Building Safety Bill

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

There are two ways to look at this Bill: we can look at what is in it, and we can look at what is not in it. I welcome the proposed building safety regulator and the move to finally establish the principle that there must be an accountable person, but there is much where the Bill is seriously and dangerously lacking. The Bill still uses height, not risk, as the primary criterion for where regulation kicks in. The arbitrary and discredited 18-metre cut-off must be dropped, and risk factors must be taken into account, especially in schools and care homes.

On public registers, in the Bill Committee for what became the Fire Safety Act 2021 I proposed that the Government create a register of qualified fire risk assessors. The Minister for Crime and Policing assured me that he was working with the industry to introduce such a register, and so I withdrew my new clause. So where is that measure now? Will the Secretary of State table an amendment to create that register, as well as a register of safe building materials?

On the EWS1 form, I do not even know where to start on today’s rushed announcement. I was asking about this for buildings last September. Some of my constituents have put their lives on hold for the best part of a year and now it transpires that they may not even need that form.

Finally, we were promised that the plight of leaseholders would be addressed in this Bill. We were assured time and time again that the Fire Safety Act was not the right place for things because this Bill was coming down the track. Leaseholders do not have the deep pockets or legal expertise to pursue giant corporations as the Government are suggesting. The Government just need to stump up the cash, make homes safe and then use their power to make polluters pay. It is really simple; it has been done in Australia and it is an off-the-shelf solution that has been shown to work. Surely the Government realise that they must now bring forward protections for the tens of thousands of leaseholders who were promised by the Prime Minister that they would not be made to pay for fire safety defects not of their making, because if he does not, Members of this House will fight tooth and nail, working across the House, to deliver justice for building safety victims.

Building Safety Bill

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

We will work with parties across this House—across both Houses—and with interested parties to ensure that these issues are properly understood and debated.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

No, I will not.

We want to ensure that these matters are properly debated and properly agreed. We also want to ensure, through a suite of mechanisms such as the extension of the Defective Premises Act and working with the sector to ensure that it pays for the defects it has caused, that this issue for leaseholders, which has gone on for far too long, is finally put to bed. This group of Government new clauses and amendments make key improvements to the Bill and extend its benefits to include the whole of Great Britain. I hope therefore that Members across the House will feel able to support the new clauses and the new schedule and allow them to stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Neill]

I restate my welcome for the Minister’s tone and approach to the Bill, as well as that of the Secretary of State, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland). The Minister’s approach does enable some of us to support the Government in the Lobby tonight when we might have been tempted to do otherwise, given their clear undertaking to look at the substance—at any rate—of the significant number of amendments in my hon. Friend’s name, which I and many other Conservative Members have signed. We look forward to taking that forward.

I stress again in particular that leaseholder protection is critical. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) made an important point on that, and as someone who has spent all his working life involved in litigation of one kind or another, I can tell my right hon. Friend the Minister that the legal route is always a risky one and always an expensive one.

The real problem that we need to deal with is the position of residents such as mine in Northpoint in Bromley. Their flats are unmortgageable, they have exhausted their funds on a waking watch and other remedial measures, and they cannot realistically rent out their flats—perhaps some can—so it is not realistic to suggest that collectively or individually they could fund legal action against their landlord, which is an offshore property trust. I have nothing against giving leaseholders the ability to litigate—where that can be done, that is fine—but that will not be the answer for many people, so we need a fail-safe system to protect them. The best route is a form of liability clearly falling on the developer. That is supported by the Law Society, which recognises the value of litigation in its right place but also its limitations, and I hope that the Government will work with the Law Society, which has real expertise in such matters, to strengthen the provisions.

