Building Safety and Resilience
Judith Cummins Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)
I begin by congratulating the hon. Members for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) and for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) on their excellent maiden speeches, which gave a real flavour of their constituencies and their constituents.
Today’s debate highlights once again the wider issues of building safety and poverty. The safety of the buildings that house people and their families should not be subject to their economic status, and we must work together across the House to level the playing field to provide safety for all in this country. There is clearly much work to be done to achieve this, and I am grateful to the Minister for noting that we will have an opportunity to further discuss this issue at a future date.
It is with immense pride that I can say that in July, on my third attempt, I was elected to represent the residents of the Guildford constituency, the place that has been my home for the past 25 years. In my speech at the count following my election, I made a commitment to my residents that I will be an MP for everyone in my constituency, including those whose voices have gone unheard for too long. I reiterate that promise today.
I first stood for elected office in 2008, driven by a love for my community and a deep frustration that my area of Bellfields and Slyfield was being failed by the Conservatives. I dedicated myself to helping those at risk of losing their homes, working on community projects and being the voice of my community fighting for change in the council chamber. Some 16 years later, I am here in this Chamber because of my frustration following 14 years of Conservative failure that has, once again, left communities across Guildford and the whole country struggling.
I am also here because the people of Guildford felt that too. They said, “Enough is enough”, and felt that I could be their voice for change in this great Chamber. I am honoured by the trust they have placed in me. We are here as MPs to serve our residents, our constituencies and our country. I hope that will always be at the forefront of our minds as we fulfil our work as MPs, and particularly as we speak in this Chamber and as we vote.
Speaking of service, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank my predecessors, Angela Richardson, Anne Milton and Sir Paul Beresford, part of whose former constituency is now part of the constituency of Guildford. Angela and Anne served Guildford, its residents and businesses with determination for 14 years. I thank them on behalf of our constituents.
Now, on to my wonderful constituency. Guildford is an ancient town. The earliest human activity in the area was in the mesolithic era and it is mentioned in Alfred the Great’s will from 880 AD. The name Guildford means golden ford, which comes from the golden banks at the river crossing below St Catherine’s chapel, but that was not the only golden watermark in this election. In June, we saw a golden tide of Liberal Democrat MPs, with 72 elected across the country, including six of us in Surrey. This victory is a message of change for our country and I am very much looking forward to working with my fellow Lib Dem MPs, particularly on the issues of special educational needs and disabilities and Thames Water.
As an MP, I am especially committed to addressing the cost of living crisis that continues to push too many people into poverty, trapped by a crisis not of their own making. We must lift people out of hardship, ensuring that everyone has access to the services they need, without draining their pockets. I am sure that colleagues throughout the Chamber will agree that the fact that over 3 million people across the UK rely on Trussell Trust food banks alone in 2023-24 is a disgrace. It is a blight on our country and it must end.
Guildford is not only a historical town but a modern hub of innovation, often referred to as the Hollywood of the computer gaming industry, and home to many high-tech businesses at the cutting edge of envirotech, defence, space and more. Our town is a tech hub that draws on the legacy of our constituency: Ada Lovelace, the mother of computing, lived at Horsley Towers in my constituency for many years, and Alan Turing, whose genius continues to be honoured through the Alan Turing Institute at my alma mater, the University of Surrey, had his childhood home in Guildford.
My constituency is also blessed with breathtaking natural beauty, from the stunning RHS Wisley to the Surrey hills and our many National Trust properties, including the River Wey navigation, which the National Trust also manages. As MP, I am committed to balancing the continued evolution and success of my town and surrounding villages with protecting the natural beauty of my constituency for generations to come.
That is why I will be championing in the House the cause of cleaning up our rivers. The River Wey, which flows through the heart of Guildford town and through the villages to the east of my constituency, has been the lifeblood of Guildford for centuries. It is central to Guildford’s identity, its history, residents’ leisure time and its future. The levels of pollution being recorded in our river month after month are disgusting, and that is impacting the health of nature, animals and residents. It is time to clean up our rivers and bring to an end the stories I hear too often on the doorsteps, about residents becoming unwell after going in the water. As one example, I met the coach of a children’s cricket team earlier this year who shared how, in 2023, his young team went for an end of season celebratory dip in the River Wey. Every single one of those children became ill after going in the river.
I will end with two final thoughts. The first comes from my time studying music at the University of Surrey. It taught me the importance of harmony, both in art and in life. It is my sincere hope that together in this Chamber, over the coming years, we can create a symphony of voices, change the divisive rhetoric of the last few years and restore public trust in politics and politicians. If we do not, I worry about the future we leave for future generations.
Finally, I want to express my deepest gratitude to my friends and family, particularly my husband, Chris, and my sons, Reuben and Josh, who have supported me every step of the journey to this place and continue to walk it with me. Without their love, encouragement and occasional campaigning skills I would not be here today.
Oliver Ryan
Slanderous!
