Fire Safety (Protection of Tenants) Bill

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Friday 19th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Sanders]

Since the Bill was published—four and a half months ago—I have made repeated attempts to arrange a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who has responsibility for fire, but I have met another junior Minister, who kindly allowed me to talk things through with civil servants. However, I was shocked this morning when the Under-Secretary said to me that if I withdrew my Bill, I could have a meeting with him. That was an insult to the people who have died in fires and their relatives.

The key word is “guidelines”. The housing health and safety rating system highlights 29 factors that may be taken into consideration by local authorities when assessing risk to all residential properties. If fire is seen as a category 1 hazard, enforcement action can be taken. Other guidance documents over recent years have stressed the importance of smoke alarms, but still local authorities are free to do as little about it as they wish. A number of cases have highlighted the need for better regulation. At an inquest into a fatal fire in Yarcombe near Honiton in Devon in May 2008, the coroner resolved to contact DCLG Ministers urging them to review whether smoke detection could be made mandatory in rented domestic dwellings. To date, DCLG has not responded positively.

Earlier this year, there were fire deaths in two incidents in Northumberland, at Ashington and Bedlington. Three people died in total and in neither fire were there any working alarms. In September, an elderly woman died in a fire in Porlock, Somerset. Again the fire authority found no smoke alarms. Indeed, fire officers have told me that they have never attended a fatal fire where working smoke alarms have been present, and the number of cases reported in the local press of smoke alarms saving families from death and/or injury is significant. There should be a straightforward solution to this problem.

In 2004, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Committee, of which I was a member, produced a report on the fire service with the following recommendation:

“We believe that functioning smoke alarms save lives and reduce injuries. The Committee congratulates those Fire Services which operate initiatives to fit free smoke alarms for the vulnerable. We welcome the requirement for alarms to be hard-wired in alterations, extensions and new buildings. We recommend this requirement be extended to include all existing tenanted properties, housing of multiple occupation and housing for vulnerable members of society. If the design of such buildings makes installation of hard-wired alarms impossible, we recommend use of alarms fitted with 10 year batteries.”

This Bill seeks to implement the Select Committee’s recommendations, which are still on the table, six years later. It will ensure that all landlords provide a working hard-wired fire detection system at the start of any tenancy agreement. That will be a legal requirement, in the same way that a landlord must have the gas system certified annually, an electrical safety check, and an energy performance certificate. From commencement of the tenancy, responsibility shifts to the tenant, who should refrain from causing damage to the system, and report any problems punctually, in the same way that the vast majority of tenants already do with all aspects of their home. As one of the Devon and Somerset fire officers said, when someone buys a car, it has to come with a seat belt. After that, it is the responsibility of the driver to use it properly. The same applies to smoke alarms. It seems eminently sensible that rented properties should be safe at the start of a tenancy, but it is equally sensible that the tenant should take responsibility for their safety after that.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I apologise for missing the start of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, and commend him for bringing the Bill to the House. Is he aware that, before and subsequent to the Select Committee’s report, even when smoke detectors without extended-life batteries or hard wiring were given away by registered social landlords and fire brigades, that did not work because batteries were taken out or they were sold at the local pub? Hard-wired detectors and 10-year batteries have been proven to work, and have saved lives. I wish the hon. Gentleman every success with his Bill.

[Mr Sanders]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Indeed, the figures are startling, both for failure rates and the number of properties where batteries were removed. That is why all building regulations today, and the Bill, require the hard-wired solution where it can be implemented.

My aim is to ensure that all rented properties, not just those covered by the latest regulations, have a good deal of fire safety. Tenants would not have only 20 seconds’ warning, and that could be the difference between life and death. It would save dozens of lives every year, and could prevent thousands of injuries. It would save millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money which is otherwise spent on preventable death and injury, health and social care costs, welfare and support. There are issues that need resolving in Committee, including the applicability to long-term tenants, a suitable process to allow landlords to hold their tenants to account without protracted civil court proceedings, and so on.

Making smoke detectors compulsory in all rented properties has broad support, including from the former Select Committee. Early-day motion 31 endorses mandatory detectors and has cross-party support. Indeed, immediately before the general election, the then shadow Home Secretary visited my constituency and was quoted in the local press as saying that he wholeheartedly supported the campaign. I only hope that his Front-Bench colleagues share that diligent attitude to saving lives.

Fire authorities have done a great deal in promoting fire safety, but there is a gap in protection that needs filling, and the fire service on the ground tells me that legislation is the only way to achieve that. I am aware of ideological objections that the Minister may have to regulation, but I hope that I can persuade him that not all regulation is pernicious and malevolent. In fact, much of it has been designed to protect and to save lives. The current regulations on fire protection in houses in multiple occupation, furniture regulations, and regulations on new build have all contributed to a decline in death and injury from fire.

Where there are market solutions, they need to be deployed, but it is clear from my discussions with the insurance industry that it does not accept that compulsory fire alarms are a priority. It simply adjusts its premiums and allows bad landlords to continue to put tenants at risk.

If the Minister is unable to set aside his ideological objections to regulation, there are many suitable candidates for removal that could serve the Administration’s one- in, one-out rule. One solution would be to consolidate or bundle the current safety regulations applying to landlords. They are already mandated to check gas and electrical equipment and to provide an energy performance certificate, so why not streamline all the relevant regulations that affect landlords?

