in this country.