I stand here, honoured beyond belief, to represent the great towns of Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield—towns that are part of the story of our nation. This is the land of dramatic sandstone avenues, of hills and skies, of romantic scenery in the shadows of Pendle Hill. This is the land of regimented urban landscapes, of terrace tops and towers nestled among chimneys and waterways, cushioned by villages, farms, country pubs and proper pints. We are England and Lancastrian and we are proud.
Burnley, the “meadow by the Brun”, first recorded in the 12th century, has long been a hub of culture and commerce. We have a 13th-century market, the 14th-century Towneley Hall plays, and the 15th-century St Peter’s church. Indeed, coming over the moors from the wrong side of the Pennines, Charlotte Brontë visited Gawthorpe Hall in Padiham, Wordsworth wrote of the site of Pendle Hill, and Burnley’s most prolific poet, Henry Houlding, led a literary renaissance for northern towns in the 19th century.
Once the epicentre of the global cotton trade, the workers of our towns built this country. It was said at its height that Burnley’s cotton industry had clothed Britain by breakfast and the rest of the world by dinner. We are a birthplace of movements, too—suffragettes such as Margaret Aldersley, and fighters, leaders and thinkers. Non-conformists are we—radicals and reformers—and once the seat of a Labour leader no less in Arthur Henderson.
I say all this because I want to stress that our story did not start or end with the mills. Looms for a long time were our tools. In our hands was the industrial world made, but now we are so much more. We do not buy the standard story of decline. We are a place determined, with eyes focused on the future, hungry to play our part.
By the way, we have no greater example of Burnley endurance and enterprise than Burnley Football Club. Yes, sometimes in the face of emotional trauma—at times extreme—they are twice champions of England and one-time winners of the FA cup. Let me say, I believe for the first time ever in this House, “Up the Clarets!”
As towns, we are now a thriving, dynamic, multicultural symbol of renewal and creativity. To be made in east Lancashire is to be a benchmark of quality, particularly in our manufacturing, aerospace sciences and cultural industries, with world-beating, amazing, innovative companies putting us on the map. We are also unusual politically, in that the constituency has been represented by all three major parties in the past 10 years alone, although I hope to bring a very lengthy period of stability in that regard.
Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield are so often painted as towns with problems and extensive poverty, which is true, but to end our description there is to misunderstand our mindset, our mission, our sense of history and community. Our fight is not in trading narratives as to how we got here. We have problems, yes, but we do not simply retreat to the warm nostalgia of our history. We know that that way lies only stagnation. Our fight is in creating solutions for tomorrow. Less interested in rhetoric, storytelling and ideology, towns such as mine want outcomes. For us, one’s ability to deliver solutions means a lot more than the colour of a rosette. Outcomes are what matters. What is good is what works. In our public services, that means dependable quality, transparency, choice, the interests of users coming first and an approach that challenges every vested interest in the public interest.
Reflecting on this mantra and the debate today, I want to talk a little about our housing stock. First raised by my predecessor, Peter Pike, in his maiden speech of 1983, the once proud regimented sandstone avenues that I spoke of earlier—once a step up for families—are now in a poor and worsening state. Too many of my constituents live in substandard, under-insulated, cold and mouldy homes. Low land values lock out investment, but, more critically, lock out families from the decent accommodation that they deserve and write off whole communities as just not worth the investment. If we are to continue to thrive we need more housing, newer housing, more social housing and a decent retrofit programme not seen on a scale since the last Labour Government. It is only through that growth that we can achieve the sort of improvements in our public services that we need. That is the only way that we will attract the secure jobs and dynamic workforce of the future.
Too many of our young people are stuck in a generational cycle of worklessness, which holds back entire families, because of a lack of opportunities, skills, connectivity and, actually, confidence. We will only truly grow as a country when people in places like ours feel that growth touches them; when prosperity reaches the doorsteps of our terraces; when we break the cycle and say, “If you have the will, we will give you the way. No one left behind.” In my time here, I hope to represent to the best of my ability those values and ambitions.
At this juncture, as is tradition, I pay tribute to my predecessors: in Burnley and Padiham, Antony Higginbotham; and in Brierfield and Nelson East, Andrew Stephenson. Both very decent and hard-working men, they campaigned on many local issues in their years in this House, and had many friends across the House, which was testament to their character. I genuinely wish them both well for the future.
I am the great-grandson of Irish immigrants, from Dublin and across Ireland, who made their life in Manchester. I was aged two, and one of two kids to a single mum, when Labour took office in 1997. It is because of that Government that my mother was supported through illness to raise us, by an NHS with the time and resources to care. Schemes such as Building Schools for the Future, first praised by my predecessor Kitty Ussher in her maiden speech in 2005, gave me this future, and I am one of many. We stand on the shoulders of giants in this place, but I was able to climb on to those shoulders only because of a supportive family, who are watching from the Gallery, and the ladder that that Labour Government provided for kids like me and families like mine, from towns like mine. I know that this new Labour Government will strive to do the same, and I for one am enormously proud to be a part of it.
