Social Housing and Building Safety

Debate between Hilary Benn and Lisa Nandy

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

I think my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee, is making the Secretary of State’s day. We can add that to the very long list of problems. I think his question was more for the Secretary of State than for me, and I am sure he will ensure that it is addressed in the winding-up speeches, but I add my voice to his in saying that one of the reasons we were very concerned about the scheme is that it reaches only a very small number at a very high price.

We have a housing crisis in Britain and, as the Secretary of State knows, it manifests in a multitude of ways—in people who have been mis-sold leasehold properties, people who face soaring rents and are crippled by housing costs and the cost of living, and people in totally unsuitable exempt accommodation. Those loopholes have still not been closed while people continue to milk the system and claim housing benefit while allowing communities to fall into rack and ruin.

As the Secretary of State acknowledged, five full years after the Grenfell tragedy thousands of people remain stranded in homes covered in similar cladding, facing ruinous costs because of a scandal that was not of their making. The right hon. Gentleman is right that developers, not leaseholders, should pay. He has pushed that further than any of his predecessors and he has my full support in doing so. As long as he continues down that road, we will support him in the fight. However, I understand that so far 45 homebuilders have paid £2 billion to fix fire-related safety defects, which is roughly half of what he told the House would be needed. Where will the other £2 billion come from? What assurances and guarantees does he have that the developers who have agreed to pay cannot backtrack on any of the agreements?

The Government’s plans are missing several elements that need to be addressed and added to existing measures in the Building Safety Act 2022. The Secretary of State will be aware of those. There is still far too little support for the significant number of leaseholders who face huge bills to fix non-cladding defects.

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. On the point she just addressed, there are leaseholders living in buildings who have looked to what the Secretary of State says about wanting to make those responsible pay but who still do not know who was involved. Often there is a network of companies; some may have disappeared or taken new names but still have the same directors and so on. Would it not be helpful if the Government were to write to the leaseholders in all those buildings setting out what information they currently have about the willingness of those involved in the construction of the building to cough up for the unsafe flats they constructed?

[Lisa Nandy]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good suggestion, which I hope the Government will take up. It is not just the huge costs that are causing such damage to people; it is the uncertainty and anxiety that they have to live with every single day. Anything the Government can do to alleviate that anxiety—to send a signal to the leaseholders who are now trapped in their homes that they are not on their own—would be extremely welcome.

Will the Secretary of State look specifically at those who are seeking to sell or remortgage their properties? For such people, this wait is agonising and unbearable; their lives are on hold and they simply cannot move on. I have to say to him that it is quite wrong of the Government to rule out retrospective help for those who have already paid. Many people felt pressured or bullied into paying these enormous bills, yet no help is coming for them. That is not justice. Nor is there help for the countless leaseholders who are mired in mortgage chaos. Government funding so far is available for buildings over 11 metres, but shorter buildings may contain more vulnerable residents, be coated in more cladding and have more serious fire safety issues. What more does the Secretary of State plan to do to ensure that priority funding is allocated according to risk?

At the current pace, it will take until 2026 to remove cladding on all social housing blocks, and until 2024 for private blocks. When does the Secretary of State expect remediation of all dangerous buildings to have been completed? Can he give us some reassurance on that?

It would be wrong of me to stand here and say that the problems facing leaseholders began and end with Grenfell. A group of local residents who have been caught up in this scandal came to see me and told me a familiar story. They have been hit with huge charges, but when they challenged the charges with their management company, they did not even get a response. They have written again and again and have been completely and utterly ignored. It is totally unacceptable, and it is not new.

The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) is not in his place right now, but he has fought this battle for years, as I well remember. Many years ago, in 2001, I worked for the then Member of Parliament for Walthamstow as the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill—later the 2002 Act—was going through this place. These debates were happening here in this place at that time, a full decade before I was elected to Parliament. They were happening when I was working for Centrepoint, the fantastic organisation to which Members have paid tribute today. Parliament was debating how too many people were being ignored and overlooked, and these arcane and archaic, feudal models of tenure were still being defended by some, even though they had clearly and completely outlived their usefulness.

Almost every country in the world apart from Britain has either reformed or abolished this archaic, feudal model. I believe there is now cross-party consensus on the need to do something about it. I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State acknowledge that we are right to say that we must have legislation to deal with this, but I say gently to him: where is it? He says legislation will be forthcoming in this parliamentary Session, but it was not in the Queen’s Speech. There are five Bills from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in the Queen’s Speech; surely time can be found to ensure that we deal with this problem once and for all.

We need new legislation to end the sale of new private leasehold houses, effective immediately after Royal Assent is given; new legislation to replace private leasehold flats with commonhold; and new powers for residents over the management of their own homes, with rights for flat owners to form residents’ associations and simplification of the right to manage. Why do the Government not hand leaseholders the right to extend the lease to 990 years with zero ground rent at any time or to cap ground rents when extending a lease to 0.1% of the freehold value up to a maximum of £250 a year? The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) chairs, has done incredible work on that. The proposals are there and ready to go.

Where are the Law Commission’s proposals to reform the process of enfranchisement valuation for leaseholders, including on marriage value and prescribing rates for the calculations of the premium? Surely, in the midst of a cost of living crisis, it is a no-brainer to crack down on unfair fees and contract terms by publishing a reference list of reasonable charges, by requiring transparency on service charges, and by giving leaseholders the right to challenge rip-off fees and conditions or poor performance from service companies.

I started by saying that a group of people were rendered invisible to decision makers only a few miles away, which is completely unacceptable in modern Britain. How can we accept that these rip-off companies, on behalf of owners who we often do not know and do not have the right to find out about, are allowed to tell people whether they can change the doorbell on their own home or make minor changes that would make a big difference to their lives? How on earth is it right that we are siding with those rip-off management companies and opaque owners over people who live in their own homes, have a stake in this country and their communities, and deserve the right to something better?

If the Secretary of State can secure time for the second part of the leasehold reform Bill that was promised, we could end these arcane rules and give power and a voice back to people in their own homes and communities. Was levelling up not intended to answer that clamour for more control and agency, and give people who have a stake in the outcome a greater ability to make decisions about their own lives? That is the legacy that we should seek to build in honour of those who lost their lives in Grenfell: everybody everywhere in the UK, regardless of the type of tenure that they happen to end up with, has the right to a decent, secure, safe home—full stop. We will make sure that that is delivered.

The Grenfell community has steadfastly campaigned not just for justice but for change, and it is humbling to welcome some of the relatives to the Gallery. I share the Secretary of State’s view that that has come too slowly and that their long fight for justice has for too long been paved with broken promises. Those lives mattered, and if we believe and mean what we say when we honour them, we must build a better system in the wake of that appalling tragedy. His Department has five Bills in the Queen’s Speech, which is five chances for us to get it right. We will move heaven and earth to help him do that, but let us not waste them.