Fire Safety Bill

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab) [V]]

It is shameful that this modest Bill is the Government’s legislative response thus far to Grenfell, almost four years after that tragedy took place. We might expect, therefore, that it would at least address the most significant and urgent wrongs that the Grenfell fire brought to the Government’s attention. The purpose of the Bill is to update the fire safety order and better manage and reduce the risk of fire. What better and more straightforward way of achieving that than to implement the recommendations of part 1 of the Grenfell inquiry, which deals with issues such as the inspection and maintenance of lifts and doors, and having proper systems of evacuation in place and communicated to residents? It is impossible to imagine those steps, backed by the moral and legal authority of the inquiry, not becoming law. That is the purpose of Lords amendment 2.

Although safety is the paramount concern, the treatment of leaseholders and tenants living in unsafe blocks is a wholly new scandal that this Bill will fail to address unless Lords amendment 4 is agreed today. Those tenants should not bear the cost of remedial work to their flats where they did not and could not have known the risks posed by their construction. The Government do not seek to deny that, but instead make a series of partial concessions. That is the wrong approach. We should start, as amendment 4 does, with the presumption that remedial costs attributable to the Bill should not be borne by leaseholders. They should not be borne by tenants or social landlords either, or by the rents of the least well off or the limited funds set aside for the provision and repairing of social homes.

The cynical disregard for the lives of our fellow citizens that Grenfell exposed will take years, billions of pounds and the concentrated efforts of the Government and industry to address. Building design, materials, construction, maintenance and inspection are all in the dock. Height is a factor, but so is who the occupants and users are and how they are taught to behave, especially in an emergency.

For the Government constantly to adopt a reductive approach to the crisis is irresponsible. This is not just about one or two types of cladding, buildings over 18 metres or residential buildings. Today is an opportunity not to address all those issues, important as they are, but to show a serious intent to act now on the most obvious faults and injustices. The Government should take it by accepting all the amendments before the House.

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). This is a horrendously complicated issue involving cladding—ACM, high-pressure laminate and other forms of inflammable cladding—fire safety measures and the height of buildings. I warmly welcome the fact that the Government have come up with the money to remedy the most unsafe buildings—tall buildings—and the cladding that was put on them, which fails to provide safe accommodation to residents.

The reality is that the £5.1 billion will remediate only the unsafe cladding and will not do the comprehensive work. The issue then becomes one of the fire safety work that has to be carried out as well. There is no funding to provide for that, so it has to be paid for by someone.

I have a series of suggested tests that could apply. The first is that, emerging from the Grenfell inquiry, it is quite clear that the ACM cladding was illegal, so those responsible for developing the cladding and putting it on the building must pay for the remediation in all other buildings where that is the case. Similarly, for other forms of unsafe cladding, if those people fail to accord with the building regulations that exist at the time, they should pay the cost of removing and correcting it.

Leaseholders could not reasonably have been expected to foresee the fire safety issues when they bought the leases on their flats, so the fundamental issue is that they should not have to pay the cost of remediation, either of cladding or of fire safety defects. My hon. Friend the Minister said that he finds the amendments defective. My challenge to him, when he responds to this debate, is to make it clear from the Dispatch Box that the Government will bring forward proposals in the Lords to amend the Bill to make sure leaseholders do not pay.

The defence seems to be that the Building Safety Bill will eventually come through and be implemented. The problem is that we have sat through the pre-legislative scrutiny of that Bill and recommended at least 40 changes to it. It will take probably 18 months for it to reach the statute book, and then we have the secondary legislation. Leaseholders do not have the time: this work needs to be carried out now. The industry estimates that it will take some four years to implement all the safety works required. It must be made clear that the leaseholders are not the ones to pay.

Currently, leaseholders cannot insure or sell their properties and no one wants to buy them. We are in danger of freezing the housing market because of this problem. I urge the Minister, when he responds, to—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. We will have to leave it there.