I turn to finding a means of capturing the consequential defects, which I have previously raised with the Minister. We have done a lot on that already—I welcome what was done with the waking watch relief fund and so on—but there are still a number of areas not yet explicitly covered by the Bill’s provisions where the fault, and therefore the cost on the leaseholder, flows clearly and demonstrably from the regulatory failure or the failure by the developer to build in accordance with the regulations then in place. My right hon. Friend and I have talked about the protection required for that—I am glad that the loan scheme has gone, because that was not fair—which could be some form of insurance arrangement, or the Government by some means funding the cash flow to enable works to be done and recouping that through a levy system from those in the industry who are at fault in some way. I think that would be perfectly workable. He has moved a good way towards that, and I ask him to continue talking to those involved about taking that one stage further to deal with that important issue.

Finally, I specifically commend to the Minister new clause 10, which stands in my name and that of a number of hon. Friends, which is about the 25-year post-sale insurance cover. That is really important. Again, the Law Society supports the measure, and I think that there is a lot of recognition of the good sense of that from the insurance sector, too. If he could take that on board, that would remove a great deal of risk of future litigation, should—heaven forbid—things go wrong in the future.

We have had a constructive set of proposals from the Government, but there is still more to do. I thank the Minister, but I hope that, in the spirit in which he started, he will take away the means to work constructively across the House to deal with people who are in an appalling situation through absolutely no fault of their own. That is what we need to stress time and again.

[Daisy Cooper]

When we started on the Fire Safety Bill, I tabled the first amendment to the Bill to try to protect leaseholders from these unimaginable, eye-watering costs. The Government said repeatedly that that Bill was not the place for it. Eighteen months on, we have had a huge cross-party effort, and while we are considering this second piece of legislation there is still no guarantee to protect leaseholders from those costs in law. The Government’s tone has changed, and I welcome that, but their position has not. I welcome talk about working cross-party and collaboratively, but I urge the Minister and the Government to make clear assurances on the record today, because I do not believe that the good will displayed in the House will last much longer if we do not get better answers.

The Secretary of State announced last week that the loan scheme will be scrapped and that cladding costs will be covered for buildings over 11 metres. Where is that statutory protection? It should be on the amendment paper today, and we should be discussing it in this House, not kicking it into the long grass.

On non-cladding problems and fire safety defects, the Minister must be aware that since the Secretary of State made his announcement last week there has been a huge rush of bills and enforcement notices because freeholders think they can get away with suddenly asking leaseholders to pay for these first safety defects. Will the Minister make a strong statement at the Dispatch Box today that he intends to issue a moratorium on freeholders issuing such enforcement notices, as that is what is needed?

I welcome that action under the Defective Premises Act will be extended to 30 years, but the Minister knows as well as I do that, as we showed in Committee, the current legislation is condemning leaseholders to years and years of litigation, litigation, litigation. In some cases, they may have to take their freeholders to court twice before they can take those responsible to court. That is not a satisfactory situation.

The Government keep saying that they want to work with freeholders and developers to find a voluntary solution, but cladding victims and fire safety victims have given the Government the answer time and again. They are asking the Government to stump up the cash to make homes safe and to use their power to go after those responsible.

I listened very carefully to the Minister’s carefully crafted answers on when we might see some of these legal protections. I note that the Bill’s Second Reading in the House of Lords is scheduled for the start of February, yet the Secretary of State has indicated that he wishes to continue his discussions with those responsible until March. When questioned by other hon. Members on whether the House of Lords will see these amendments, the Minister said it “may include” in the other place, not that it “would include”. Will he make a clear commitment from the Dispatch Box today that the statutory protections announced last week will, in fact, be amendments to this Bill, that those amendments will be introduced in the other place, and that sufficient time will be provided in this House for us to discuss them? If the Government make any attempt to railroad this Bill through without those protections in place, he will have a very significant cross-party fight on his hands.

[Sir Mike Penning]

I do not think there is a conflict, but I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As an ex-fireman, although my concerns and thoughts are with the victims of the Grenfell fire and their families and loved ones, I say that we must put on the record our thanks to the emergency services, and particularly the firefighters, who have to live with what they saw—most of them will never have seen such an incident in their life. They went in one direction while, quite understandably, the public went in the other.

