Oral Answers to Questions

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

What assessment he has made of the potential effect of ending the moratorium on evictions on levels of (a) evictions and (b) homelessness.

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

What assessment he has made of the potential effect of ending the moratorium on evictions on levels of (a) evictions and (b) homelessness.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Eddie Hughes)]

Although the ban on bailiff enforcement has ended, the measures that the Government have introduced mean that fewer cases are progressing to eviction. Landlord possession claims were down by 74% in quarter 1 of this year compared with the same period in 2020, and the number of families in temporary accommodation is at its lowest since 2016. For those who need more support, we are providing councils with £310 million through the homelessness prevention grant—that is an uplift of £47 million on last year—which can be used for financial support for people to find a new home, to work with landlords to prevent evictions, or to provide temporary accommodation and ensure that families have a roof over their head.

[Eddie Hughes]

It is important that these matters are handled by the councils themselves, because they are much closer to the problem than the Government; that is not something that we should or could legislate for centrally. With regard to the hon. Lady’s own council, we have allocated £5.2 million from the rough sleeping initiative and £6.8 million of homelessness prevention grant funding. The contribution that the Government are making to support local councils is very significant.

[Florence Eshalomi [V]]

I thank the Minister for his response to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), but one of the key ways to prevent homelessness is to ensure that people are not being evicted. As a result of the end of the evictions ban, many Vauxhall residents now face eviction, with no need for justification and no requirement for adjudication. The Government said in 2019 that they wanted to bring an end to section 21 no-fault evictions, yet two years down the line, tenants in my constituency still face the constant threat of eviction. Will the Minister please tell the House when we can expect to see the long-awaited renters reform Bill?

[Eddie Hughes]

We remain committed to delivering a better deal for renters, including repealing section 21 of the Housing Act 1988. We will legislate, but it is only right that that legislation considers the impact of the pandemic and is a balanced set of reforms that improves the private rented market. A White Paper detailing our package of reforms to the private rented sector will be brought forward in the autumn.

Fire Safety Bill

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I will not, because time is short and so many Members want to get in; I apologise to my hon. Friend.

Last time, I asked what direct contact Ministers had had with the Association of British Insurers, the building societies and the banks, because without their help, we are unable to deal with the negative equity and resale problems that are at the heart of so much of the distress we find. I know from talking to so many of my constituents about this issue that they appreciate that the Government have already come a long way. They are very grateful for taxpayer support. The problem is that we need more details, and for real-time issues, we need real-time solutions. Urgency is the key.

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

I am grateful to colleagues in the other place for the opportunity to reconsider amending this Bill. I also thank the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith), for their perseverance in holding the Government to account over this cladding scandal.

Much has been said in this Chamber about why leaseholders should be protected from fire safety remediation costs, and I could repeat the long list of powerful arguments that colleagues from across the House and I have put to the Government, but instead I draw on the experiences of those whose voices are not often heard in this debate, and in particular want to mention the problems faced by disabled leaseholders. I pay tribute to the work of the Leaseholder Disability Action Group in highlighting them.

For many disabled constituents in Vauxhall, the difficulty finding accessible homes in London means that, where possible, they choose to invest in a property that they view as a potential property for life.

In many instances, shared ownership with a housing association is an affordable option for those who do not have enough for a large deposit or even a mortgage. Many disabled leaseholders will have spent thousands of pounds adapting their flats to suit their needs, including with bathroom and kitchen adaptations, which will often have been funded through local authority disabled grants. But like so many leaseholders caught up in this crisis, they are now facing the additional burden of remediation costs, on top of other fire safety measures, putting them at risk of bankruptcy and losing their home for life. What is more, we know that disabled people are less likely to have the savings or income to meet unforeseen bills, and these are all subject to means-testing. This cannot be right. The important amendment before us this evening would help to end this nightmare for all leaseholders, so I urge all colleagues across the House to join me in voting for it.

Residential Leaseholders and Interim Fire Safety Costs

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered residential leaseholders and interim fire safety costs.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. It is also a pleasure to be back in Westminster Hall and to be able to debate such an important topic today. When I became the MP for Vauxhall in 2019, two and a half years after the horrific Grenfell Tower fire, I did not expect to find so many of my constituents still living in unsafe buildings, blighted by dangerous cladding and other fire safety defects. To date, I have received correspondence from and been contacted by more than 250 individual leaseholders living in 27 different unsafe building developments in my constituency. And that is just in Vauxhall. The sheer scale of the cladding scandal is truly shocking, and it has revealed the full extent of what can only be described as a systematic failure in building safety in this country. But because of the tireless efforts of campaigners and their supporters up and down the country, we know that safety is only one part of this story. Leaseholders who bought their homes in good faith now find themselves saddled with the financial responsibility and liability for problems that they had absolutely no part in creating.

