Fire Safety Bill

Apsana Begum Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 29th April 2020 Commons Chamber

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

Many of us simply cannot understand why tens of thousands of residents still live in blocks with Grenfell-style cladding. When we look beneath the rhetoric, the endless legal complexities and the passing of the proverbial buck, that is the truth of the situation and the reality of what so many people endure day to day. That is what is important here and what is at stake. Years have passed since the Grenfell catastrophe, and yet still no one has been called to account. When will we ever get answers? When will the victims ever get justice?

To be completely clear and frank, it is utterly unacceptable that residential blocks in my constituency of Poplar and Limehouse and elsewhere, covered in Grenfell-style ACM cladding, have still not had it removed. The remediation of unsafe buildings is a national issue, and supporting affected residents and leaseholders must be paramount, but it is not clear that the Fire Safety Bill will address the fact that a majority of the blocks remain covered almost three years after Grenfell, and that other types of cladding identified as dangerous and ordered to be removed have not yet been removed.

I am alarmed that residents and leaseholders are suffering from anxiety and stress, and that leaseholders in blocks with ACM and other types of cladding experience problems in selling or remortgaging their home. Most fundamentally, people are forced to continue to live in an unsafe building. It is not obvious what will be done for the hundreds of blocks that have either missed, or look set to miss, deadlines for cladding removal, or what assistance the Bill will give to residents who are trapped in buildings with Grenfell-style cladding but where work has stopped because of covid-19.

On top of that, there is much uncertainty regarding the sufficiency of the Government’s funding and assistance. The Government must acknowledge the difficulties that leaseholders face in particular, and the Government need to ensure with action, not simply words, that remediation work should not in any circumstances whatever fall on individual leaseholders in affected private blocks. Likewise, it would be helpful if the Government provided assurances today that support will be extended to all leaseholders, regardless of the type of unsafe cladding on their building, and that the coverage of the cladding replacement fund will extend to all types of blocks that the local fire service has identified as being unsafe.

As mentioned, the coronavirus has caused many contractors to cease work on cladding sites, while others have not even begun yet due to complex legal disputes. Such delays mean that residents in buildings continue to face extortionate fees for interim safety measures. The Government must ensure that leaseholders in blocks are not forced to shoulder the costs of such interim safety measures, especially those in blocks whose owners have been named and shamed by the Government for refusing to make their blocks safe.

The Bill is only a modest improvement to the fire safety regime. As I and many colleagues have said, it does not fundamentally solve the problems we face. That will require substantial investment in fire and rescue services, to ensure adequate staffing levels and appropriate levels of training. Yet existing policies continue to cut frontline services. In the meantime, firefighters take on new areas of work to keep their communities safe. On the frontline, they are helping us through this crisis, while still responding to fires and other emergencies.

It is time for the Government to step up, to take responsibility and ownership of the issue, and to ensure that the Grenfell Tower fire never ever happens again. The truth is that the decisions of central Government, stretching back for years, have led to the gutting of the UK’s fire safety regime and the failure to regulate high-rise residential buildings properly for fire safety.

Policies relating to housing, local government, the fire and rescue services, research and other areas have been driven by the agenda of cuts, deregulation and privatisation, fostered by the direct lobbying of private business interests. What is certainly without any doubt is that it is not the fault of individual residents that they are now subjected to the awful situation of living in an unsafe building. They most certainly should not have to pay the price accordingly.