Fire Safety Bill

Debate between David Simmonds and Kate Osborne

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osborne]

On the Prime Minister’s watch as Mayor of London, in eight years the London Fire Brigade was required to make gross savings of over £100 million, leading to the cutting of 27 fire appliances, 552 firefighters, 324 support staff, two fire rescue units and three training appliances, the closure of 10 fire stations and a reduction in fire rescue unit crewing levels. Ministers must commit to funding fire and rescue services sufficiently to ensure that fire authorities are able to inspect and enforce these new measures.

In conclusion, last October the Government promised to implement the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower review in full and without delay. Nearly a year later, this Bill does not contain a single measure recommended by the inquiry. Therefore, I will be supporting new clause 1 as it places robust requirements on building owners or managers to implement the recommendations from phase one of the Grenfell Tower inquiry. I will also be supporting new clauses 2 to 5. I urge the Government to make true on their promises: back the amendments and put everyone’s safety first.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I would like to add my voice to those of many colleagues across the Chamber who have expressed the frustration of many of our residents that, following the terrible incident at Grenfell, we have not yet brought to a conclusion many of the issues that the incident highlighted. We have followed the progress of the inquiry, with many views expressed by stakeholders—those personally affected because they had relatives in the building, and different parts of the industry and professional bodies. At the heart of much of the frustration is the question of liability. Who, ultimately, will meet the costs faced by our residents—whether they are landlords or occupiers of the property, freeholders or leaseholders—for the cost of remediation, which we know is substantial?

That issue plays out in many different parts of our lives. In my former role, I was responsible for the construction of a significant number of new schools. Inspections of those new buildings subsequently identified that some of the fire safety work, signed off and done in recent times, did not meet the standards that we would expect. We need to ensure that the question of liability is brought to a conclusion as quickly as possible. Those on the Front Bench know that there are many different ways in which that might be achieved, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will have something to say about that.

I turn to two specific points on which it would be helpful to hear a little more from my right hon. Friend. The first is the role of the responsible person. Across Government, where we are concerned about the degree of accountability for a life-and-limb, critical activity or service, it has been common practice to identify an individual post holder who is accountable for ensuring that work is done to the relevant standard. In children’s social care, we have the director of children’s services. In public health, we have the director of public health. In businesses, we have chief accountable officers.

We also know from long experience, with all sorts of things having gone wrong across different parts of those services, that having someone identified as accountable will only bring about the improvement that the House wishes to see if we can be confident that that person has the necessary qualities to do the work required and the ability to carry out the duties we are imposing on them. A number of Members have expressed views about whether there will be sufficient people with the knowledge of fire safety to undertake this role. It is crucial to ensure that whoever is responsible in individual buildings, on estates, on local authority estates or on school estates, we can rely on them to carry out that duty effectively. It will be critical to ensure that training, qualifications and all the rest of it sit behind that.

Secondly, ensuring that that person has the ability to do what sometimes may be intrusive and expensive work that may not always attract the consent of the householder will be a major issue. Earlier on in my political career, I spent a bit of time as chairman of a housing management and maintenance sub-committee at a local authority responsible, as a landlord, for over 12,000 properties. I am conscious that the local authority sometimes had to take several dozen tenants to court every year to get access to properties to do—at no cost to the tenant—essential safety checks and safety-critical work. We should not assume in this House that, by saying that we are going to designate a responsible person, we can be confident that they will be able to do what they need to do. I look forward to my right hon Friend fleshing out the further measures that we might need to take to ensure that responsible people are able to undertake the work to the relevant standard, to provide the assurance that we all want on behalf of our residents.