Much has been said recently about this injustice, and I am grateful to colleagues across the House who have called for urgent action to protect innocent leaseholders. Understandably, much of the debate has focused on who should pay for the cost of the remedial works to remove and replace the cladding. However, I want to draw attention to an equally urgent but much less talked about financial aspect of this crisis. That is the eye-watering charges that are being passed on to leaseholders for compulsory interim fire safety measures while they wait for the remediation work to be completed.

Interim costs have life-changing impacts. The sheer feeling of hopelessness is shared by many leaseholders I have spoken to. One constituent wrote to me and said,

“I have worked hard. I have contributed to the communities in which I have lived. I have paid over £100,000 in taxes over the past three years. And yet I now find myself facing potential bankruptcy, homelessness and the collapse of my business through no fault of my own. My future is utterly bleak, and my life feels worthless.”

As soon as a building is assessed to be unsafe, residents are told that they must immediately introduce additional fire safety protocols or face an evacuation order from the fire brigade. The requirement for those interim measures can be met in two ways. One is by appointing a waking watch, whereby trained wardens continually patrol the building in order to be able to detect a fire. The second is the installation of specialist alarm systems. Faced with homelessness, leaseholders have little choice but to assume the costs for those measures.

Interim measures have become a frequent occurrence as the fire safety crisis has unravelled over the last three and a half years. Every week, new buildings have been discovered to be unsafe. Worryingly, a fire safety assessment is generally triggered only when the leaseholder tries to remortgage or sell, which in turn triggers the external wall survey or the now-infamous EWS1 process. It means that the true scale of the problem is still unknown, and it will only grow in the months and years ahead.

There is currently nothing in law to protect leaseholders from the financial responsibilities for such interim measures, which are typically passed on through increased service charges. The data on interim costs are patchy and incomplete. Government figures show that the average estimated cost of a waking watch in England is £17,000 per block, rising to over £20,000 in London. Per household, that translates to a bill of approximately £500 a month for each affected household. Alarm systems are not much cheaper as an alternative, with estimates ranging from £50,000 to £150,000 depending on the size of the building. Those figures are eye-watering, and they will recur month after month, year after year, until the cladding is removed and the building is deemed completely safe.

In February of this year, the Minister told Parliament that

“we are clear that waking watch regimes should only ever be used in the short term”.—[Official Report, 1 February 2021; Vol. 688, c. 690-691.]

On one development in the Kennington area of my constituency, however, they have been paying for a waking watch since July of last year, at a cost of £10,000 per flat. The remediation works are not expected to be completed before the end of next year, and the alarm system is deemed insufficient to meet the danger. The total cost of the interim measures for this one development is currently estimated to reach over £1 million. What really sticks in the throat for my constituents is not just that the interim measures are expensive and mandatory, but that their effectiveness has been called into question. One constituent told me:

“These guys add little practical value and sit around watching TV on their phones, and yet we have to pay for them under the threat of being evicted if we don’t. In a fire, they are not really going to be able to make a blind bit of difference through evacuating residents.”

We have to remember that such interim measures are a daily reminder to our constituents that the buildings they live in are unsafe. The amounts are unaffordable for most people at any stage in life, but many of those affected are young, first-time buyers whose dreams of home ownership have turned into an unaffordable nightmare, with their homes literally unsellable. Industry experts estimate that it will take between five and 15 years for all affected buildings to be remediated. The truth is that the costs are anything but interim.

Ministers have known about this problem for almost four years. They have repeatedly acknowledged that fire safety defects are not the fault of leaseholders, and yet it took the Secretary of State until December last year to announce any sort of help for interim costs. The waking watch relief fund, which offers a grant to pay for the installation of fire alarm systems, was a welcome step in the right direction, but it remains the only form of Government assistance that is available for interim costs. In their current form, the fund’s provisions are partial and insufficient. Leaseholders living in blocks below 18 metres are excluded from applying. The Government claim that this is because the risk of a life-threatening fire in lower buildings is smaller, but any building that faces an evacuation order if the interim measures are not established is, by definition, clearly not safe, regardless of whether it is 18, 15 or 12 metres.

