Fire Safety Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

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

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]]

I want to begin by welcoming this long-overdue Bill. We all know what the consequences can be—[Inaudible.] Nobody here will ever forget the tragedy of Grenfell Tower, but only last autumn a block of student accommodation called The Cube, just over the border from my constituency in Bolton, caught fire. There were no casualties that time, but—[Inaudible.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I have to interrupt the hon. Lady because the sound quality is not very good. Let us try again for a few seconds, and if it does not improve, we will leave the hon. Lady and come back to her later.

[Barbara Keeley]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Although this Bill is overdue, it does not guarantee action immediately. I understand that the current crisis makes it difficult—[Inaudible.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am very sorry, but I have to interrupt the hon. Lady again. Those in the Chamber, and presumably those listening in other ways, cannot make out what she is saying, so we will interrupt her speech for the moment and hopefully come back to her shortly.

I am glad to see that in the Chamber we have, without any sound difficulties, Meg Hillier.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Christine Jardine—the hon. Lady cannot hear us. Do we have a connection? We can see her, but we cannot hear her. We will come back to her. Meanwhile we will go to Vauxhall.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We will now attempt again to go to Christine Jardine.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) [V]]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Good, we can hear you.

[Christine Jardine]

I am delighted to be able to join this debate. Each time the House debates or acknowledges in any way the horror that was Grenfell and the 72 lives lost that night, I find, like so many others, my mind going back to that evening. As a new MP, excited by the opportunity to effect change, I was horrified to turn to my TV in my hotel room and see the tragedy that was unfolding across the city. As so many right hon. and hon. Members have said, that memory remains with me. More than that, it is what drives my and so many others’ commitment to preventing it from happening again.

In this Parliament and the previous one, we have become accustomed to using words like “unprecedented”, “historic” and “crisis”. I hope that when we reflect fully on this period, we will be able to be confident that we gave this issue the attention, energy and commitment that it deserved. We need a commitment to ensuring that Grenfell is fully investigated and the victims and survivors honoured, and we have to make sure we have done everything possible to ensure that it cannot happen again. For that reason, I, with my Liberal Democrat colleagues, welcome this legislation today, but with a caveat. Several aspects of the Bill perhaps miss an invaluable opportunity to introduce other vital fire and safety mentions. There is no mention of evacuation plans for high-rise blocks or three-monthly fire door inspections, as recommended by the inquiry chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick. When will the House see those measures introduced in legislation?

A building safety Bill is urgently required. As more people spend time at home isolating, the risk of injuries and harm increases. When will that legislation be laid and what impact will the pandemic have on instigating necessary change and improvement? Those questions need to be answered.

While this Bill may be designed for England and Wales only—Scotland has its own fire safety regulations—it is far-reaching and has potentially serious implications for Scotland, where many homeowners now find themselves faced with a significant problem. Nine out of 10 mortgages in Scotland are provided by London-based lenders. The terms of those mortgages are based on English law and regulations. The effect of that is that many in apartment blocks are finding that their flats are now worthless. The mortgage lenders have placed a zero value on their property, because, according to those regulations, accommodation over six storeys must have an official external wall fire review, ensuring that the cladding is safe.

In England, one person would normally own the block and lease out the apartments to the owners. In Scotland, all the apartments are owned outright; there is no leasehold. The difficulty is down to that different ownership model. In England, it is relatively simple for one person to organise the checks and work on the apartment block and then bill the leaseholders. In Scotland, that is impossible. In a block of 250 owners, there would have to be 250 EWS1 forms verifying cladding. Each one costs thousands to complete. That anomaly is blocking any checks and many sales in Scotland. People cannot sell their apartments in such blocks without an ESW1 form, and in many cases no apartments are valued at more than zero. That is not to say that the regulations should be compromised—far from it. We need acknowledgement of the issue and arrangements made for properties where there is no leasehold.

I do not believe that any one of us is not committed to doing everything we possibly can to ensure that no family and no person ever has to endure the horror that the residents of Grenfell and their loved ones have endured over the past three years. To do that, we have to not just pass this Bill—[Inaudible.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We have lost contact with the hon. Lady, just as she was coming to her peroration. I think that everyone present, and in particular the Minister, can imagine what she was about to say, so we will assume that her peroration is complete.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab) [V]]

I hope everyone can hear me. I welcome the Bill—all three clauses of it—but it is not sufficient to deal with the problems that have been happening in relation to buildings across the country. The Grenfell fire occurred three years ago, and although the taskforce reported last year on the things that needed to be done, none of them has yet been implemented, despite the Government promising that all the recommendations would be encompassed, lock, stock and barrel. I hope that the Government will soon introduce a Bill that does all those things.

The Bill is very welcome, but it requires proper resources. The Fire Brigades Union has estimated that it will result in hundreds of thousands more buildings needing to be inspected, which is obviously the right thing to do. However, since the Government have, for years now, been cutting fire brigade services, we have fewer fire officers and less equipment. The response can therefore often be slower than it should be. Since 2013, £141.5 million of cuts have been made to the fire budget. Clearly, if the Bill is to have an impact, money must be provided to the fire brigade so that it can carry out its work.

