Fire Safety Bill

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

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

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

In my first virtual contribution, I start by paying tribute to the House staff for their tireless work over the last few weeks to make these hybrid proceedings possible.

I support this long overdue Bill, which provides much needed clarification on fire safety law, but we must go further if we are to prevent the potential for fatal fires in people’s homes. The Bill does not include the provisions arising from the recommendations made during the first phase of the Grenfell inquiry—something that Ministers had promised—and it does not include the much-needed changes to building safety standards.

It is nearly three years since the tragic Grenfell fire, which claimed the lives of 72 people, and for the Government to move so slowly on this is unacceptable. Like many other Members who have highlighted this today, I remember that fatal night, as I sat up for most of the night nursing my young son, who was just one week old on 14 June 2017. I sat up watching the scenes unfold during the night, and we must never forget those 72 innocent victims.

I also pay tribute to our hard-working firefighters, who continue to put their lives at risk and who need the Government to provide the necessary funding and assurances that this will never happen again. Will the Minister today confirm when we expect to see the recommendations from the inquiry brought into law and when the Government finally plan to bring forward a building safety Bill?

Legislation is only one piece of the puzzle in making our homes safe to live in. During this lockdown period, I have been contacted by many leaseholders in my constituency of Vauxhall who live in flats owned by private companies and who are having severe problems and delays in removing this dangerous cladding from their homes. This is not the fault of those leaseholders, and they should not be the ones to shoulder the blame for the Government’s failures, yet they are the ones who are struggling to get the necessary safety gas certificates and paying for really expensive service charges and interim security measures, and they are now having to spend this lockdown in unsafe buildings, worried that their homes will catch fire.

I welcome the £1 billion announced by the Chancellor in the Budget to remove the dangerous cladding from residential buildings, but the £200 million offered to private residential blocks to remove the cladding has been available for over a year now, and only two buildings have accepted that grant. Three years on, almost nine out of 10 private sector buildings affected have not yet had the dangerous cladding removed or replaced. The Government set a deadline of June for all private sector buildings to be safe, yet we know that the deadline is certainly going to be missed.

The Government need to accept responsibility for making our homes safe now and make the necessary steps to ensure that the money that they have made available is used to remove this dangerous cladding as soon as possible. We must not and cannot afford to wait.