One such block in Vauxhall, which is under 18 metres, failed its EWS1 assessment in October 2020, and its leaseholders have had to find more than £170,000 to pay for interim safety measures. It is estimated that the remediation work will cost in total £1.4 million. The developer of the building has gone out of business, and leaseholders were all excluded from any Government support schemes. I simply do not know how this situation can ever be fair.

Even if we focus our attention on just the buildings over 18 metres that can apply for the fund, the £30 million that the Government have allocated is drastically short of what is needed. The Government estimate that that will pay for a maximum of 460 buildings, but there are at least 560 eligible buildings in London alone. Lord Greenhalgh told the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on Monday this week:

“We recognise that the £30 million goes some way, but not all the way.”

Finally, the fund pays only for an alarm system purchased and installed after December 2020. That totally ignores the thousands of pounds that leaseholders have already spent on compulsory and expensive but ineffective waking watch systems. How can that be right or fair?

The Government, including the Minister, have repeatedly said in the House that no leaseholder should pay, so I ask the Minister whether he agrees in principle that innocent leaseholders should not be responsible for solving the problems that they did not cause. Why are we asking the same leaseholders to pay extortionate sums for interim costs?

I am grateful to the Minister for attending this debate today. I want to conclude my remarks by focusing on what can be done to fix this appalling situation. I have four questions for the Minister, which I hope he will answer. Will the Government agree to the principle that no leaseholder should have to pay for interim fire safety measures to mitigate the problems that they did not cause? Will the Government commit to including provisions within the upcoming draft Building Safety Bill to protect leaseholders from such costs, and ensure that they are picked up by the people who were responsible for causing them in the first place? Will the Government immediately extend the waking watch relief fund to match the number of buildings that we know are affected, and make sure that all leaseholders facing these costs can apply regardless of building heights?

The Minister has previously said that interim measures should be used only temporarily,

“because they are an entirely inadequate substitute for remediation.”—[Official Report, 1 February 2021; Vol. 688, c. 691.]

With that in mind, will the Minister ask the Government to mandate a timetable for the completion of the remediation work in all unsafe blocks to make sure that the interim costs do not have to be paid by leaseholders for years to come?

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate will last until 10.55 am. I intend to call the Opposition spokesman no later than 10.32 am and the Minister at 10.42 am. Florence Eshalomi will have two or three minutes to sum up the debate at the end. There are 16 Back Benchers seeking to contribute. I want to make sure that everyone gets in, so I am afraid that I will have to impose a time limit. If we aim for three minutes, everybody should have their say. All Members participating virtually should have a countdown clock on their screens. We will start with Stephen McPartland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Florence Eshalomi]

I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions; all raised excellent points. That highlights the consensus of all Members across the House.

I thank the Minister for his comments, but respectfully, his argument about prioritising the high cost of remediation work is a sideshow, a false economy and morally bankrupt. We need to look at how we can help our constituents now. These interim costs will not go away. I look forward to writing to him to highlight some of the questions I posed.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered residential leaseholders and interim fire safety costs.

Coronavirus: Supporting Businesses and Individuals

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

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

Many businesses in Vauxhall will be feeling cautiously optimistic after hearing yesterday’s plan for reopening the economy. Here in Vauxhall, our economy is dependent on the hospitality, tourism and entertainment sectors, and is supported by many small, independent businesses that provide auxiliary services to residents and the millions of visitors we normally welcome every year. From this afternoon’s contributions, we have heard that this pandemic has created winners and losers. Vauxhall has been hit particularly hard because of the nature of our economy and the supporting workforce. The gradual lifting of restrictions will not see an immediate return to business as usual. It will take time for tourists to come back along the south bank, to Brixton, to Stockwell and to Oval, and for local people to feel 100% comfortable about socialising in public again. But Vauxhall’s businesses do not have time. They are struggling to stay afloat after a year of stop-start lockdowns and gaps in Government support.

As we look ahead to next week’s Budget, I urge the Chancellor not to withdraw support too quickly and not to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to recovery. It makes no economic sense for businesses to be supported all the way through lockdown only to have that support withdrawn once restrictions are lifted. I call on the Chancellor to make sure that this support is sector-specific and tailored to meet the needs of each and every one of our businesses to ensure that we have a fair and resilient national economic lockdown.

Building Safety

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

On the important second point that my right hon. Friend raises, we have worked with the Department for Education and the Department of Health on buildings in the wider public sector—universities, student halls of residence and, in a small number of cases, buildings in the NHS—to ensure that the works there proceed at pace. I will happily update him with respect to Lincoln University.