There has rightly been talk about the Grenfell fire, but in my constituency of Bolton South East, The Cube, which was student accommodation, also erupted into fire, leaving 200 students homeless. Fortunately, no one was injured. The university has been great at looking after the students, even though the building did not belong to it, and the local community has been fantastic. I thank the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service for dealing with the situation so speedily and effectively. However, it leads to the question about the height of buildings. High buildings are considered those of 18 metres; The Cube was just 16 cm short of that.

The Cube’s cladding was what is called high-pressure laminate, unlike Grenfell, which had ACM cladding. People rightly talk about ACM cladding, but there is unsafe cladding across buildings in this country, some of which is high-pressure laminate and some of which is not. It is imperative that the Government test every single building in our country to ensure that they are safe for the people in them. Although such things cost money, at the end of the day, people’s lives are destroyed. The Grenfell Tower showed the tragedy of how many people died and how many lives were destroyed.

Although I welcome the Bill, I urge the Government to introduce a Bill that deals comprehensively with fire safety across all buildings—not just high buildings, but smaller buildings, such as hospitals and shopping centres. We need to have proper regulation, and proper inspections should be carried out for new buildings. I ask the Government to please sort this out. People’s lives must not be played with.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We will now go back to Barbara Keeley. The connection is not good enough to give us a video connection, but we will have an audio connection.

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[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab) [V]]

It is a privilege to speak in the debate. I should like to begin by paying tribute to the Grenfell families and survivors, and to the fire service. I should add that it is a pleasure to follow hon. Members across the House, although it is somewhat strange to take part in the debate from my sofa.

I am pleased with the quality of today’s debate and the many thoughtful contributions from across the House. I, like other Opposition Members, welcome the Bill; it is a step forward, although a modest step, and I urge the Government to go much further.

I would like first to reflect on the situation affecting many residents in my constituency, particularly in central Reading where there is both a huge number of larger blocks and many much smaller ones, which—like the block referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley)—are below the height threshold but where there are serious concerns about their safety nevertheless.

I want to reflect on an email from a constituent that I found extremely moving. It was from a young woman who had been living, for several months at this point, in great stress in a flat in the town centre that had dangerous cladding. She and her fellow residents in the block have now been living in this condition for almost three years, and it is simply appalling that people are still having to put up with such enormous stress and worry, which is shared by residents across the country. As has been said, many of them are simply trapped in their properties; they are unable to sell, and are living in properties with dangerous cladding, either ACM or one of the many other types of dangerous cladding. We heard about the high-pressure laminate earlier. and it is also worth considering the danger from wooden cladding; there was the dreadful case of a fire in Barking a few months ago.

In the Reading area, we have ACM, wooden cladding that has been found to be dangerous, and laminate types. In my constituency, four or five large blocks have been inspected by Royal Berks Fire and Rescue Service and found to be not up to the required standards. The work is under way in one of those blocks, but in many other cases has been delayed. To make matters worse, there is the related issue, mentioned earlier, of smaller blocks that fall below the threshold yet have many dangerous fire safety issues— either dangerous cladding or a host of other problems, such as substandard fire doors, which have been discovered recently.

This is a very substantial problem affecting towns and cities across the whole country. We are only just beginning to discover the full extent of it. It started with the awful fire at Grenfell and similar fires which predated it and which should have been a warning to the Government. There have been subsequent fires, such as the Barking one or The Cube fire in Bolton, but there are many other dangers out there and I would like to draw the House’s attention to some of them, particularly those to do with HMOs.

There are huge numbers of HMOs in my constituency and many other towns and cities, and the numbers are growing. HMOs are not well regulated, and local authorities do not have the power to institute the sort of fire safety measures residents would often ideally want. There is also a growing market in unregulated and illegal HMOs, often tucked away and out of sight, which are not being inspected.

I want to make two points calling for more action from the Government; one of them relates to this issue of inspection and the other is a more general point about liability. On inspection, I hope the Minister will acknowledge what I have been saying about the scale of this issue in towns such as Reading, a typical medium-sized urban area in Britain. Our local fire and rescue service estimates that 30 additional officers would be required to inspect the county of Berkshire, which has a population of about 800,000, with towns including Reading, Slough and Bracknell. Given the number of smaller but still possibly dangerous buildings, substantial investment is required from Government. I hope the Minister reflects on this and comes up with a realistic plan for funding the emergency services so that they can properly inspect the vast multitude of potentially dangerous buildings. They include, as mentioned earlier, educational buildings, and there is a whole series of other types of building that people use, as well as flats and HMOs. All these need to be inspected and the resources are currently very limited.

I should add that it can take up to two years—possibly in some cases longer, depending on the grade of the person—for fire safety officers to be fully trained. They need to be trained firefighters who specialise in this field.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I trust the hon. Gentleman is bringing his remarks to a close.

[Matt Rodda]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I apologise if I have somewhat overrun.

My other point is briefly to reiterate the wise comments made by colleagues about the need for the owners of blocks—not just leaseholders, but freeholders—to contribute towards these schemes.

In summary, this is a step forward, but much more needs to be done and I urge the Government to look at the resources needed, particularly for inspection.