Fire Safety Bill

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

The Welsh Government have a proud record on fire safety, and I point the hon. Gentleman in the direction of the many actions that have been taken. In this case today, we are looking at the actions of the Government and their failure to act since the Grenfell Tower fire three years ago.

Time and again in Committee, the Minister supported what we were saying in principle but told us that we must wait for a consultation to finish, a taskforce to report, or the experts to tell us what to do. That is not good enough. We have seen with covid what can be done with political will: hospitals built in days, and whole systems restructured to respond where there is a need. If the political will was there, the Government would support this new clause and we could take one step in the direction of keeping the promises that we all made in those days and weeks after the Grenfell fire. The Government have given no timetable for when they will deliver the inquiry’s recommendations through secondary legislation. The Government have continuously pushed back on their promises while thousands of people across the country are stuck still in unsafe flats.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will know, and the Minister will recognise, that there are thousands of leaseholders living in flats—I support all steps being taken to improve fire safety—where, as each day passes, more bills are coming in for increased insurance and waking watches. They live in dread of the final bill for the cost of replacing the cladding, which will be completely unaffordable. It is not fair to our constituents to make them live with this nightmare that they did not cause, and I hope she will continue to urge the Government to play their part, because only the Government can solve this.

[Sarah Jones]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: only the Government can fix this problem. The lack of action and the lack of clarity about which buildings are safe, apart from anything else, and about what needs to be done has led to huge disruption for thousands of people, huge cost, mental health issues, weddings put off, jobs and opportunities not being able to be taken and all manner of problems that the Government need to fix.

The Government have constantly pushed back on their promises, while many people are still in unsafe flats. The fire safety measures recommended by phase 1 of the Grenfell Tower inquiry are urgently needed. Why would we wait for secondary legislation at an undetermined point in the future to ensure that building owners and managers share information about the design of external walls with their local fire services? Why would we delay the requirement to have inspections of individual flat doors and lifts? Why would we wait to make building owners or managers share evacuation and fire safety instructions with residents?

In Committee, the Minister responding—the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse)—said that the Government intend to legislate further, but we need more than vague commitments about secondary legislation. At the very least, we need a clear timetable from Government that sets out when further changes to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 will be delivered.

The fire safety order requires regular fire risk assessments in buildings, but it includes no legal requirement for those conducting the assessment to have any form of training or accreditation. I could call myself a fire risk assessor, set myself up with a logo and be responsible for one of the most important safety measures we have. No other sector would accept that. No one would accept electricians with no qualifications or gas engineers making it up as they go along. It is absurd. Any one of us could carry out fire risk assessments on schools, hospitals or care homes with no test or accreditation needed. The lack of training and accreditation in such an important area is completely unacceptable.

The Bill’s changes to the fire safety order clarify the inclusion of external wall systems such as cladding and insulation, which makes the competence of fire risk assessors even more important, as they will need to understand the more complex elements and materials found in cladding systems. That hugely important issue has been raised by Members from all parts of the House on Second Reading and in Committee.

The Government should be using the Bill to legislate for higher standards and greater public accountability in fire inspections. New clause 2, tabled by the Opposition, would bring into force an accreditation system for fire risk assessors, rather than waiting for more secondary legislation. In Committee, the Minister responding referred to the “industry-led competency steering group” in relation to fire risk assessors. I hope that the Minister today can provide an update on when the Government plan to bring forward changes to address the issue of unqualified fire risk assessors.

Turning to new clause 3, we have talked to many experts and stakeholders who have significant concerns, which the Minister will be aware of, about how the Bill will be implemented. The Minister responding in Committee referred to the building risk review programme, which looks

“to ensure that local resources are targeted at those buildings most at risk.”––[Official Report, Fire Safety Public Bill Committee, 25 June 2020; c. 62.]

We would like to see a similar provision in the Bill. New clause 3 would require the schedule for inspecting buildings to be based on a prioritisation of risk, not an arbitrary distinction of types of buildings. Local fire and rescue services know their areas and the buildings where there is greatest risk. Let them decide what to prioritise first. They know better than Whitehall.