The first point that my right hon. Friend made is actually extremely important. We have had to strike a careful balance because millions of our fellow citizens are not homeowners, and we have to protect their interests, just as we want to provide safety and fairness for the leaseholder. That is the balance that we have tried to strike today, and I hope that fair-minded people on both sides of the House and in the country will appreciate that and understand the choices that we have made.

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

I welcome today’s announcement, which is a testament to the campaigning of leaseholders across the country. I am sure that the Secretary of State believes that the deal he has negotiated with the Treasury is a great success, but for many of my constituents it will make no or little material difference. A number of leaseholders continue to pay thousands of pounds for interim safety measures. The issue at hand today is one of principle and fairness, and the upshot for many constituents is that they are still paying, despite the Government’s assurances. If the Government subscribe to the principle that no leaseholder should have to pay for fire safety problems, will the Secretary of State please explain why this package clearly shows that not all leaseholders are treated equally?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady is wrong. Thousands of her constituents will directly benefit from today’s announcement. We have chosen rightly, on the basis of expert advice, to prioritise buildings of over 18 metres. That is where the greatest risk is. It would be quite wrong for us to direct public money—taxpayers’ money—to buildings where the risk is low or extremely remote, so we are targeting that money on the buildings that need it most. In those buildings, leaseholders can have certainty that they will not be paying for the remediation of unsafe cladding. It will be paid for either by the building owner—the developer—which is quite right, or by the taxpayer. We will use the levy and the new tax to recoup as much of that as we possibly can.

In other buildings where the risk is significantly lower, the new financing arrangement will give people real comfort that they never need to pay more than £50 a month. My expectation is that many of them will pay significantly less. I think most reasonable people would see that sum of money as truly affordable and manageable within the budget of most homeowners.

Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

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

This debate is long overdue. I thank my Labour colleagues for bringing it to the House, and I thank all Members who have made a contribution today, for this truly is a national scandal. Many colleagues have rightly reminded us of the horror and tragedy of Grenfell. They have also spoken about the Government’s slowness to recognise the breadth and scale of the issue, their reluctance to get things moving, and the hollowness of their repeated promise that no leaseholder should have to foot the bill.

My constituency of Vauxhall is only a few miles from Grenfell, but today we still have hundreds of unsafe buildings. I have been contacted by over 200 leaseholders living in more than 26 different housing developments, some with multiple high-rise blocks. Each and every one of those leaseholders is now spending their third lockdown in a home with serious safety defects, not knowing when their building will be fixed or even how they will pay for it—or why they should pay for it. In the meantime, they have to pay eye-watering costs to put interim safety measures in place. One block in Vauxhall has to pay over £10,000 per flat just to install a 24-hour waking-watch system. Another block paid £130,000, before spending an additional £40,000 on an alarm system. These interim costs alone are causing so many leaseholders to become bankrupt, not to mention the additional stress and anguish. That is why one of our demands today is for a waking watch fund to be fast-tracked to leaseholders as a matter of urgency.

There is so much more that the Government can and should be doing to right the wrong that is the national cladding scandal. They have the opportunity in the forthcoming Fire Safety Bill to support amendments from Members across the House. I urge all colleagues to show their support, and to care and stand up for their constituents, by voting in favour of today’s motion.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

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

It is a privilege to be able to speak in such an important debate and I would like to echo the contributions of other hon. Members today. I think we can all agree that this is an issue that unites us across the House.

Holocaust Memorial Day allows us a moment to remember the 6 million Jewish victims of Nazi holocaust and the other victims of Hitler’s murderous regime. It also reminds us that genocide did not end in 1945. It allows us to reflect on our human experience and the choices we make. We know that darkness exists within all of us, but we can choose to be the light. We can choose not to be drawn down into a dark place of hatred and discrimination that only leads to one place.

Three weeks after I was elected as the MP for Vauxhall, anti-Islamic slogans were painted on the walls of a mosque in my constituency. That hideous hate crime was rightly, and immediately, condemned by everybody in a position of local authority. It came three days after antisemitic graffiti was sprayed across a synagogue and shops in north London, during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

Genocide does not just happen. People do not wake up one day and decide that they hate each other. It is a slow process that builds over time. We know from history that latent hatred can lead to genocide when it is left to fester and then exploited by those in positions of power. We cannot pick and choose which forms of racism or hatred we do not like. We must all be united in condemning all forms of racism and hatred, whenever and wherever it happens.

