Building Safety

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of his statement this afternoon.

The Secretary of State will remember, as we all do, the shocking disbelief and grief in the immediate aftermath of the dreadful Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, and he will remember, as I do, the solemn undertakings from all parts of this House to make sure that such a fire could never happen again. I never thought that, two and a half years later, I would be standing here facing a Secretary of State—the third Secretary of State—who still cannot say that all the necessary action has been taken and that a fire like Grenfell cannot happen again in Britain.

Directly after the fire, the then Prime Minister made this promise on behalf of the Conservative Government:

“Landlords have a legal obligation to provide safe buildings…We cannot and will not ask people to live in unsafe homes.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 169.]

Yet thousands of people continue to live in unsafe homes, condemned to do so by this Government’s failure on all fronts after Grenfell. Why, two and a half years later, are 315 high-rise blocks still cloaked in the same Grenfell-style cladding? Why do 76 of these blocks’ owners not even have a plan in place to replace the deadly cladding? Why have 91 social tower block landlords still not replaced their ACM cladding, when this Secretary of State promised that it would be done by the end of last year? And why have the Government not completed and published full fire safety tests on other unsafe, but not ACM, types of cladding? Why has the Secretary of State had nothing to say this afternoon in his statement on these points?

The Secretary of State has made pledges of his own on Grenfell action. He promised

“to take action of a scale and a pace that is commensurate with the tragedy that prompted it.”—[Official Report, 30 October 2019; Vol. 667, c. 419.]

Seventy-two lives were lost in that Grenfell Tower fire, yet there have been no prosecutions, no fire safety fund to retrofit sprinklers, no legislation to make private block owners, not leaseholders, pay the safety work costs, and still no legislation in place to overhaul building safety legislation more than 20 months after the Government’s own Hackitt review was published and accepted in full by Ministers.

I know that the Secretary of State has approached this task with a very serious intent since he was appointed in the summer, and we welcome the setting up of a national regulator to do the job that Ministers and the Department have been unable to do so far. I also welcome the decision to name and shame block owners who will not do the work, and the recognition that the system of building safety checks and controls does not just affect buildings of over six storeys.

There have been 21 announcements on building safety in this House since Grenfell, but there are still not enough answers and there is still not enough action, so let me ask the Secretary of State: given that the new building safety regulator will need legislation to underpin it, when will the new draft building safety Bill be published, and when on earth is it actually going to reach the statute book?

The Secretary of State has said this afternoon that ACM cladding with an unmodified polyethylene core should not be used on buildings of any height. How many additional buildings does he estimate fall into this category? Also, why wait a month to name and shame block owners who will not do the work? Why not do it now? In fact, why did he not do it in June, when I previously called for him to do so? And why has he not restated to the House that June 2020—fully three years on from Grenfell—is the Government’s hard deadline for the full removal and replacement of ACM cladding from all tower blocks in this country? I am afraid that this is too little, at least two years too late.

At every stage since Grenfell, Ministers have failed to grasp the scale of the problems or the scale of the Government action required, and I fear that we will reach the third anniversary—and, Lord forbid, the fourth anniversary—and still not be able to say to people with confidence that a fire like Grenfell can never happen again in Britain.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his questions and the tone with which he approaches this task. I think we can find a lot of common cause on this issue.

The right hon. Gentleman says that we have not done enough. This is an extremely challenging task, but the Government have already taken a wide range of steps of which he is aware. We announced the independent inquiry, the first phase of which has now reported, and the second phase of which will begin on 27 January. We commissioned Dame Judith’s independent review into our building safety regime, which was widely praised. It has reported back, and has led to the measures that we are taking today. Dame Judith remains closely involved in the process and will now be leading the establishment of the new regulator. I have taken the decision that that work needs to begin immediately, and have chosen the Health and Safety Executive to be the home of the regulator because it has the capacity to do so at pace.

We launched the social sector ACM cladding remediation fund in 2018, and that has led to a very large number of properties having remediation work on ACM cladding. We later extended that to the private sector. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is frustrating that the pace of work has not been faster. I am frustrated by it. I said to the House in September that I would name and shame building owners who had not already commenced work or who were not taking the issue sufficiently seriously. I think that threat contributed to an increase in action from building owners, and now every private sector building with ACM cladding—bar 10—has a plan and is working with my Department to commence or complete remediation works. The 10 buildings that have not done so already are in exceptional circumstances; they are mostly buildings that have only recently been discovered to be clad in ACM, so they are late to join the process. We are none the less working to expedite those cases to ensure that they get moving at pace. I have said that we will publish that list next month, so it will happen within a matter of weeks. I hope that that will be a further spur on those building owners to do the right thing and get moving.

We have set out today a very significant set of measures that will have a profound effect on the industry, particularly on new buildings built in the years ahead. I have said that I am minded, subject to the final review of the consultation, to lower the height threshold for sprinklers. We have to be guided by evidence. Dame Judith and our expert panel suggest that it is too crude to say that all high-rise buildings should be remediated and have retro-fitted sprinklers—that we need to take an individual-building approach, because it might be the right thing for some buildings but not for all. I will certainly, as long as I am in this job, be guided by the evidence.

We have set up the protection board that I announced last year, which is working with the Home Office, with my Department and with fire and rescue services on a priority basis to assess those buildings where assessments have not yet been made and ensure that the building owners take action.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about legislation. We announced in the Queen’s Speech last year that the building safety Bill would come forward. Following the outcome of the first phase of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, I took the view that that was too long to wait, and so we have now divided the work into two Bills, one of which will come forward very swiftly—a fire safety Bill. That will place into legislation the recommendations of the judge that require legislation; some require regulatory change rather than primary legislation. Later this year, we will follow that with the larger, more complex building safety Bill, which we intend to publish before the summer recess. That will be the biggest change to our building safety regime for 40 years. I do not underestimate the complexity of that, and it is obviously right that we get the details correct so that we can move forwards.