Many Members from all parts of the House have been contacted by desperate leaseholders who have been left to foot the bill for urgent fire safety works, despite not being the building owner. That is a huge challenge, as we have already discussed. The definition of the responsible person in this legislation needs to be made clear.

The Fire Safety Bill is intended to be a foundational Bill. Its purpose is to provide clarity on what is covered under the fire safety order, which will inform other related and secondary legislation. New clause 4 would be an important example of that kind of clarification. Its purpose is to clarify the definition of “responsible person” to ensure that a leaseholder is not considered a responsible person unless they are also the owner or part-owner of the freehold. The draft Building Safety Bill places various requirements on the responsible person, and refers to the fire safety order for the definition. It is vital that the fire safety order makes it clear that there is no ambiguity around the definition of “responsible person”; otherwise, there is a risk of confusion and misalignment between the two pieces of legislation, and a danger that the responsible person might seek to use that ambiguity to avoid their responsibilities under the Bill.

The definition of the responsible person has been raised by many Members from across the House at each stage of the Bill’s progress. Without clear definitions, there will be new questions of interpretation, and we will not achieve what we are setting out to achieve. The Opposition do not understand why that is controversial. Perhaps the Minister could help by explaining why he is comfortable leaving such dangerous ambiguity.

New clause 5 refers to another important issue, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) raised. Struggling leaseholders across the country have been forced to pay extortionate fees for interim fire safety measures—most commonly, waking watch—while progress on remediation work has been too slow. New clause 5 aims to clarify when waking watch should and should not be in place. The Government still have not published the findings of their audit of external wall systems of high-rise buildings, and are therefore unable to say how many buildings are covered in dangerous non-ACM cladding. However, we know from their latest figures on aluminium composite material cladding that more than 80% of private sector residential buildings, and nearly half of social sector residential buildings, wrapped in Grenfell-style ACM cladding have not had it removed and replaced. The Government deadlines of 2019 for social sector blocks to be made safe, and June 2020 for private sector blocks, were both missed. Progress has been painfully slow, and the coronavirus pandemic has hindered it even more. The impact on residents is terrible. Tens of thousands of people have been locked down in unsafe buildings for months on end.

The National Fire Chiefs Council says that waking watch should be a temporary measure, but some blocks have been paying for it for three years, which has cost residents thousands of pounds and ruined lives. Given that the safety status of many buildings across the country remains uncertain and the timelines for cladding removal keep getting extended, clarity on when and for how long waking watch should be used would bring much-needed consistency on how the measure should be applied.

I will speak very briefly about amendment 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), who has persistently campaigned on fire safety for many years. I pay tribute to him and Jim Fitzpatrick, who is no longer in this House, for their campaigning work and for writing to Ministers time after time, including only weeks before the Grenfell fire, to implore them to act on fire safety. The issue of electrical safety, which amendment 1 raises, is hugely important, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing it to the House. The additional requirements on the fire and rescue service to provide a higher level of inspection and enforcement on the communal parts of buildings with two or more domestic premises, which this Bill introduces, should be accompanied by a rigorous approach to safety checks of electric appliances inside the premises. It is vital to ensure that the risk of faulty electrical appliances in multiply occupied residential buildings is minimised.

Last month, I wrote to the Minister seeking urgent action on the rising number of fires caused by faulty appliances in high-rise blocks. The number of electrical fires caused by faulty appliances has risen in England. Based on analysis of Government figures by Electrical Safety First, The Times has reported a rise in the number of electrical fires caused by faulty tumble dryers and fridges. The number of accidental electrical fires in tower blocks has risen in each of the past three years. If these measures cannot be included in the Bill, we will scrutinise any proposals that the Government bring forward to ensure the best possible standards of electrical safety. Will they set out a timetable to deliver that?

In conclusion, there are many issues around improving fire safety that we would have liked to see included in the Bill. However, due to its limited scope, many will have to be addressed through the draft Building Safety Bill and secondary legislation. The amendments we have tabled are straightforward; most of them are on issues that the Government have stated their intention to address but have not shown the political will to move faster on. For those living in unsafe buildings, the risk of fire will not wait for the Government to choose an appropriate date for the Bill’s commencement. After Grenfell, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), said that her Government will do “whatever it takes” to keep our people safe. Three years on, we urge the Government to honour the commitment to keep people safe, and to act as quickly as they can to do that.