Jeremy Corbyn
The hon. Member is absolutely right. The watchword has to be independence, of both inspection and regulation. The idea that developers can mark their own homework has to be got rid of sharpish, because it is a dangerous precedent, and we can now see the results of it.
This horrible fire at Grenfell did not come from nowhere. There was the Knowsley fire and the Lakanal House fire. There were constant references to the dangers of inadequate or inappropriate cladding, the lack of fire equipment, and the fire risk that goes with that. This has to be the most massive wake-up call there has ever been. It also shows that communities, such as those in Grenfell, were treated with contempt by their local authority, regulators and others. They simply did not care. In Grenfell, there was a mixed group of working-class tenants living in a dangerous place. On the day that the report came out, one of the residents was asked about it, and he said that the cladding might as well have been made of firelighters, given the danger it presented to them all. Something quickly needs to be done about that.
We must look at how we deal with the need for remedial action. When the Grenfell fire took place, inspections were immediately made of buildings all over the country; that was the right thing to do. By and large, local authorities responded well and removed cladding. In my local authority, Islington, cladding was discovered on one local authority building, Fyfield House, and that was immediately removed by the authority. However, I find that buildings in the private sector and other buildings in which leaseholders live have not been dealt with in the same way or with the same efficiency, and tenants, residents and leaseholders are paying the price for that. To give an example, there is a nice leasehold development in my constituency called Highbury Square. It was apparently well built and has good facilities. The problem is that it has cladding that has not been certified or approved, so the insurance costs are very high. The developers do not want to pay for the remedial work, and despite numerous meetings being held with Ministers in the previous Government and so on, no action has been taken. The families living there cannot sell or move. They cannot do anything. They are absolutely stuck.
I said in my intervention on the Minister that those who have had to incur huge insurance costs just to remain in their flat should be compensated, and the stress among people who live in such places should also be recognised through compensation. If there is a huge dispute about who will pay for all this—I am quite sure that many companies will try to take legal action against the Government—surely it is the Government’s responsibility to step in, if necessary, and do the work. They can charge it to the owners of the freehold or leasehold who are the cause of the problem. In the case I mentioned, Aviva pension fund is responsible. In the case of the Drayton Park development in my constituency, which the Ministry is well aware of—I had several meetings about it with Ministers under the previous Government and many officials—it is Galliard Homes, which seems to be trying to evade its responsibility to ensure that the work is carried out.
I appeal to the Minister to look carefully at the excessive delays caused by endless arguments with developers and the owners of freeholds. Those delays have put people at risk and have led to enormous cost for them. I come across other developments all the time that seem to be in the same situation, including some of those at the former Arsenal stadium site. This debate is about all that.
In this debate, we also recognise how communities respond, and how they responded to the Grenfell fire. I went there the day after the fire, and met the firefighters who, unbelievably bravely, had been trying to deal with a fire the likes of which they had never seen before. They did not really have the wherewithal to deal with it. Their bravery was enormous and their stress was huge. Some of them received abuse from our media and others, who tried to put the blame on them. They are the last people who should be blamed. I also saw how the community came together. I have been on every one of the silent walks for Grenfell that take place every year on the anniversary, usually in the company of the former Member of Parliament for Kensington, Emma Dent Coad, who did a fantastic job, not just at the time as the MP, but since then, campaigning for safety and justice for the victims of Grenfell. It needs to be recognised that the community came together to support and to demand, and they expect answers from this Government, so that they can live in a place of safety in the future.
The last thing that I want to say—I know that others wish to speak—is that fundamentally this debate is about housing and how we treat people. We have had market domination of the principles of housing. We have gone away from the principle of housing as a human right and instead to a market solution to it all. We can see the results: several thousand people rough sleeping every night; tens of thousands of people living in grotesquely overcrowded conditions; and many people—in my constituency, a third of them—living in the private rented sector, which is largely unregulated, insecure and very expensive.
I have been leafing through the Renters’ Rights Bill just produced by the Secretary of State. I welcome much of what I have read, but unless the Bill addresses the fundamental issue of the cost of private renting, instead of leaving it to the market to set the cost, areas like mine will suffer from social cleansing for a long time to come. Working-class families will be moved out because they simply cannot afford to stay.
We want to maintain the communities in our inner-urban and city areas in all parts of the country, so we need rent regulation, as well as security of tenure and all that goes with it. That means public intervention, building more council houses and taking the market element out of how planning decisions are made on building council housing. Instead, we should say, “The priority for all our community is a sufficient supply of good-quality, well-designed council housing.”
I finish on this thought: we have the potential to build some wonderful places, but also to take over many empty properties and convert them into some form of council or social housing. We need to ensure that housing is well designed, with sufficient open space and good room sizes. When developers are creating a home for someone to live in, they should think it through—changes in life, disabilities that may occur and everything else—and ensure that we have the highest possible quality social housing design for the future. This report could be a great turning point in the way that we deal with housing in our society—or it could be shelved and forgotten in a few years’ time. The people of Grenfell, who suffered and are still grieving the loss of others, will never let us forget it.
