Fire Safety Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]]

So, here we are again debating the Fire Safety Bill and the Lords amendments to it. The key issue here is not whether we enshrine in law the requirements on fire safety but who ends up paying for them. The reality is, as the Father of the House mentioned, that the £5.1 billion offered by the Government thus far will be insufficient to cover the remediation and fire safety costs identified not only in tall buildings but in lower buildings as well. The key issue, then, is that it is going to take some five years for the work to be carried out, and that leaseholders are receiving bills now of £50,000 or more in order for the work to be carried out. They can ill afford it.

The Government are committed to producing the Building Safety Bill, but we know that it will be announced in the Queen’s Speech and that it will probably take 18 months to two years before it is live and operational. Leaseholders do not have the luxury of that time. They are being charged the money right now. We still do not know the details of the forced loan scheme that the Government are offering for leaseholders in buildings below six storeys. We have been asking to scrutinise it, so we can see whether it is fit for purpose or whether it will even work.

I have had the honour and privilege of serving on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee for the past 11 years. We are publishing a report on cladding and the other issues tomorrow. Obviously I am not allowed to pre-disclose the details, but it is fair to say that we are critical of the way in which the Government are approaching this necessary means. I urge the Minister for Housing, who is a good friend for whom I have every respect, to let us have some commitments from the Front Bench in his answer to this debate, and to tell us what he will do to ensure that leaseholders are prevented from having to bear these unnecessary and unacceptable costs. Let us also have some commitments on when we will see the proposed forced loan scheme. Let us have some commitments on when we can expect to see the Building Safety Bill brought into operation, and some overall commitment to ensure that people living in unmortgageable, unsaleable flats are given appropriate comfort, because, frankly, without that, we will have to support the Lords amendment to ensure that the Government come back with these proposals early in the new Session.

Let us make sure that we send the message to leaseholders out there: you should not have to pay a penny piece to rectify the problems that are not your fault in the first place. I shall be supporting the Lords amendment once again today.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab) [V]]

This Bill has been passing backwards and forwards between the Lords and Commons because the Government will not do the right thing and protect leaseholders from the ruinous costs of replacing cladding and remediating internal fire safety defects during construction. By refusing to do so, the Government are making liars out of all the successive Ministers—and, indeed, a Prime Minister—who have told this House that leaseholders should not pay for building defects for which they are not responsible.

Today I want to focus on the impact of the EWS1 regulations and the callous way in which another operator, FirstPort, is treating vulnerable residents in Blackberry Court in my constituency. FirstPort has written to the 27 leaseholders in Blackberry Court, which is a two-storey block of flats, to advise them that the fire safety work will cost more than £20,000. It has not provided a breakdown of costs or issued a section 20 notice, as it is legally obliged to do for any work costing more than £250 per leaseholder. What is most disturbing, however, is that FirstPort has been demanding access to the roof void through the only loft hatch, which is located in the bedroom of my constituent, who is an elderly lady of 94 years of age. FirstPort would brook no objection to this until I intervened to forestall this intrusion and asked it to create new access to the roof void from the common parts of the building. But the fact that it had not yet been able to access the void to survey it means that it must already have been aware that there was no compartmentation in the roof space. Indeed, I have discovered that Blackberry Court, which was built in 2007, never got a completion certificate, despite being covered by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. That prompts the question of why the company had not acted on this fire safety defect before. Some may suspect that the properties were unsaleable and devalued—unless the work was done—because of the EWS1 form. The Government did change the requirements on the form, but the Minister knows that the banks and the mortgage lenders have not changed their stance, nor have the insurers.