Building Safety Bill

Debate between Janet Daby and Stephen McPartland

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen McPartland]

It is a great pleasure to be able to speak in this debate. I am very grateful to the Minister and the Secretary of State for the great work they have done since they have taken up their roles in working with us to get to a position where the Government accept that leaseholders are the innocent victims who are not responsible and should not have to pay.

I will come on to the waterfall in a few moments, but I want to pay tribute to a number of cladding groups: UK Cladding Action Group; End our Cladding Scandal, Leasehold Knowledge Partnership; Cladiator groups up and down the country; the millions of leaseholders who have put their lives on hold; and a lot of my colleagues on both sides of the House, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) who helped me coin the McPartland-Smith amendment all that time ago, which we both found very humbling. We were very pleased that we were able to help to move this process forward and give leaseholders hope.

We have gone from being offered £400 million to £9.2 billion. The Government are still negotiating, and were talking to me and other Conservative colleagues this morning. The Minister himself said from the Dispatch Box during the debate that for leaseholders in properties under 11 metres, issues in those buildings will be looked at on a case-by-case basis. It is clear that the Government have listened. It is clear that the Government are trying to work with us and are trying to find solutions. I accept —we all accept—that we did not want to be in this place. The Government themselves want to fix the problems.

We need to reintroduce some proportionality into the debate. We need to ensure that leaseholders feel that the buildings they are in are safe and are not fire risks. One thing that has disappointed me throughout is that although it has been very cross-party, we have to ensure we keep it cross-party and that we reassure people. A lot of leaseholders out there feel that they and their children lay their heads down to sleep in unsafe buildings. They have just come out of the covid pandemic where they were told to stay at home because going out was unsafe, but staying at home was unsafe. These people have severe mental health issues and financial insecurity. It is our job and our responsibility to reassure those leaseholders that we are trying to resolve this problem, that we are going to try to find a way through and that we will ensure their buildings are made safe.

That is what I want to do as the Member of Parliament for Stevenage. I want to represent the leaseholders in Monument Court in my constituency who at the moment—I will speak to the Minister about this—are being sent bills by Higgins Homes for 50% of costs. How is that even possible when we have been clear that leaseholders are not going to pay? We have Vista Tower—the iconic Sophie Bichener, my constituent, got me involved in the campaign originally, all that time ago—and even with all the measures going through, because the tower is effectively owned by trustees they may be exempt and the waterfall may pass directly on to the leaseholders. They are already getting £10 million from the building safety fund, and they need to find £5 million from leaseholders. It is going to be very, very difficult.

We have to finish the primary legislation and get the Bill through to Royal Assent so that leaseholders have some reassurance. Once the Bill has achieved Royal Assent, we need to work together to get the secondary legislation, vast quantities of which are needed to make the Bill work, right. We then need to start, over five years on from the terrible and tragic events at Grenfell, to make these buildings safe. How will we make people feel the buildings are safe? Finishing this debate in the Chamber today does not make any building safer than it was yesterday or five years ago. We need to focus on identifying those buildings and making sure they are safe. That is my priority. I will be supporting the Government today, because they have shown a massive willingness over the past few months to sit down and negotiate with us, and to do everything they can to try to ensure that leaseholders are not held responsible.

On the waterfall and the cap, we need to ensure that the waterfall works in practice so that developers are held on the hook, then freeholders and then other organisations, with leaseholders being the last resort. In my constituency, leaseholders who are affected would not pay a single penny, because the Secretary of State gave a commitment from the Dispatch Box in a previous debate that waking watch costs that had already been paid over the past five years—extended to 10 years, which we are very pleased about and did not even ask for—would contribute towards the £10,000. The reality is that the leaseholders in my constituency would not be paying a single penny towards the cost of remediating the building. We need to find a way of ensuring that the building still gets remediated. We have gone from the issue being just cladding to the Government’s accepting both external building safety defects and internal building safety defects. We have won the campaign. Leaseholders have won. Up and down the country millions of leaseholders have won, but we must turn that victory into reality. We must ensure that those leaseholders live in protected buildings.