Clive Efford
Yes, insurance costs are driving up service charges. I have heard of 60% increases in service charges that are attributable to insurance costs. Insurance companies are gouging prices and making money on the back of this situation. Given what has brought us to this debate, it is absolutely appalling that they are behaving in that way.
Remedial works are ultimately the responsibility of freeholders, and contributions from leaseholders should be capped. Management companies are obliged to provide the detail of what they intend to spend on such work but, unfortunately, they are withholding that information. The managing agent should not be able to charge residents anything until the information is supplied. The cap should be spread over 10 years, and no more than one tenth of the cost should be charged in any one year. In the absence of the relevant information, leaseholders cannot check whether the charges that are being imposed on them are reasonable. If they do not pay them and they challenge them, they risk being in default of their leases and receiving a letter from solicitors. The reality is that the terms of leases prevent people from being able to get justice.
The outstanding safety work in the block in Master Gunner Place is simply not being done. A survey was done at the end of 2019, and it was clear that the work needed to be done. In the intervening years, none of it has been carried out. The developer, Vistry Group, is supposedly in the process of handing over the freehold to Samnas, but because the legal documents have not been signed, the leaseholders have been left in limbo and are unable to progress any of the work. The leaseholders engaged lawyers to write to the developer in order to get a reply on the scope of the work that needed to be carried out, and they were informed that the work was due to start in August 2024. Here we are in September, and nothing has been done. They still have no idea about what work is in scope or what contribution the residents will have to make. There are three blocks involved in the development and, to date, none of them has had any of the remedial work done.
It is now time to draw a line under all this. It has gone on for too long. We know that the work needs to be done, we know who is responsible for it and we should not be allowing them to drag their feet any more. It is time for the remediation acceleration scheme to put a rocket under those developers and freeholders. We should be ensuring that they carry out this work, and that if they refuse to do so, they are fined. Only fines will make these people see reason; it is only if they are hit financially that they will change their ways. The remediation acceleration scheme must also include compensation for leaseholders for all the unreasonable charges they have been forced to pay because the management companies and the freeholders have withheld the information needed to ensure accurate fees and charges and that the cap is being properly applied. Where those companies have not done that, we should be making sure that they are fined.
Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
I congratulate all the hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches in today’s debate, and in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) who made a witty and ambitious speech giving an ambitious vision for his area, which I fully support and congratulate him on.
It is the honour of my life to have been elected to serve and represent the people of the Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy constituency in this Parliament. To each of my constituents, I say, “I will do my very best to serve you, regardless of who you voted for.” I pay tribute to my predecessor, Neale Hanvey, who represented the area with passion and a particular dedication to casework —a crucial part of an MP’s role that is too often overlooked.
I am only the second woman to represent this fine constituency, the first having been Lesley Laird. Lesley, like me, is a passionate advocate for women’s equality. I am proud to be elected to a Parliament that has more women in it than any before, and I give grateful thanks to the women who fought for our right to be here today and to be here in significant numbers—women such as Jenny Lee from Fife. We stand on the shoulders of these sisters, and I pledge today to continue to work for our equality with men. Progress of any kind is often hard fought, and that is a lesson I will keep hold of. Nevertheless, we persist.
My constituency enjoys widespread name recognition because our former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is another of my predecessors. No pressure, then! Gordon’s contribution to our communities, our country and our world is deep and lasting. More than anything, I take inspiration from his absolute moral clarity over why he was in politics and what he used power for—namely, to tackle poverty. Gordon’s first speech in this place was an excoriating exposé of unemployment under the then Conservative Government and the poverty it had created locally.
Today, in one part of Kirkcaldy, one in four children are growing up in poverty. The last Labour Government lifted almost 1.5 million children out of poverty, and we will ensure that this one does similar. Unlike some, I do not believe that the purpose of politics is simply to ensure better opportunities for those we are here to serve. It is also about bettering their outcomes, because every child in my constituency should be able to fulfil his or her potential.
As we have heard this afternoon, it is not surprising in a first speech to say how lucky we are to represent such a beautiful part of our United Kingdom, but in my case it is definitely true. My constituency takes in towns and villages including Dysart, Kirkcaldy, Kinghorn, Burntisland, Aberdour, Dalgety Bay, North Queensferry, Inverkeithing, Kingseat, Crossgates, Auchtertool, Cowdenbeath, Hill of Beath and Lumphinnans, as well as the islands of Inchcolm and Inchkeith. We have some 19 miles of glorious Fife coastline, stunning beaches and rolling fields. One end of the engineering wonder that is the Forth bridge, a UNESCO world heritage site, rests in North Queensferry. Hon. Members who may wish to take a train across it to visit us would find much to enjoy, from the Links market in the Lang Toun, Europe’s longest street fair, to Burntisland highland games, the second oldest highland games in Scotland, and many wonderful galas—I greatly enjoyed parading in the excellent Cowdenbeath gala day this year—as well as a multitude of events at Aberdour festival, and so much more besides.
