Fire Safety Bill

David Amess Excerpts

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

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

Today our country is in the midst of a national crisis, and together with the rest of the world we face an invisible enemy. No individual or group of people can say with any certainty how this crisis started and how it will end, but I feel certain that working together we will overcome it. That is in sharp contrast to the Bill before the House, which was of course triggered by the Grenfell disaster.

Who can forget the chilling morning of 14 June 2017, when we all woke to see the Grenfell Tower become a burning inferno? Words cannot describe adequately the horror that I and everyone in our country felt when we saw the tower ablaze. We could see the enemy there. It was a fire, and yes, Parliament could and should have done something to prevent it from happening. The all-party parliamentary fire safety and rescue group drew attention on countless occasions to the underlying issues surrounding the cause of the fire, but unfortunately, those warnings were not acted on swiftly enough.

I, as chair of the APPG, do not want to dwell on the past. Instead, I want to say that I am delighted by and welcome the Bill, which will at long last require owners and managers of multi-occupancy residential buildings in England and Wales to reduce the risk of fire through unsafe materials on the external walls of buildings and individual flat entrances. Essentially, I am delighted to say, it closes at last a legal loophole that left it unclear whether fire safety legislation applied to certain parts of multi-occupancy residential buildings, such as the structure’s external walls, including anything attached such as cladding, balconies and windows, and the entrance doors to individual flats that open on to common parts. Our APPG strongly supports the Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan), who represents the constituency where the tower is, said, the Bill provides reassurance to residents that the Government have learned lessons from the Grenfell tragedy and are taking steps to improve the safety of those residents while ensuring that building owners and managers—the Opposition spokesman was right to draw the House’s attention to this—are clear that they are responsible for assessing the risk of external walls and fire doors of any height. If I had the time, I would say something else about height, but I hope that Members will discuss that in Committee.

The fire and rescue services’ role of undertaking enforcements against dangerous cladding and fire doors in residential buildings is also made clear. While the application of the order initially applies to a building containing two or more sets of domestic premises, the relevant authority may, by regulations, amend the order to change or clarify the premises to which it applies. The Bill will bring these areas within the scope of the 2005 order, ensuring that the responsible person assesses and mitigates the fire safety risk associated with these parts of the building. Fire and rescue services will at long last be able to take enforcement action and hold the responsible person to account if they are not compliant.

As my right hon. Friend the Minister of State said, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government will gain powers to amend the 2005 order by way of secondary legislation, enabling Government to adapt legislation to align it with the proposed new building safety regulatory system and to implement the recommendations of phase 1 of the Grenfell public inquiry, such as new requirements for signage and evacuation plans in residential buildings. As has been said, this Bill is, in effect, enabling legislation that will address much-criticised legal ambiguity that has hampered fire and rescue services in trying to deal effectively with unsafe cladding and flat entrance doors. They will be expected to use these new powers, and landlords and responsible persons should be prepared for that, as the Minister of State said.

For the past 11 years, since the July 2009 Lakanal House fire tragedy, and with more intensity since the inquest on that fire seven years ago, the all-party parliamentary group has warned what would happen. I am delighted that now the Minister of State will work with us in the future.