Obviously we would all like the cap to be at zero. However, one of the issues, which I asked the Secretary of State about only yesterday, is that there are leaseholders who cannot move, take a new job or move on with their life because they cannot sell their flat; the flats have no market value and are worthless. In response to a letter that we sent, the Secretary of State has asked the lenders whether they will provide consent to let for affected leaseholders so that they can rent out their property and move on with their life somewhere else. As we know, at the moment millions of them are trapped.

The Government are working with us all the time. Because we know that the most that any leaseholder will ever pay—technically, in theory—is £10,000, we have created value again in every single one of those properties. We have got the market moving again, because everybody knows that they will not have to face what in the case of Vista Tower is a remediation bill of £180,000 or £200,000 on a £180,000 flat. That is how far we have moved—that is the size of the victory that we have won. Leaseholders up and down the country have won, and we need to ensure that we take that victory to the next level and help them to get their buildings made safe. I am grateful to the Minister and will support him in the Lobby today.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

In June, it will have been five years since the devastating Grenfell fire. I did voluntary work in the community when I was in my late 20s, so I know the area well. The fire destroyed lives and tore families and communities apart; again, I offer the survivors my condolences in memory of those they lost. Since then, thousands of leaseholders have been forced to live with the anxiety of being in unsafe buildings through no fault of their own. It has to be said that although we are where we are today, the Government have acted far too slowly to put right the most serious situation. Residential leaseholders are panicking about costs that they never envisaged and are worried about who will pay for the work to remedy the situation.

The Bill has the opportunity to right those wrongs. I put on record my appreciation for all the building safety campaigners and for their work and their efforts. At the beginning of this year, the Secretary of State announced that

“leaseholders…are blameless, and it is morally wrong that they should be the ones asked to pay the price.”—[Official Report, 10 January 2022; Vol. 706, c. 283.]

I absolutely agree. Nevertheless, I am in contact with my constituents and they are concerned that the Government’s proposals will still leave most leaseholders facing unaffordable costs. I therefore support Lords amendment 155, which reduces to zero the maximum amount that leaseholders could be liable to pay for fire remediation works, as we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook). That is important, because people who have done nothing wrong should not have to pay a penny for remediation work, for other fire safety work or for additional work that may arise.

The residents of Parkside in my constituency have endured years of uncertainty about who will pay for the work to put right the unsafe cladding on their building. My constituents, residential leaseholders, have been given a tentative commitment by Peabody, the housing provider, that the full cost for their remediation works will be met by Peabody, Ardmore and Rydon, the developers. However, the developers have not given my constituents the outright reassurance that they need; instead, they are keeping them dangling on the end of a string. My constituents desperately need to know that no additional cost will be passed on to them. It is deeply disappointing that they have not been given that reassurance.

Leaseholders who have shared ownership and socially rented residents have been left in limbo in unsafe buildings for far too long. Promises are being broken, works have yet to begin—they have been delayed and delayed—and commitments are not being met. If the families or friends of Peabody, Rydon and Ardmore were in that situation, they would want it put right. It is not fair that leaseholders and socially rented residents continue in these situations. Leaseholders cannot sell, cannot re-mortgage and cannot increase their share of ownership. They cannot decide to extend their family, because they will end up in an overcrowded situation. For Parkside, there is still no policy for sub-renting. Furthermore, the building is vulnerable to the risk of fire.

My constituents need to know the timeframe for when remediation work will begin and end. They need reassurances that they will not be paying for anything. They need to be treated with the utmost respect and consideration. I ask the Government what they will do to follow through, ensure that there is a time cap on when remediation work begins and ends, and ensure that leaseholders and socially rented residents are treated with the utmost respect when remediation work takes place. Every decision needs them at the forefront. After all, as we have already heard, it is they who are vulnerable. They are the victims and they need to be protected.

I urge the Government to accept the Opposition amendments and always to put the residential leaseholders and socially rented residents in this situation first.