Building Safety and Resilience

Debate between Clive Betts and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali), to her position. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) said in an intervention a few moments ago, it is probably one of the most challenging and difficult jobs in Government. We all saw the struggles faced by Conservative Ministers who had to deal with these issues over many years; indeed, we are still struggling because we have not got to the position that we would all like to be in.

I want to comment on the many reports produced by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee in the last Parliament and the one before, when I was privileged to chair the Committee. We produced two reports after Grenfell, following Dame Judith Hackitt’s initial report on the issues to the Government. We also did pre-legislative scrutiny of the Building Safety Bill, followed up with a report, did quite a lot of work on things like construction products, and had correspondence with Ministers on those subjects. Every one of our reports was agreed unanimously by that cross-party Committee, and I am pleased that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), has indicated the Opposition’s support for the general approach to these matters; we all want to see building safety carried out on all the buildings in our constituencies in a timely and proper manner.

As I was looking back at Dame Judith’s report and deciding what I should say today, as well as picking out one or two bits of the Select Committee’s work, something struck me. She said that it was about not just building rules and regulations but culture. The Grenfell report clearly sets out that there needs to be an overall comprehensive review to avoid the gaps in regulations. That is absolutely right, and the Government will no doubt follow that through and report on what they are going to do, but Dame Judith said that there was a “race to the bottom” culture in the building industry—that it was about how cheaply could things be done. That was shown in Grenfell, as there were examples of cheaper products being substituted for others.

In the end, the safety of individuals was put behind financial returns. Unfortunately, that is far too common in the construction industry. The Minister may even struggle more with that fundamental reform to attitudes and culture than she does with the review of building regulations, which will be a struggle enough itself. That has to be borne in mind right the way through. Nevertheless, we look forward to the Government’s response to all the recommendations of Sir Martin Moore-Bick and his inquiry.

The Minister said in a written answer to me the other day that about 4,000 homes still have dangerous cladding on them. After all this time, that really is quite shocking. I wonder whether the Minister might consider updating that figure regularly—maybe placing it in the Library every three months—so we can all look at whether progress has been made quickly enough. She might even like to provide a list of all the buildings, their owners and their developers so we can start to see who the guilty parties are. Some have legitimate reasons for not having made changes yet, which we want to know, but others simply are not interested in getting on with the work that is their responsibility.

There are some other problems and challenges that the Minister might also like to address. My attention was drawn to a particular block that could access the building safety fund for the removal of cladding, but not for other safety work that needed to be done, including replacing missing firewalls and dangerous fire doors. That is okay when developers are involved, who should be pushed to put right their wrongs of their construction, but in this case, the developer had gone bust and the building was owned by its leaseholders. Where did they go in that situation? Well, actually, the building work just stopped.

We ended up with a building safety fund that is not comprehensive—the Select Committee recommended it cover all aspects of building safety work—and covers just cladding, and because other elements of building safety are not covered by the fund, there are situations where buildings are left unsafe and there is no one really to point the finger at and say, “They’re responsible.” The Minister probably cannot give me an answer to that point today, but I hope she will think about it. If we can start to identify precisely where these buildings are, many more such situations may emerge.

Where there are recalcitrant developers and owners, how can the leaseholders get help? As has been mentioned, they are often faced with high insurance costs and enormous worries about what happens next in their life. The Select Committee talked to people who were in despair, and that was a few years ago; they are probably still in despair now because nothing has changed in their situation. On top of that, they can be faced with legal costs to challenge the developers and owners. Can the Minister give us some assurance that her Department and officials will stand ready to offer all assistance possible to leaseholders in that situation, who are really struggling and desperate in many circumstances? The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership has done good work in providing assistance, but the technical and legal advice should really be coming from her Department.