I do not disagree with anything I have heard in the House today. My constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), and I are as one. If this is not sorted in the other House, as promised, we in this House will sort it. That is not a threat but a promise. The Minister, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, as we heard, have been brilliant in changing direction. They realised the risk that no thought at all had been given to leaseholders.

I declare an interest because my daughter has a leasehold property. When she bought it, why would she have dreamed that this situation would occur and she would face such penalties?

When I intervened on the Minister, I said I would mention a way out. Those hon. Members who have been here long enough will remember that I took the Mesothelioma Act 2014 through this House. The Act compensated people whose lives, through no fault of their own, had been devastated by asbestos. We could not fine the insurers, the companies, the directors or the shareholders, so they had suffered and they had not got compensation. This Bill is an opportunity to resolve the problem for leaseholders where we cannot impose fines.

There is no reason why leaseholders should drag themselves through the courts. We are trying to sort the matter out in this House. We should put a levy on the insurers. Without any doubt, the insurers got the premium from these companies, because otherwise they would not have been allowed to build the properties, so liability insurance was in place. The fact that we cannot find the developers—some have gone offshore in parts of my constituency—is irrelevant now. If we can find them, fine, but if not, we will levy the insurers.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We have already done it with the mesothelioma Bill. Originally, we gave the victims 80% of the compensation that they would have got through the courts. Eventually, we gave them 100%. This House was unanimous in its support of the Bill as it went through its stages. It was probably one of the easiest Bills that I have taken through the House—apart from having to pronounce mesothelioma, which, to this day, still troubles me, as Members may have notice.

This is an option that I have mentioned to the Minister before. I have said that his civil servants can come and talk to me, or to anybody at the Department for Work and Pensions who took that legislation through. I am more than happy for that to happen. Sadly, though, no one has talked to me about this—I am gently looking towards the civil servants in the Box, which I am not meant to do. This is a great opportunity to right a wrong that we can see coming down the line here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

New clause 2 and amendment 1, which stand in my name and are kindly supported by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), add “the protection of property” to the list of purposes for which building regulations may be made under the Building Act 1984, and require the Building Safety Regulator to carry out its work

“with a view to furthering the protection of property”.

In many respects, in terms of drafting, these are tweaks to the Bill, but they could have far-reaching and positive consequences. Modern methods of construction and the increasing compartmental sizes of industrial and commercial buildings are leading to more challenging and larger fires, which put lives at risk and also cause enormous social, economic and environmental consequential damage. That is exactly what happened at Wessex Foods in Lowestoft 11 years ago, in July 2011. If adequate property protection measures—in the form of sprinklers, in that instance—had been in place, a huge amount of disruption would have been avoided, and the firefighters would have been back at their station in four minutes.

If the consideration of “property protection” were added to the Building Act and the building regulations, we would secure a significant double dividend: greater safety for people, including firefighters, and more sustainable buildings. It is far better to be preventing fires than to be putting them out. I should therefore be grateful if the Minister gave serious consideration to accepting new clause 2 and amendment 1, so that the Building Act can be amended to provide for the protection of property. These proposals have the support of professionals across the fire sector: the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Fire Sector Federation, the Fire Brigades Union, the Fire Protection Association and the Institution of Fire Engineers.

The new clause and amendment would provide an appropriate framework for the future fire safety of building design, and we would therefore know that homes, schools, care homes, student accommodation and all industrial and commercial buildings had adequate property protection and fire prevention measures built in at the start, so that we were not putting people—including firefighters—and property at risk. As I have said, I should be grateful if the Minister considered these proposals.

[Daisy Cooper]

I will speak very briefly about amendment 75 and new clauses 24 and 25, all of which stand in my name and are supported by the Local Government Association.