However, it is a different kind of beauty which truly marks my constituency as special: the beauty of community solidarity and looking out for each other in difficult times. Today, our food banks and so many amazing community organisations such as Max’s Meals, the Cottage, the local YMCA, Greener Kirkcaldy and Nourish are doing work that they should not have to do to stop people going hungry. Just as we on the Labour Benches recognise the beauty of this community solidarity, we work for the day when nobody has to rely on it.
Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy helped to power the industrial success of this country, as mining was once a booming industry. People worked incredibly hard in often dangerous conditions, as the tragedy of the Seafield colliery disaster showed. I am proud to be a trade unionist, and indeed unions have a proud history in Fife because of our mining heritage. We have a proud industrial history too, of openness and connection to the wider world, where once we were a world leader in linoleum production.
It is well known that economist Adam Smith was born locally and wrote his hugely influential text “The Wealth of Nations” in Kirkcaldy. His book “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, written over 250 years ago, is less well-known but made significant observations about empathy between human beings, including between those in countries far apart. A lesson in our common humanity could not be any more important in today’s deeply dangerous world.
The people of Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy are rightly proud of our industrial past, but we know too that pride in the past does not allow our children to reach their potential. What my constituents want is a future to look forward to, with work that pays fairly, and it is the job of those of us elected to this House to make that possible.
Fife has a housing emergency. I contrast our new UK Labour Government’s programme to build 1.5 million new homes in England with the unacceptable fact that we simply do not have enough homes for all of the people who need them in Scotland.
Today, the NHS, which is under so much strain, is our biggest employer locally, and I pay tribute to the staff at the Victoria hospital in particular. Mine is a family indebted to the NHS, as so many across this country are, but this Labour Government—and hopefully a Labour Scottish Government from 2026—have so much to do to repair it.
My constituency is also home to a significant Polish community, whose presence was established by brave war veterans unable to return home after fighting the Nazis in world war two. Those who seek to sow hatred and division in this country would do well to remember that many of us simply would not be here without immigration; my own great grandfather was a Polish immigrant. The Polish community in my constituency is an example of the way that immigration so often enriches our communities.
In my previous work leading international development and humanitarian aid charities, I met thousands of people forced to flee their homes for survival. Among crowded Syrian refugee camps, parched Nigerian internally displaced persons camps, and the unbearable horror being inflicted on Gaza, I have seen the impact of humanity at its worst. I have hugged other mothers, each of us with the same desires for our children, but each of us also with vastly different chances of ever achieving them simply because of an accident of birth—there, but for the grace of God, go I.
I have witnessed what happens when international law is ignored, seen how climate change ravages humans’ ability to survive, and observed the impact of mistakes made by this House. I have seen the worst of humanity, but I have also seen the best. I thank those I was lucky enough to serve alongside, especially the Nigerians, Lebanese and Palestinians, each of whom I was privileged to learn from. I particularly want to name my former colleagues from Gaza: Fikr, Mahmoud, Mohammed, Motaz, Wasim, Ahmed, Rasha, Asma, Nawraz, Amal, Moe, Mahmoud, Ali, Haitham, Tarneem, Afnan, Khaled, Heba, Saeda and Ghada. They are the best of humanity, and they desperately need a ceasefire, justice, freedom and dignity.
My life and political beliefs have been shaped by the experiences of my brother Ross, who is disabled. Like so many, my family, and my mum in particular, have had to fight incredibly hard with and for Ross to access the support to which he should be entitled from our education, health, housing and social security systems. Disabled children and their families should not have to fight so hard. There is a fundamental flaw in our state that it requires the parents of a disabled child to make it their life’s work to access the services that should be their right. This must change.
It is of enormous sadness to me that my dear dad is not here to see me become a Member of this House, having been taken from us by cancer, as too many still are. I was a schoolgirl when he first brought me to this place, and we never imagined then that I might one day sit on these green Benches. I know he would swell with pride if he were here today.
I thank my whole family and my friends for their love, and I thank everyone who has supported me along the way. Most of all, I thank my amazing boys. To my husband and children, I say that I hope I will make you proud. You are the greatest gift I could ever have asked for.
In the general election, Labour promised an end to chaos and division. I know that many of my constituents are weary of a Scotland that has been divided on the constitution for too long. Instead, people want us to focus on fixing our broken but beloved country, bringing people together and building a better future. I will do all I can towards this goal.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Markus Campbell-Savours to make his maiden speech.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Ind)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours) and everyone else who has made their maiden speech today and welcome them to their place here.
I rise today with a heavy heart as we remember the 72 lives lost in the Grenfell Tower fire—an avoidable tragedy fuelled by systemic neglect, corporate greed and an ideology that prioritised profits over people.
