Building Safety Bill

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

So I hope that, in the next parliamentary Session, we will have a chance to discuss leasehold in more detail and to reform it, and have more initiatives that mean that more houses are built, but in collaboration with people such as leaseholders, who can advise on some of the pitfalls of building too quickly and put forward safety concerns.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Fox. I pay tribute to the efforts of the Secretary of State and the Minister to achieve significant changes in the face of a very difficult situation. That should never be understated. If it has been too slow for some seriously challenged individual households, the Bill is undoubtedly immeasurably better than when we started. Obviously it was a disappointment to me that several key elements were rejected in the House of Commons, and I remain concerned by the sub- 11 metre exclusion, buy to lets, enfranchised blocks and orphan buildings, about which so much has been spoken. Although the point that the perpetrator should pay was not before the House of Commons, the problem remains a real one: the problem of funding does not go away.

On the 11-metre cut-off, it has been consistently said that with the measured and proportionate response that the Government say they have adopted, there is no systemic risk for low-rise properties. I do not know whether this means that other mitigations, such as alarms, smoke detectors or sprinklers, may be appropriate, but the claim seems to lack a basis in data. The point was well made in the seventh report of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee of the other place and followed by an Answer to a Question for Written Answer of mine: without data, assertions regarding risk, mitigation options and cost-benefit lack foundation and create doubt.

If the Government are saying that adding sprinklers, smoke detectors and alarms to such buildings is an acceptable means of overcoming an initial failure in construction, I ask the Minister to be aware that there is a reputational and moral hazard here. If those are seen as workarounds to deal with essential, original compartmentation in buildings, I would really worry about how that will be taken forward and potentially abused in the future. I just do not want to go there; this one has been bad enough. So we rely heavily on government assertions that they will have the powers to deal with these issues.

I acknowledge that the Secretary of State has made considerable progress on the developer pledge but, as the British Property Federation observes, it does not cover sub-11 metre buildings and, in several aspects, as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said, it may be inconsistent with the Bill. But if, as I am led to understand, this will be enforced by denying developers planning consent, apart from the questionable basic legality of such an intervention in planning and development laws, it should be noted, as I have said to the Minister before, that planning consent runs with the land, not with the applicant, and even less with whoever happens to be the current owner. That is a matter of law, not of debate.

I was also led to believe that one of the reasons why the perpetrator-pays approach would not stand the test is that it means backdating to a previous era, beyond what would normally be covered by the provisions of the Limitation Act. If I am right and a fundamental failure to meet the mandatory provisions of building regulations from 1965 and at all times since is, in fact, an offence, time cannot run against the commission of an offence in favour of the perpetrator. I am a bit fearful that aspects of the Bill could be regarded as arbitrary and discriminatory as between classes of owner and the nature of liabilities, touched on by other noble Lords. In a sense, that might lead to its own legal trajectory in another area.

I hope the Government have a constant process of rolling review of what is going on here, because if we do not deal with ongoing market turbulence, lack of confidence, economic attrition and the victims in all this simply concluding that they have been hung out to dry in some way, that will really be a system failure and we will not have delivered on the promise given by Ministers in the other place and here that leaseholders should be kept free of these costs, for which they were entirely blameless. I am absolutely sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, will say just that in a minute.

I finish by paying tribute to noble colleagues with whom I have worked and particularly to the many leaseholders and their groups. They have campaigned for justice and proper defect remediation. My arguments here have been fuelled by their plight, and I intend to keep reminding the Government that this matter, until it is all put to bed, will have to remain in their line of sight.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and to hear that he intends to keep a close eye on this, because that will clearly be needed well into the future.

I rise to offer Green support for Motions D1 and H1 and to make a single point about how I see these fitting together. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and others said that the leaseholders are the absolutely innocent parties here—but, more than that, it is important to say that they are the injured parties. They have been injured over years and years of stress and worry, both financial and about their physical safety, given where they are forced to live. Think about going to bed every night fearful about what is going to happen. They are the victims of the policies of successive Governments who have allowed the building industry to act as a cash cow rather than a provider of secure, affordable, decent homes.

There are still a lot of steps down the road, but if we pass Motions D1 and H1 we give those leaseholders and owners the clarity and certainty that they will be looked after, whether or not their building is under 11 metres, and that they will not be hit with a bill that they still cannot afford to pay, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said.

I was tempted to say that your Lordships’ House should put one last heave behind the Building Safety Bill, but then I thought that was a slightly unfortunate metaphor in the context we are talking about. I will pick up what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said: the campaigners have done so much work and have fought so long and hard on this. Let us buttress that and put in the final supports they need to get the Bill we should have.