Building Safety

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

They should do. Again, the right hon. Gentleman homes in on something that is very important, as have a number of other colleagues. Developers are stepping up to the plate and accepting their responsibilities, with one or two exceptions, and those developers have to alter their behaviour. It is also the case that lenders, for the most part, have changed their behaviour in order to help people who are trapped by their mortgages—but we have to monitor that behaviour. There are others—and the insurers as well as construction product manufacturers are squarely in our gun sights—who do need to do more. I believe that what we have announced today will help, but there does need to be additional Financial Conduct Authority and Government co-ordinated action. If the right hon. Gentleman has not yet received a response to his letter, I hope to lay out in my response exactly what we will do.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

My constituents will welcome this statement, but they will not break out in celebrations just yet. We want to see some action. Two big developments in my constituency, which had unsafe cladding identified three years ago, applied to the building safety fund. Since then they have been given vague promises by the developer but no action from the building safety fund. Can the Secretary of State confirm that those developments will now be taken out of the building safety fund and given to their developers, who will be told to do the remediation by a certain date, so that this lack of clarity over who is responsible for getting on with it is ended, and people can at last sleep well at night?

[Michael Gove]

That is exactly what today’s announcement is intended to achieve.