Fire Safety Bill

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Royston Smith]

What I will do is refer my hon. Friend to two things that he has said. First, he said, “We will carry the can”, and he has now said, “Who is going to be on the hook?” It sounds to me like he is very happy for leaseholders to carry the can and be on the hook, but not to find a solution. The Government’s problem is to find the solution. Our problem is to say that leaseholders should never have to pay. That is not an unreasonable position for us to take.

In trying to help, the Government have satisfied no one and they have upset just about everyone. The leaseholders are not responsible for this. They know they are not. We know they are not. The Government know they are not and, therefore, the Government’s position is now untenable.

In conclusion, I appeal to the Government and to all my colleagues to think very carefully before they abandon thousands of their constituents, because I know this: they will not forget and they will not forgive.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab) [V]]

I am speaking in support of all the amendments before us that seek to protect leaseholders from having to pay. First, on the Minister’s argument that this will delay matters, I think that leaseholders are left perplexed by the Government’s position. One day Ministers say that the cost of fixing historical defects should not fall on leaseholders—the Minister said it again today—but on another day, they say that it should. The £50 a month towards the loans that the Government propose to give to buildings below 18 metres shows that that is their policy. I do not think that Ministers can criticise others who are trying to address the problem—I support the speeches we have heard from supporters of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland)—because the Government are completely unclear about what their policy is on who should bear the cost. It is clear to me that it should be the people who built the blocks.

On the argument that leaseholders who are also part-owners of the freehold may walk away from their flats, that is a very fair point, but exactly the same argument applies to loads of leaseholders who will not be able to afford to meet these costs. What this tells us is that if we are to solve this we must deal with the whole problem, not just part of it.

Secondly, to argue that this is the wrong Bill misses the urgency of the situation. Leaseholders are facing bills that they cannot afford now—waking watch bills now, insurance bills now—and they still face the prospect of being asked to pay to make safe homes that they bought in good faith. That is why we should take the first available opportunity to protect them from this great injustice.

Fire Safety Bill

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con) [V]]

I thank the Lord Bishop of St Albans and the Lord Bishop of London for ensuring that we have the opportunity to vote on the amendments today. It gives us the chance to divide the House on whether leaseholders should be responsible for paying for historical fire safety costs. I urge the Minister and the Government to accept the amendments or, if there is something wrong with them, to table their own. They should work with us and with leaseholders to try to resolve this issue.

It is unacceptable that people feel that we want taxpayers to pay. Leaseholders do not want taxpayers to pay and Members across the House do not want taxpayers to pay; we want those who are responsible to pay—the developers, the insurance companies and the building regulators who said that these properties were safe over the past 20 to 30 years, when many of the leaseholders who will be forced to pay these bills were in primary school or not even born. It is not acceptable, it is not fair and it is not right. What we are doing today is shameful.

The amendments would maintain the status quo with regard to the costs of remediation. I understand the Minister’s point that this is a small Bill and not the right place to deal with the costs of remediation. I agree with him, but it is he who is transferring the liability to leaseholders in this Bill. The status quo is that leaseholders are not responsible for the costs of anything to do with external walls or doors. It is this Bill that amends the legislation. It is this Bill that will make leaseholders responsible for paying for historical fire safety defects. Again, that is not fair.

I was at a building today and it became clear very quickly that the estimated costs of remediation are greater than the value of the properties within it. Can the Minister give me an answer? What will happen in cases where the costs of remediation are greater than the value of the building and the properties within it? Will the building be written off, like an insurance company would write off a car? Will those people be made homeless? We know that if the Bill goes through, even more leaseholders will face bankruptcy and huge issues of homelessness.

At the moment, the interim costs are bankrupting leaseholders up and down the country. Leaseholders are screaming for help; they are screaming in pain. And what are we doing? Today, we are saying to them, “Thanks for paying the interim costs. Once you’ve finished that, we’re going to load you up with the remediation costs on top.” That is tens of thousands of pounds that people just do not have.