Amendment 75 is pretty straightforward. At present, the Bill lacks clarity in relation to social housing providers. This amendment to clause 57 would make registered social landlords exempt from the additional financial burden of the building safety levy. I think it unacceptable that council and housing association tenants have to subsidise the failures of private developers under this scheme.

The purpose of the two new clauses, taken together, is to introduce a more stringent building safety framework that would apply to multiple dwellings under 18 metres in height as well as those above. We have already heard from hon. Members about how crude the 18-metre cut-off is and how it has no basis. Indeed, many of us remember seeing a leaked video of an adviser to the Government saying that that figure had been plucked out of the air.

These two new clauses, taken together, would prevent having a two-tier building safety regime. I ask the Minister to respond to the amendment and the new clauses to see whether the Government might be willing to adopt them all during the passage of the Bill.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clause 17, which stands in my name.

The Minister, probably more than anybody else in this Parliament, already knows that I have a tendency to fall over. Because I am teetotal, this is not down to drink either. Indeed, I suspect that every single Member here will know someone—a friend, a loved one or a relative—who has had a fall on the stairs. They are a silent killer and claim the lives of over 700 people every year, as well as thousands more who suffer injuries and lose their independence.

Finding a solution to the issue of flammable cladding has proven fiendishly complex, as we know from our time here, but for staircase safety it should be, and indeed is, simple. A British standard already exists that reduces falls by a staggering 60%: British Standard 5395-1. It means that stairs must have a minimum size of “going”—the horizontal surface on which one treads—and a maximum rise in height limiting steepness and providing enough surface area on which to step. Provision of easy-reach handrails is also required for staircases to be compliant. While such staircases hardly look different at all to the naked eye, their impact on preventing falls is remarkable.

British Standard 5395-1 has been in place since 2010 but never enshrined in law as a requirement, so today I am proposing this new clause, alongside the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for whose support I am most grateful. This is the result of ardent campaigning by the UK’s leading accident prevention charity, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, but also, crucially, major players in the housing industry such as the Berkeley Group. Industry wants this regulation. It wants a level playing field where there is one simple rule for all to adhere to. Because I am only calling for the standard to be applied to new-builds, there will be negligible cost and no need for retrofitting.

I can almost hear what the Minister is about to tell me—that it is uncommon to use primary legislation to enshrine such a standard into law. The Government will argue that our focus should be outcome-based rather than legislating on method, but I might point to regulation 7 of the building regulations, on combustible materials, which is in itself descriptive and sets out how the industry must achieve that particular regulation. If the outcome that we are all aiming for is safety of stairs, then the status quo is simply not working, and hundreds of people are dying every year from something that could so easily be prevented: I refer back to the 60% figure. If the Government have some other way to achieve such a reduction in preventable death in the home, then I am all ears, as many people have often pointed out to me. Independent safety campaigners such as RoSPA are confident from the statistics that this simple measure will save more lives than perhaps anything else in the entire Bill.

Genuine low-hanging fruit does not come along very often in politics, and I would like the Minister to grasp it when he sees it. He may not wish to satisfy me by granting me the agreement of the Government to the new clause. He has spent many years working on this with me trying to keep me satisfied and happy, but failed. Now he has his chance to redeem himself after 12 months of horror. Will he at least agree to meet me to discuss how we can take this matter forward? He can make my day by saying, yes, the Government agree. He can give me a minute of happiness and take forward Conservative party harmony, so rare these days, just by agreeing to meet me. I look forward to hearing what he might just have to say.

Building Safety Bill

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

The issue is the proportionate measures that can be made in those buildings to ensure that they are safe. We want to make sure that we get this right, and we will be continuing to look at all of these. If the building safety regulator assesses that further work needs to be done, or that the Government need to look at what needs to be done, we will absolutely make sure that we do that, and I make that commitment to the House.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

On that specific point, I am grateful that the Minister has said that he will look at this issue of buildings below 11 metres. As part of that, will he commit to focus especially on those buildings where there are many vulnerable residents—whether that is care homes, shelter buildings or perhaps even schools where there are children with special educational needs or disabilities who might find it harder to escape buildings? Will he commit to look specifically through that lens of risk to the vulnerable adults in those buildings?