It is our duty as public servants to ensure that those in power never knowingly sow division through the language they use or the actions they take, or choose not to take. We must always be vigilant to see the warning signs, and we must call out racism, discrimination and hatred whenever we see it. The power of Holocaust Memorial Day is that it reminds us never to forget.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I look forward to receiving the proposals for my hon. Friend’s towns fund bid. We will be making further announcements on that early next year, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to support the towns in her constituency.

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

I want to ask the Secretary of State about funding for our hard-working firefighters, including the London Fire Brigade. They have seen a 38% cut in central Government funding since 2010 and 11,200 fewer firefighters during the same period. The workload for our firefighters continues to increase as they are now expected to monitor and keep safe a built environment with previously unidentified risk, inspecting over 8,000 high rises, including many in my Vauxhall constituency. So is it fair that the Government are forcing the LFB and other fire authorities to shoulder these costs?

[Robert Jenrick]

I think the hon. Lady’s question is better directed to the Minister with responsibility for the fire service, who laid a written ministerial statement earlier today specifically with respect to the police and fire settlements. More broadly, I join her in thanking fire and rescue services across the country for the fantastic work they do day in, day out and have done throughout the pandemic, and the work they are doing with my Department with respect to building safety issues.

I heard the hon. Lady’s question earlier to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House with respect to waking watch. She might like to know that earlier today we announced a £30 million fund, which will be available to any building faced with egregious waking watch costs, so they can pay for fire alarm systems to be installed. That should bring those costs to an end, or at the very least significantly reduce them, and be the beginning of the end of terrible rip-off practices that have put huge stress and anxiety on to leaseholders.

Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order, 4 June).

Leaseholders and Cladding

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I receive emails from constituents in Vauxhall on an almost daily basis about this cladding scandal. My constituent who lives at Beregaria Court on Kennington Park Road emailed me yesterday and said:

“I am a leaseholder and do not own any other part of the building, I had no say in how this was built, until recently I didn’t know what cladding was, have just been working and saving for years and putting it all into 1-bedroom apartment that now is worth nothing.”

Such constituents bought their homes in good faith, so I have one question to the Minister: do the Government agree with me that in principle it is wrong to make leaseholders pay for these bills?

[Christopher Pincher]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady. I know she campaigns hard for her constituents, and we have had many exchanges across the Chamber about the concerns that her constituents have raised with her. We entirely agree that it is not right that leaseholders who have done the right thing—who have invested in a property or have chosen a place to call home—should find themselves burdened by costs for which they are not responsible. That is why we are working with the financial services sector—Michael Wade is working on this—to try to make sure that any costs respecting historical defects of buildings are obviated. She will understand when I say that the taxpayer should not be held responsible for an open-ended cheque. We have already spent over £1.5 billion of public money to ameliorate those buildings most in need of it. The fundamental responsibility must lie with developers, but I entirely understand the point of view that the hon. Lady has raised on behalf of her constituents. Leaseholders who have done the right thing should not fall liable to unfair costs.

Leaseholders and Cladding: Greenwich and Woolwich

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

May I begin by thanking you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for granting the debate, and the Minister for taking time from his schedule to respond?

The debate concerns a subject of the utmost important to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of leaseholders in my south-east London constituency, and to hundreds of thousands more people across the country. For those who have not followed the twists and turns of this scandal since 2017, it is easy to forget just how staggering the scale of the cladding and mortgage crisis truly is. Its impact on an urban constituency of the kind that I represent has been, and continues to be, enormous. Within Greenwich and Woolwich, the external wall systems of more than 20 privately owned buildings across seven developments have been found to have aluminium composite material cladding of the type found on Grenfell Tower. The external wall systems of a further 59 buildings have been found to contain some other kind of combustible material, and many of those also have significant building safety defects, ranging from non-existent fire stopping to defective compartmentalisation. Thousands of leaseholders in countless other buildings locally—many with no defects whatever—remain mortgage prisoners or have had to absorb the significant costs of intrusive inspections to gain an EWS1 form.

I would be the first to concede that there are no simple or straightforward answers to this crisis, but based on my involvement in scores of cases over recent years, of which there are far too many to cover individually, there are some obvious things that the Government can and should do immediately to better support leaseholders, as well as a pressing need to provide greater clarity on the fundamental issue of leaseholder liability. In my remarks, I intend to touch on three specific areas where I believe decisive Government action is required—namely, public funding, buildings insurance and mortgages—before addressing that more fundamental issue of leaseholder liability.

Turning first to Government funding, while leaseholders will not easily forget the fact that previous Ministers had to be cajoled over several years into making various funding commitments, the public funding that the Government have made available for both ACM and non-ACM remediation is welcome, but further changes will need to be made, and I will speak briefly to three.