We are nearly four years on from Grenfell, and it appears to me that the Government have given up on those who should be responsible for paying and are pushing the costs on to leaseholders. It is morally unacceptable.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab) [V]]

I will be supporting the amendment moved by the Bishop of St Albans, because in circumstances where leaseholders are beset by worry, fear and uncertainty, it will provide them with the reassurance that they will not have to pay to fix a problem for which they are not responsible. It will also make the Government realise that they have to come forward with a different solution.

There are two problems here: the first is dangerous cladding and the second is other fire safety defects, which have been discovered in building after building. The Government appear to be in the position where the funding they have announced will pay for the remediation of missing fire cavity barriers where they are integral to the replacement of dangerous cladding, but not where they are not—in other words, where they are elsewhere in the building. I do not really understand that. Can the Minister say whether, if the works the Government are prepared to fund through the scheme are completed, the buildings in question will be declared safe so that the waking watch and insurance costs disappear even if the other fire safety defects have not been fixed?

Time, however, is not on our side, because we know how long making all of these homes safe is going to take, even if all the necessary funding had already been identified.

There are detailed inspections to be done, tenders have to be put together, firms found who are willing to do the work, and scaffolding and building materials have to be ordered before the work can even begin. So, given the scale of this, it is going to take a long time. But that is the one thing that leaseholders do not have, because, as we have heard, they are paying bills that they cannot afford.

Even worse, the bills are now starting to arrive on their doormats demanding payment to fix the cladding. One recent example was a demand for £71,000. It might as well be for £1 million, because there is no prospect of leaseholders being able to find that kind of money.

So the longer this goes on, the more likely we are to see leaseholders becoming bankrupt. What are the local authorities going to do when they turn up at their door and say, “I’m homeless; I need somewhere to stay”? And make no mistake: the anger that leaseholders are feeling at the moment will be something else again when they find themselves being made homeless through no fault of their own.

So, let us do the right thing today to protect leaseholders, and then the Government can turn their attention to finding an answer that will actually work. At a time when people are getting bills to the tune, as I have just said, of £71,000 through the letterbox, to stand up and say, “I’m really sorry, but this isn’t the right legislation” demonstrates a failure to understand the nightmare that so many of the people we represent are living through.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I will call the Minister to wind-up the debate at five to 9.

Fire Safety Bill

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Royston Smith (Southampton, Itchen) (Con)]

The longer this debate drags on, the more damaging it becomes to the Government and the worse it becomes for innocent leaseholders. On Saturday evening, there was a fire in the tallest tower block in Southampton. That building has ACM cladding. As I understand it, it was alight. Hampshire fire and rescue responded quickly and dealt with the fire with its characteristic professionalism. Fortunately, the fire was not too serious, but it could have been. What would we be saying today if the worst had happened, I wonder?

I have said from the start that there are three dimensions to the fire safety scandal: the moral, the economic and the political. The moral obligation is obvious: this Government have a duty to hold those who are responsible to account and to defend the innocent leaseholders. There should be no disagreement on that issue.

Secondly, on the economic, the Government clearly think that my concerns about toxic debt, mass bankruptcy and repossession are wrong, but it is not just me who thinks it is a risk. The Bank of England is concerned, too—so concerned that it is assessing whether the fire safety scandal could cause a new financial crisis. With up to 1.3 million flats unmortgageable, perhaps the Government should be a little more concerned about the economic issue.

Finally, on the political, the Government believe in the home-owning democracy. It defines us. We have encouraged it. We have incentivised it. In fact, many people would not be in their own property without the support of Government. How do we look ourselves in the mirror when we have helped people to buy a home in a dangerous building that is worth less—sometimes much less—than they paid for it? The truth is that most MPs, including Conservative MPs, agree that the Government should resolve this issue. They believe, as I do, that it should not be the taxpayers who pay, despite what some in government have been saying. It should be those who are responsible—the manufacturers, the developers, the National House Building Council and development control. Some of those, of course, are local authorities. The Government can underwrite what is needed and then take it back from the industry. It may take years, but we will charge interest. It should be those who are responsible who pay.