I begin by sharing the call of Grenfell United for the removal of flammable cladding from buildings now, for sprinklers, for the Hillsborough law, and for speedy criminal prosecutions of those whose negligence, greed and dishonesty killed 72 people. But there is something more here, which I urge hon. Members to understand. The Grenfell Next of Kin group call this report “10 kg of words on pages” rather than justice. The anger that Grenfell survivors have expressed is an anger that many of us feel—that in Britain today, working class people are treated as expendable.
Less than a year before the fire, the Grenfell Action Group warned that their “dangerous living conditions” would cause
“a catastrophic event...an incident that results in a serious loss of life.”
They predicted their own deaths, because they knew how little anyone in power cared about keeping them alive. That is the inescapable conclusion of this report.
Building firms engaged in “systematic dishonesty”—that is what the report says—to profit without ensuring safety. Some of them knew that their insulation was a “raging inferno”, but they kept selling it anyway.
After the earlier fires at Knowsley and Lakanal and after large-scale tests warned of the dangers of cladding, neither the British Government nor Kensington and Chelsea council came to help the residents of Grenfell. Then, after the fire, a former Secretary of State responsible for housing, Lord Pickles, loudly told the inquiry to not take up too much of his time.
Nobody seriously thinks that the residents of London’s wealthier streets would be so ignored, so derided, treated with such contempt for decades and left to die. Let us tell the truth about the society in which we live: when two billionaires drowned on a submarine voyage to see the Titanic, powerful countries united in a global rescue effort, but when poor people and persecuted people drown in the English channel or burn in Grenfell Tower, we do not mobilise every single resource to save their lives and bring them to safety. That is a kind of class war—a war on exploited and persecuted people wherever in the world they are born.
Grenfell Tower was named after Sir Francis Grenfell, a general who carried out colonial violence in Ireland, Sudan and South Africa. When the British ruling class wants cheap labour from places like those, it houses workers in an unsafe building named after a man who may have killed their ancestors, and then ignores their warnings and leaves them to die. That was Grenfell Tower.
Residents have spoken up beautifully in recent days of the community in the tower, and of how people stuck together and looked after the weakest among them. They share the working-class values that we all should and they are entirely alien to the values that, unfortunately, rule in this society. The dead and the living deserve safe homes for all. They deserve corporate and state accountability and a different kind of society. Grenfell’s 72 dead are forever in our hearts. Thank you.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Alex Ballinger to make his maiden speech.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
May I also pay tribute to the Grenfell families at this very difficult time, following the recently published report? My thoughts are also with the families of those affected by the fires in Slough and east London.
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) and others for their excellent maiden speeches today. I thank the Minister for her explanation of Government policy, and for the reassurance that she has given us. The issue of building and fire safety is important to Reading residents, so I will mention a few local matters and ask the Minister few brief questions.
In the years since Grenfell, I have been constantly reminded and aware of the awful briefing that I had from Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service immediately after the tragedy. It was sobering and will stay with me for many, many years. I was told of the scale of the problem in our county, not just in Reading but in other towns such as Slough, Wokingham and Bracknell. What I heard from the fire service about the scale of the problems that it was uncovering, and the serious threat to human life from building safety issues, was incredible.
To give the House some idea of the problems, which relate to cladding and other issues, the fire service explained that it had discovered holes in what should have been safe partition firewalls, and dangerous cladding in buildings across the county, and that it would take a very long time to carry out assessments across the whole of our county—just one English county—to fully understand the risk to residents, not just in taller buildings but, as hon. Members have mentioned, in lower-rise flats below the limit set for some of the measures. The service set out other problems, including wooden cladding, poorly designed fire doors and the need for waking watches. Incredible work followed on those issues over a number of years. It has taken a huge amount of work locally and, I am sure, across the country to tackle that awful legacy.
There have been significant delays in addressing many of the problems. Although they were uncovered some years ago, it took a long time to tackle them under the previous Government’s watch. In many cases, local residents were left waiting several years for remediation to privately owned or housing association blocks. I welcome the measures that the Minister outlined to speed up that work and continue to press forward.
Some issues were linked to local supply-chain problems. I thank the many responsible owners who took early action, including a number of housing associations, and indeed some responsible private owners, in my constituency. However, like other hon. Members, I have discovered continuing, often very serious, problems with some overseas owners and management companies. I have had some truly awful casework involving residents who have spoken in graphic terms about the pressure that they have been put under because of these issues. There were young couples who found it difficult to get to sleep at night because they knew that they were living in a block in which there was dangerous cladding. The overseas management company was not taking action to tackle it quickly enough. To make matters worse, they could not sell their property and had to live there, in some cases facing very high costs to remove the cladding. I welcome the Minister’s action on all those things, but I wish that the previous Government had sped up their measures to tackle this huge problem across the country.