The energy performance certificate, for example, often proves of no practical use to tenants, and it certainly will not save any lives. Perhaps the Minister could look at exempting landlords from having to produce energy performance certificates, and give them the same status that life-saving alarms have under the current guidelines. The one in, one out principle: sorted; simple. The bottom line is that regulation saves lives and ideological objections take lives. This is an interesting test for the coalition, because that difference goes to the heart of what divides most Liberal Democrats from most Conservatives. Is the Minister big enough to bridge that divide?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who made a robust case in support of her hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders), the proposer of the Bill. I shall not speak for long, mainly because running down the clock will make a trifle easier the Minister’s opportunity to talk this Bill out. I have a high regard for him, but I understand that the Government will not support the Bill, which I find very disappointing.

I support the Bill because, as the hon. Members for Totnes and for Torbay and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) have said, everyone knows that smoke detectors save lives.

When I was fire Minister in 2005, I used to travel around the country. One chief fire officer introduced me to a fire crew who had only recently started installing smoke detectors on a council estate on their fireground. He took some pleasure in introducing me to the officer in charge of the crew. Asked by the chief fire officer to explain their experience the previous week, the crew told me rather sheepishly that they had fitted a smoke detector in a home and had been called out some six hours later to find the mum and three children on the pavement. They had been alerted to the fact that there was a fire in the dwelling by the smoke detector. Although that was not an exciting incident for the crew to attend, because they did not have to carry out any live rescues, the people in the building could easily have died had it not been for the smoke detector. The installation of the detector had been far more effective in saving lives than a fire engine a mile down the road responding to a 999 call would have been.

Everyone knows that smoke detectors save lives, and hard-wired detectors are the most effective. The Bill gives the Government an opportunity to proceed with social legislation that I fully support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

I have in fact met the Local Government Association’s fire forum on more than one occasion. I have attended its meetings and have had meetings with its chairman, Councillor Brian Coleman, and other leading members. I have already made it clear that I have a regular series of debates, but I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point. I am sure that if the fire commission wishes to raise a specific issue, it will ask for a further meeting and I will happily oblige, as I hope I have always tried to do.

Although there has been success, we can never be complacent; we wish to drive the number of deaths down further. The Government’s key strategy is to drive down the number of preventable fire deaths through community fire safety activity. I say “drive down” the number because, tragically, there will be some instances where, despite everything being done, it is not possible to save someone. We want to get the numbers down to the irreducible minimum, of course. The strategy is to drive down the number of preventable fire deaths through community fire safety activities, in which the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse took a leading part when he was a Minister. The strategy involves efforts to reduce the number of fires through education, information and publicity. The installation of properly maintained smoke alarms in every household is at the centre of efforts to reduce fire death in the home, as they provide important and vital early warning of fire and can help people to escape. The Fire Kills campaign has for some time conducted high profile campaigns promoting smoke alarms and maintenance messages, which have proved very successful.

The English housing survey 2008, published last month, shows ownership of smoke alarms in all dwellings in England standing at 91%. It is a significant achievement for the Department for Communities and Local Government and the fire and rescue service that nine out of every 10 homes have a smoke alarm installed. I am grateful that the hon. Member for Torbay mentioned the excellent work of Devon and Somerset fire and rescue service, its firefighters and chief officers and the chairman of the authority. He is absolutely right: all of them do fine work. There has been great consistency of application by fire and rescue authorities. Circumstances vary, but much work is being done and Devon and Somerset is a good example.

Although that is a significant achievement, we aim to raise that percentage even further because, as the hon. Gentleman said and I accept, there is evidence that those without fire alarms—the remaining 10%—are often in the groups who are at the most risk from fire. Furthermore, there is concern arising from some statistics that show the importance of not only fitting alarms, but making sure that they are properly maintained. In some cases, sadly, there is evidence that a smoke alarm failed to operate—the battery had gone flat or had even been removed. There are also instances—one of the recent fires reported to this House among them—showing that even the provision of a properly working smoke alarm cannot guarantee that lives will be saved. In one of the fires I mentioned, the smoke alarm operated properly, waking and alerting those in the neighbouring house, but, for reasons that are not yet apparent, not enabling the occupants of the house to make their escape.

When we look at changes in technology—we have heard about 10-year life batteries or hardwired alarms, which I am happy to discuss further with hon. Members on both sides of the House—it is also worth considering the fact that, in many cases, death is caused not by smoke inhalation, but by carbon monoxide poisoning. We should consider seriously whether dual-sensor arrangements should be brought much more to the fore, moving the position on yet further. I hope that we can discuss that. By no means am I closing the door to potentially better ways of improving safety.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The Minister is held in high regard by the fire community because of his leadership of the London fire and civil defence authority, and he speaks with considerable authority on these matters, but the key question to which Members are keen to learn the answer is: do the Government support the Bill? If not, why not? If the reason is the one to which the Bill’s sponsor and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) alluded—regulation—will the Minister not take the opportunity to consolidate existing regulations to accommodate the one-in, one-out rule, as the coalition wishes?

[Robert Neill]

The situation is a little more complex than the hon. Gentleman puts it, although I acknowledge the sincerity with which he does so. Let me set out the difficulties. First, it is not only a question of regulation. When an obligation and a duty are imposed under any legislation, it is important to ensure that the obligation and the duty—especially if they are backed up by a criminal sanction, as is normal in these sorts of regulatory instances—are properly and practicably enforceable. For reasons that I shall explain, I have concerns about whether the measures in the Bill would be practicably enforceable.