We have been accused of wanting to kill the Fire Safety Bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the Government wanted the Bill to succeed as much as I do, they would do what was necessary to get the Bill through this place and the other place, but they have thus far chosen not to. After today, the Bill will go back to the Lords, and it will, in all likelihood, come back again. The amendment may come back with a different name and moved by someone else. If that happens, the Bill may well fall. That will not be my fault or our fault. That will be the Government’s fault.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab) [V]]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith). Here we are again debating a Lords amendment to protect leaseholders from having to pay to fix construction defects and unsafe cladding that never were and never should be their responsibility, and yet Ministers continue to resist, even though they have repeatedly said that leaseholders should not have to bear the cost. The trouble with this endless debate is that the clock is ticking and innocent leaseholders continue to face unreasonable costs as bills now start to arrive demanding sums of money that they simply do not possess. One constituent wrote to me last week enclosing a photograph of the bill he has just been sent, for £27,000. Another thinks that their bill will be £40,000. They obviously cannot remortgage their flats. So I ask the Minister: what are people in this situation meant to do? Sadly, we know that the Government do not have an answer to this, or indeed to the mental and emotional torment that these people are being put through. That is why this amendment is needed, and needed now.

Even taking account of the Government funding already announced, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership estimates that about two thirds of the total cost will still fall on leaseholders: the very people whom the Government say should not pay. The Association of Residential Managing Agents estimates that the average remediation bill will be about £50,000 a flat and that insurance costs have risen by 400%. The Government estimate that the average cost of a waking watch outside London is over £2,100 a year for each flat. Leaseholders in shared ownership properties are in a particular bind. The building safety fund is moving too slowly. There is a shortage of companies who can, or will, do the work. There is total uncertainty as to what is meant to happen when we know that there are other works that have to be done to make buildings safe but for which the Government are not prepared, so far, to offer funding. I find it very hard to believe that Ministers do not understand that the remedy they have come forward with so far is patently insufficient, or that, without a comprehensive plan, leaseholders will, month by month and year by year, inevitably face financial collapse because of the huge burden of costs being put on their shoulders.

In conclusion, can I assure the Minister that the growing number of MPs who support the Lords amendment are not going anywhere, and that is because our constituents have nowhere else to go?

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate.

It is unfortunate that this is the third time the House of Lords has felt it necessary to return this Bill to the House of Commons. That is because their lordships, like many MPs across the House, feel that the Bill cannot progress without some form of protection for leaseholders. It completely astonishes me that people in government cannot hear the screams of pain of leaseholders begging for help—people who are going bankrupt and people who are being hit with high insurance premiums. We were told only last week of an insurance premium for a building that was £11,963 last year but £242,400 this year. People are being hit with bills of £6,000 each with seven days to pay them and no recourse to help. With waking watches, there are interim bills that are going through the roof. Leaseholders cannot pay this; they cannot afford this. The reality is that these buildings will not be made safe by transferring the financial and legal liability on to leaseholders. Leaseholders do not have the funds to fix it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) said, we, leaseholders and leaseholders’ groups do not want the taxpayer to pay; we want the taxpayer to provide a safety net to help. We believe that those responsible should pay—nobody else.

Nobody wants this Bill to fail. We are nearly four years on from Grenfell. The Minister mentioned Grenfell in his opening remarks. I would like to read him a statement that has been issued by Grenfell United:

“The fire safety bill is back in the commons. Government is using the excuse that the amendment will delay Grenfell recommendations. The amendment is to protect leaseholders from charges. The FSB is separate & it is wrong to claim support of it damages recommendations. Using Grenfell Recommendations to justify government’s indifference is deeply upsetting for us and shows they’d rather protect the corporates responsible from paying for the mess they created. Our request is simple: implement Grenfell recommendations make homes safe & protect lease holders from financial ruin. Nearly 4 years since Grenfell and yet not a single piece of legislation has been passed. Homes have to be made safe this is a basic human right. We ask all MPs that committed to ensuring Grenfell 2 could not happen to do the right thing today by us and the thousands of leaseholders effected.”

Grenfell United and the people affected there have spoken. Leaseholders up and down the country are speaking. Our constituents are speaking and Members of Parliament are hearing them. The Bishop of St Albans has tabled an amendment to try to provide the Government with the opportunity of the time and space to come forward with a compromise. I urge the Government to compromise and bring forward an amendment in the House of Lords later today to help support leaseholders.