Fire Safety Bill

Jim Shannon Excerpts

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

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Policing Minister. I, too, put on record my best wishes to the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who cannot be here to lead for the Government today. We all wish him a speedy recovery

I thank our fire and rescue services, who are going above and beyond to keep us safe and have worked tirelessly to protect us throughout the covid pandemic. I am grateful to Ministers, to officials and to House staff who have worked with us on this Bill. I give particular thanks to Yohanna Sallberg and Kenneth Fox, who have supported me, in particular, throughout the Bill’s passage. I thank Lord Kennedy of Southwark, and all those Lords who have led this Bill through the House of Lords, and ensured that Labour’s key amendment on implementing the Grenfell phase 1 recommendations was accepted there.

Every time we debate and discuss the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, we hold the memory of those who died in our hands. We must be gentle and respectful, but we must also see the injustice, and honour those who died by taking action, and by not resting until justice has been done and everybody has a safe home that they can afford. I pay tribute to the campaigners—Grenfell United, the families, survivors, and the entire community—for their tireless fight for justice. I also pay tribute to those campaigners who are fighting every day for the hundreds of thousands of people who are trapped in unsafe buildings, and who face extortionate bills and are unable to move. The drumbeat of their lives is fear and anxiety. No Parliament can ignore that.

Thousands of people are working on this, but I particularly thank Ritu and Will from the UK Cladding Action Group, for their assiduous efforts. I thank the 200 people who joined our roundtable this morning, so that we could hear at first hand the horrors that this Government are wilfully enabling. As Ritu said, “we are fellow human beings in these buildings—your family, your friends, your colleagues.” To everyone who is affected, and who is living in fear and anxiety, I say sorry—we must do better.

As we have said throughout the passage of the Bill, we support it, but it is small and the only piece of concrete legislation we have had since Grenfell. That is not an adequate response to the biggest housing safety crisis in a generation. It does not even scratch the surface of the work that must be done to fix the wild west of building control and fire safety that we have seen played out with such horror over the past few weeks during phase 2 of the Grenfell inquiry. It has taken so long to get here, and at every stage we have had to drag the Government into action.

The Government promised to act swiftly after Grenfell, yet it took them almost three years to introduce this Bill. We waited 12 weeks just for them to bring the Bill back to consider Lords amendments. This is intended to be a foundational Bill. Its purpose is to provide clarity, and state what is covered by the fire safety order, which will inform other related and secondary legislation. In Committee the Minister said that the Government intend to legislate further, and he spoke many times of action still to come, as he did today. By this stage, however, 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 will be delivered, when secondary legislation will be introduced, and when the Bill will be implemented.

In response to a deeply frustrated letter from Grenfell survivors in September, the Government said that the introduction of the Fire Safety Bill was a key priority, yet the Bill does not include provision for any of the measures called for by the first phase of the Grenfell inquiry. We would like many issues around improving fire safety to be included in the Bill, but many will now have to be introduced through the draft Building Safety Bill and by secondary legislation. We have no idea when any of those things will happen.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I have been asked to speak by my party leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson), and by other Members who have relatives who own such flats on the mainland. They have extreme concerns, and the fears that the hon. Lady has referred to about their properties, and what that means for the future. Although the Government have good intentions, I believe —as I think does she—that the Bill does not go far enough. Is she convinced by what the Minister has said, and if not, will she push the amendment to a vote?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I do not think the Government have gone far enough, and I do not accept the reasons why we are going at such a snail’s pace on something so important. I will come to what we think should be done about it.

The Government rejected many attempts to amend the Bill. The draft Building Safety Bill places various requirements on what is called the “responsible person” and refers to the fire safety order for the definition of that, but the fire safety order does not provide a definition of the responsible person. The draft Building Safety Bill even attempts to put into law a building safety charge. It is vital that the fire safety order makes it clear that there is no ambiguity around the definition of responsible person and that it does not mean leaseholders. However, the Government chose to reject that amendment.

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. In Committee and on Report, we tabled amendments that would bring into force an accreditation system for fire risk assessors, rather than waiting for more secondary legislation. We also tabled an amendment to require the schedule for inspecting buildings to be based on a prioritisation of risk, not an arbitrary distinction of types and heights of building. On that point, I am glad that the Government have listened, having turned us down in the initial stages, and taken good practice from Croydon and other areas and introduced a risk-based approach to the Bill.

We tabled an amendment on waking watch to require the Government to specify when and for how long such measures should take place. Thanks to Lord Kennedy of Southwark, our amendment on implementing key measures from the first phase of the Grenfell inquiry passed in the Lords, despite the Government’s attempts to block it. The Government have made so many promises to address the fire safety crisis but failed to keep them. The families and survivors are still waiting for justice, and hundreds of thousands of leaseholders and tenants are still trapped.

As we debate the Lords amendments this afternoon, the Government face a choice on what they include in the Bill. They could do the right thing and fulfil their promises, or they could push the can down the road again—“We do care, just not quite enough, not quite yet.” There are two answers that thousands of people across the country are watching and waiting for today: will the Government change their mind and back the Lords amendment to implement recommendations from the Grenfell inquiry, and will the Government legislate to ensure that leaseholders—blameless victims of this crisis—do not have to foot the bill for measures to make their buildings safe?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Member said, “I am not saying it would not affect the value of that property”, and that is the key. This issue should not be affecting the value of the property when people have saved up for many years, worked hard, bought their flat and then through no fault of their own suddenly finds that the value of their property goes down because of the Government failure to deal with the problem.

Through successive lockdowns, the people in these blocks have gone to bed at night with the added pressure of sleeping in a building at risk of fire or being themselves at risk of bankruptcy and deep financial trouble. It is taking a heavy toll on people’s mental health and putting millions of lives on hold. Leaseholders have been trapped in this impossible position for far too long.

I hate that we are still having this conversation. I hate that I have stood here at this Dispatch Box time after time for years saying the same thing to Ministers, and I hate that good people on both sides of this House are saying the same things and it is still falling on deaf ears. The problem is not going to go away. The Government could legislate today to ensure that leaseholders do not pay by supporting the Lords amendment, the McPartland-Smith amendment or the Labour amendments. At this point, I do not mind which one they pick; I just want the job done.

[Jim Shannon]

One of the items that has been brought to my attention is that 57% of flats requiring remediation were purchased for under £250,000, which means that many of those people are living in negative equity in their properties. Does the hon. Lady agree that this is not about cake tomorrow, but about what happens today, and unless the Government accept the amendments that have been tabled, those people will feel that they have no hope for the future?

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. We heard from a lady this morning that the cost of insurance for her small block had gone up from £30,000 a year to £500,000 a year. We heard from a lady who lives in a block in Kent—I know one Government Member has stood up for her in this place many times—where the residents have already spent £500,000 on a waking watch. It is quite extraordinary.

I was alarmed to see reports this afternoon that the Prime Minister’s press secretary, Allegra Stratton, has said:

“Our problem with McPartland’s amendment is that, far from speeding things up for constituents across the country who are worried about finding themselves in these properties, it would actually slow things down.”

That mirrors the intervention that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has made, and it is an absolute cop-out. We are four years on, and leaseholders are struggling. We think that 11 million people are affected by this—not necessarily those living in dangerous blocks, but those living in blocks where they do not know, because they have not got the forms sorted and they are paying more insurance. That is a huge crisis.