I wanted to mention one or two other key issues, although if I tried to go through all the building safety issues that came up in the Select Committee, I would be here for a lot longer than today’s debate. Skills have been mentioned. When the Committee looked at the Building Safety Bill, we recommended a national system of third-party accreditation and registration for all professionals working on the design and construction of high-rise buildings. That did not include all the people who work on buildings, such as labourers and those with other skills, but all those involved with professional skills—whether it be architects, those overseeing construction work or building safety managers—should be properly accredited, and there ought to be a national system. It is clear that there are gaps in that regard.

As for those who work in the trades involved, it is a disgrace that under building electrical safety regulations, it is still the case that the only rules relate to “competent persons”. In a high-rise building, an electrician who does work in a kitchen where there is water, or in the garden where there is water, will not be covered by any building safety regulations. An electrician who does work in the bathroom will be covered, but will have to be part of a competent persons scheme—which does not mean that the person doing the work must be competent; it simply means that the company must be registered as having someone who is competent to sign off the work at the end of the day, even if the person never sees the work that has been done. The Committee reported on that several times back in 2015 and never got any further with it, so it needs to be looked at.

Construction products were clearly a problem at Grenfell, and I welcomed the comments about that in the Grenfell report. We called over and over again for a comprehensive review of the testing of products and their safety. We called for the publication of information not only about the products that had been tested and found to be safe, but about those that had failed. What Dame Judith Hackitt found initially in her review was that companies were going from one testing house to another with their products until they found one that passed them. No one was ever notified of the failures, and that cannot be right. Sir Martin Moore-Bick has called for more transparency over product testing, so can we ensure that failures are reported, as well as successes?

In all the costs of Grenfell, while developers are being held to account to some degree, not one construction product manufacturer has been asked to pay a single penny towards the cost of building remediation, although many of them are clearly responsible for some of the problems. Why is that? We pushed the then Government about it. We last wrote to the relevant Minister in March last year. The Government commissioned a report by Paul Morrell on construction products and safety, but never responded to it in detail. Will this Minister now look at it and give a response? Will she look at the testing and categorisation of products, and at how manufacturers can be made to pay some of the costs that should not fall on leaseholders or on social housing providers?

I am pleased by the recommendation in the Grenfell report that building control officers should always be appointed by an independent third party. The developers should not be choosing—in some cases—their own friends to sign off a building. In the case of the highest-rise buildings, the building safety regulator is now responsible for appointing building control officers.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Let me compliment the hon. Gentleman on all his work on this. Does he agree that one of the problems is the systemic underfunding of local authorities—leading to the inadequacy of all their inspection regimes, building control in particular—which has had such a devastating effect on the quality of building in so many parts of the country?

[Mr Betts]

Yes, I do. The Committee has made many recommendations in many reports about the whole issue of local authority funding and the squeezing of resources in respect of services of this kind, given the priority that authorities have to give to social care in all its forms and, now, temporary accommodation. As well as the question of resources, however, there is the question of independence. The building control officer will be beholden to the developer, whoever the developer is, because the developer will say, “If you give me a difficult time on this building, I will not give you any work for the next one.” That must be stopped. The last Government would say that they did so in respect of the highest-rise buildings, but it needs to be stopped for all buildings, and I am pleased about what Sir Martin said about that in his report.

Let me now return to the issue of social housing. I am sorry, but I must tell the Minister that I am not going to let it go away. Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister made comments about the discrimination against and bad treatment of social housing tenants. For a long time we have had the attitude that this is poor housing for poor people who do not really matter. We must challenge that, because they do matter. Landlords in the social housing sector, housing associations and councils, will always do their best to make buildings safe, and in some cases—because there is no access to the building safety fund unless they can show that they cannot do the work, and they can always find some money to do it—that will mean squeezing the headroom in the housing revenue account or housing associations’ business plans. That squeezed headroom would otherwise be available for the building of new homes.

If the Government want to build 1.5 million new homes—and I fully support that; I think it is one of the best commitments that they are making—they will not be built by the private sector alone. A substantial number of social houses will have to be built, and that requires HRA resources and resources in the housing associations’ business plans. The more we squeeze them with other responsibilities that are not financed by the building safety fund, the less money will be available to build new social housing.