I have questions for the Minister. I appreciate that other Members have yet to speak so I will be brief, but I want to hear more from her about action to tackle management companies based overseas, and how she plans to roll that out. I appreciate that might be difficult. I hope to hear more about the action that the Government will take to tackle manufacturers of dangerous cladding, though I realise that in many cases they are overseas companies.
I welcome the Minister’s action, and the vigour with which she has pursued this issue in a short period of time. I recognise her very genuine commitment, and know that this problem is serious in her constituency in inner London, too. I thank our new colleagues again for their excellent maiden speeches.
Housing: Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly
Judith Cummins Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for giving way, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for securing this excellent debate. It is great to welcome him back to his place; he brings a wealth of expertise in this area. I also welcome the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) to his place. I hope that he understands some of the issues that have been raised in this debate, given that he is a close neighbour of ours.
I welcome the cross-party co-operation that we are seeing from hon. Members across the House this evening—although not so much from the Conservative Benches, unfortunately. Cornwall faces a real housing emergency, and it is critical that we work together to fix it. As my hon. Friend mentioned, we must finally move away from building more and more executive housing that has little to no infrastructure, and focus on local need.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I remind the hon. Member that interventions should be short.
Ben Maguire
Does the hon. Member agree that the long-standing Liberal Democrat policy of introducing use classes for non-permanent occupancy is a good idea?
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for raising these difficult issues around housing and second homes in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. We have parallel issues in my constituency of South Devon, a little further up the coast. It is apt that we are having this discussion today, after the presentation of Devon Housing Commission’s report at lunchtime, which highlighted many of the issues and just how difficult the situation is in Devon, as in Cornwall. Second homes are hollowing out communities in my constituency. Like the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham), I have had a headteacher and the local hospital—
Matthew Pennycook
I thank the hon. Lady and appreciate that she was cut off. As Mr Speaker, Madam Deputy Speaker and the other Deputy Speakers remind us, interventions have to be short, but I am sure we can pick up the conversation outside the Chamber. I recognise the impact on communities of the unique challenges that she mentions, particularly the excessive concentrations of second homes and short-term lets.
The hon. Member for St Ives said that the previous Government introduced a limited number of measures in response to concerns expressed in the previous Parliament. In Opposition, I welcomed those measures, while making it clear that they did not go far enough. That remains my firm view, so although we will progress with measures such as the introduction of a registration scheme for short-term lets in England, and the abolishment of the furnished holiday let tax regime, we are also considering what additional powers we might give local authorities to enable them to better respond to the pressures that they face. I will update the House as soon as I am in a position to.
In conclusion, I thank the hon. Member for St Ives once again for giving the House an opportunity to consider these important matters. I look forward to engaging closely with him and all other Cornish Members, so that together we can ensure first homes for all local people in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
Question put and agreed to.
Building Homes
Judith Cummins Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What we are trying to achieve today, and with the legislation that was announced in the King’s Speech, is about how we strengthen local consultation. I have already said that only a third of local authorities have up-to-date local plans, so this is a wake-up call for them. As part of local planning and having local plans in place, there is an obligation to consult, and to consult again on the final plans. Many people are frustrated by housing that goes up, but that is because of speculative development and because there has been no engagement. We have already met mayors and council leaders, and what we are proposing today is a push that has come not just from local leaders and mayors but from voters. I believe that that is why we won as large a majority as we did at the general election: people want to see that change. We know that that engagement has to continue and that we have to work with local leaders and mayors to make this plan a reality, and we are going to work with them to make sure that we get those homes, that infrastructure and the next generation of social and affordable housing that the people of this country need.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and good luck in your new role.
It is possible to have successful development, but from experience it has to be something done with people and not to people. This policy is the latter. These pernicious top-down targets have the practical effect at ground level of setting one town against another, one village against another and one local community against another; and given the Chancellor’s statement on public spending yesterday, who will pay for the tens of billions of pounds-worth of infrastructure that would be required to make all this work? All experience shows that, on development and house building, the man or woman in Whitehall really does not know best. Why then, is the Secretary of State going back to the old, failed way of doing it, which will not work?
Angela Rayner
Again, there is a challenge that we have inherited. I hope that the hon. Member’s area has a local plan for what is required and can therefore push for that infrastructure as part of its section 106. I will happily engage, through the Minister, on that particular issue, but I am wondering whether the hon. Member was in the Chamber yesterday and realises what a mess his Government left us in.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I welcome you to your new place.
I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for the speed with which she and her fantastic team are tackling the housing crisis. It is welcome news in Luton North, where my surgeries have been consistently full of people struggling in overcrowded housing and facing skyrocketing rents for substandard conditions. We also have daily cases of people being subjected to eviction notices through no fault of their own. Does she agree that the Government’s new plans to build genuinely affordable housing, and for this council house revolution to start, cannot come soon enough for towns such as mine?
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I am planning to end the statement at around 20 minutes past 2, so could you please help each other by keeping questions short?