It is obvious that the deadlines involved in the building safety fund will have to be revised. The latest statistics released by the Department make clear that only 139 applications have been processed since 31 July—an average of just 17 a week. Even if the process accelerates markedly in the weeks ahead, there is no chance that more than a tiny proportion of eligible projects will have contracts in place by the 31 December deadline, given that the average time taken from the release of funds to having one in place is between 25 and 30 weeks. In responding, can the Minister confirm that he accepts that all the deadlines in the fund will have to be pushed back, including the 31 December deadline and the March deadline for people being on the ground and in place? When can this House expect an update to that effect?

The size of the building safety fund will clearly have to increase. It is well known that the Government’s own estimate is that the total cost of remediating non-ACM buildings will be in the order of £3 billion to £3.5 billion. The current size of the fund is only large enough to cover around 600 buildings, so even if a significant proportion of the 2,784 applications made to date are deemed ineligible or are rejected, it is patently obvious that the £1 billion of funding that has been allocated will still not be enough.

I appreciate that there are good reasons for the Government not to rush to announce additional funding, and I also trust that the Department is trying to make the funds that do exist go further by doing everything possible to convince developers to contribute to remedial costs in ways that do not prejudice applications to it, but it surely cannot be the case, as it is at present, that some affected leaseholders in non-ACM buildings over 18 metres will receive support from the taxpayer while others will not. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister could assure me—I phrase this carefully in order that he might—that the Government have not ruled out additional public support for non-ACM remediation beyond the moneys already committed.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate on a big issue for my constituents in Vauxhall. On the funds that the Government have made available, does my hon. Friend think the Government should make provide funding for waking watch, for which, in some cases, constituents are being asked to pay in excess of £30,000 a month just to stay in their buildings? Without that, they would have to evacuate the building.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I agree that the costs of waking watch are absolutely staggering. Leaseholders are already paying those costs, as she makes clear, in a way that is financially unsustainable for many of them. I will pick up on that point later, not only in what I will say on the fund, but in talking about leaseholder liability and whether leaseholders are being protected in the way that has been suggested.

Finally, the scope of public funding more generally must also be revisited. It is Government guidance that is ultimately driving the need for remediation and it is simply not equitable that leaseholders in buildings over 18 metres in height, whether those buildings are covered in ACM or non-ACM cladding, are assisted by the state while those in buildings below that threshold are left to fend for themselves. The Minister must surely recognise that the Government cannot argue that height should not be the sole, or even the—

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that we have made significant progress with the processing of the applications. I look forward in due course—I hope it will be soon—to giving him better news than he supposes may be out there.

We have been clear that it is unacceptable for leaseholders to have to worry about cladding remediation costs to fix safety defects in their buildings that they did not cause. That is why—I say it again—where developers or building owners have been unable or unwilling to pay we have introduced funding schemes, providing that £1.6 billion of remediation to accelerate the pace of work and meet the costs of remediating the highest-risk and most expensive defects. We recognise that there will be wider works. We are accelerating work with leaseholders and the financial sector on solutions to deal with those wider works, and we believe that there will be a combination of options to deliver a solution—there will not be a quick fix, as the hon. Gentleman put it. I want to update the House and leaseholders on that set of options as soon as I can.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned waking watch, as did the hon. Member for Vauxhall. I know that leaseholders have very significant concerns about the costs of interim measures, which have been heightened due to the covid-19 emergency. Waking watch is a short-term tool; it is no substitute for remediation. It is by targeting remediation funding where it is needed most—by removing and replacing dangerous cladding—that we can help make those homes safer more quickly and dispense with waking watches.

However, I recognise residents’ concerns about the costs of waking watch measures and the lack of transparency about those costs. That is why we have collected and published information on waking watches. The data will enable those who have commissioned waking watches to make comparisons and challenge providers about unreasonable costs. We have also identified, as a result of that work, that it can be cheaper to install alarm mechanisms rather than use waking watches. We will, of course, keep the situation under review.

[Florence Eshalomi]

On the specific issue of waking watches, a number of constituents represented by me, my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) and many others are probably watching tonight and about to go to bed. Does the Minister agree that they will not be able to sleep because of not just the cost of the waking watch, but additional costs for which they may be billed?

The Minister talks about options, but these people have no option to rent or sell—there are no options for some of those leaseholders. They want the Government to step up now and look at how to address the interim costs—not costs in the future. For them, there are no options and there is no way out. They feel trapped, now.