[Stuart Andrew]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her engagement, too. She raised this important point with me yesterday. Yes, absolutely, we have officials looking at that, but also, as I have said, the Building Safety Regulator will be assessing buildings such as those. If this becomes an area that needs further consideration, we will look at what measures need to be introduced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daisy Cooper]

I declare an interest as I am a vice-chair of the Local Government Association. I add my voice to those who have paid tribute to the extraordinary building safety campaigners who have shared their stories, put this issue on the national agenda and shamed the Government into several significant concessions. We are in a better place than we have been over the past couple of years, but the situation is still not good enough. There have been, from the beginning of the debate, a very few principles that the Government should have followed—that homes should be fixed as quickly as possible, that the innocent should not have to pay for the mistakes of the guilty, and that the Government should use their weight to go after those responsible. It is a sorry state of affairs that those principles have not been upheld two pieces of legislation later.

On Lords amendment 184, many of us are in agreement that innocent leaseholders should not have to pay a penny, end of. But the costs cap undermines that principle. Two years ago, when I tried to introduce that principle for the first time in the Fire Safety Bill I was told time and again by Ministers in Committee that it was not the right place, or that it would not work as intended. If we ever needed confirmation that that is code for “we don’t want to do it”, we get that from this Bill.

By arguing for the costs cap, the Government are opening themselves up to legal challenge. It cannot be fair, or in keeping with natural justice, that in some cases the single determinant of whether someone has to pay £10,000 or £15,000—and someone else does not—is the arbitrary fact of whether the Government can find another party to carry the can.

The Government have said that by their calculations the vast majority of leaseholders would not have to pay, so I would like the Minister to respond to these questions in his remarks. He says the vast majority. How many? Where is the Government assessment? Will he publish it and put it in the Library? Where is the web page for every leaseholder to find out whether they will be in the camp that might have to pay?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

It is always wise for a Minister answering the Father of the House to take his sage advice, and of course I will speak to my officials.

The hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) asked about valuations. I am aware there has been a discussion about how the Bill proposes to assess the value and banding of individual flats. The process set out in the Bill—further detail will be set out in regulations—takes the last price at which a flat changed hands, which will be recorded at the Land Registry, and uprates it in line with the national house price data produced by the Office for National Statistics. We recognise that this may produce a value that differs from the flat’s current market value, but we are using this approach for two specific reasons. First, it uses publicly available data and so avoids any potential for gaming the system. Secondly, it avoids the need to value a large number of flats individually, which would likely be both expensive and time-consuming and could delay the needed changes and improvements to those properties.

[Daisy Cooper]

Notwithstanding the Minister’s explanation that the valuation might not meet today’s market value, which he also gave to me yesterday, does he accept that, precisely because the starting point is the most recent sale price, the owner of a flat might have to pay up to the cap to get remediation done, whereas the owner of the identical flat next door in the same block might not because the two flats sold at different times for different sums of money? That is simply not fair.

[Stuart Andrew]

I recognise the hon. Lady’s point, and I have committed to coming back to her after we have done further work in this area.

I am conscious that there will be a large number of Divisions in a moment, so I reiterate my thanks to hon. Members on both sides of the House. This is an incredibly important issue, and I am aware that my Department has a great responsibility to get it right. I hope that the direction set by the Secretary of State shows that we are determined to get it right for people who have been living in these worrying circumstances for too long.

Amendment (a) made to Lords amendment 93.

Amendment (b) made to Lords amendment 93.

Lords amendment 93, as amended, agreed to.

Before Clause 117

Meaning of “relevant building”

Amendment (a) proposed to Lords amendment 94.—(Stuart Andrew.)

Question put, That the amendment be made.