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
This has to be the most important statement I have heard since being in the House. York has really suffered from the proliferation of luxury accommodation, second homes and short-term holiday lets, so I very much welcome this statement. Where developers have plans in the system, what steps can be taken to ensure that we pivot to hit the targets for the affordable and social housing that we desperately need right now?
Angela Rayner
It is difficult to set out the detail at a local level because those types of development are subject to section 106 agreements. That is why local plans are really important, and we support that process. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the consultation document on the release of grey belt, which talks about a minimum of 50% of housing being affordable. Again, that figure will depend on local need. We have to try to get the balance right. If local areas say, “We need x”, but I say, “Well, you are going to have y,” then that is a challenge. We have said that 50% of housing built on the grey belt must be affordable. Local areas can then use that figure and say that they want a particular amount of homes for social rent. The methodology and the affordability test we are using make things much better, because they give a figure that reflects the reality for people in an area.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
I welcome you to your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Deputy Prime Minister will be all too aware of the extent to which the planning system is failing communities like mine. It is not building the affordable homes that people are crying out for, not delivering the infrastructure my growing communities need, and not even protecting some of the nature-rich parts of our countryside. Opposition Members might not like to hear this, but under the last Government, green-belt approvals, often haphazard, increased tenfold, while brownfield approvals halved. Will the Deputy Prime Minister reassure my constituents that her golden rules will ensure that brownfield and greyfield sites are truly prioritised, and that infrastructure and affordability will be prioritised too, so that we finally deliver growth that works for communities like mine?
Oral Answers to Questions
Judith Cummins Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Jacob Young
My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion for his constituents. I am happy to meet him to discuss the delays as soon as we can. The project adjustment process is available to the council if it needs to use it.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
Oral Answers to Questions
Judith Cummins Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
Michael Gove
That money went towards ensuring that service families get the accommodation and support they deserve. If Labour wants to be taken seriously as a patriotic party, it should stop talking down our armed forces and ensure that they receive the money they deserve.
Levelling-up Fund Round 2
Judith Cummins Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Lucy Frazer
I know that my hon. Friend campaigns very hard for her constituency in this and other areas. Of course we can confirm that we will be able to work with her local authority to ensure that a successful bid can be put forward.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that the British people have an innate sense of fair play? Independent analysis of the largest cities and towns in England identified Bradford as the UK’s No. 1 levelling-up opportunity. None of the four Bradford bids was successful in this round. Does the Minister believe that the people of Bradford will think that that is a fair outcome, or that the process stinks?
Lucy Frazer
As I mentioned earlier, as someone who grew up in Leeds, I understand how important that area is and how much more we can do. As I have also mentioned, we had £8 billion and were only able to allocate £2.1 billion in this round, but further funds are available, and round 3 will take place in due course.
Oral Answers to Questions
Judith Cummins Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Neil O’Brien
I know that this is something that my right hon. Friend has been campaigning very hard for. The next round of the levelling-up fund will be open in spring next year, and I am sure that, with her help, her local councils will be able to develop a strong bid for that important bridge.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)
As the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), pointed out in response to the previous question, levelling up involves every Department working in a co-ordinated fashion to advance a series of policies that spread prosperity more equally across the country. The £96 billion integrated rail plan was the single largest rail investment ever made by a UK Government.
Judith Cummins
There was broad agreement around Lord Heseltine’s 2012 report that investment in rail infrastructure is central to a levelling-up agenda. The integrated rail plan really only delivers an upgrade to the existing lines, axing the eastern leg of High Speed 2 and the new high-speed Northern Powerhouse Rail line. How can the Secretary of State do his job now that the integrated rail plan has derailed progress in the north? With less than three weeks of parliamentary time left in 2021, when will he publish his long-promised levelling-up White Paper, which is due this year?
Michael Gove
The hon. Lady makes two very good points. On the first, if we look at the integrated rail plan, we can see that there are significant benefits for communities across the north of England. Indeed, travel time between Leeds and Bradford is reduced from, in some cases, just over 20 minutes to 12 minutes. That is a real, material benefit for citizens of both great cities. It is also the case that the potential for further work in making sure that we can have a more effective mass transit system in West Yorkshire is inherent in the approach that was outlined by my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary. More broadly, I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her anxiety to see the broader set of plans that we are keen to bring forward shared with the House, and we will do so at the earliest possible opportunity.
Budget Resolutions
Judith Cummins Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
I rise to speak in today’s Budget debate in disappointment, because I have campaigned to bring Northern Powerhouse Rail to Bradford city centre for six years. I have raised the issue of Northern Powerhouse Rail many times in this place, in many Budget debates—perhaps even as many times as the Government have made their many announcements on it. Among the avalanche of leaks from the Treasury, I was really hoping to hear some positive messages about Northern Powerhouse Rail, but there was nothing. Then I hoped that the Chancellor would pull something out of the hat on Budget day, but again—nothing. I trust that if the Government had positive news for Bradford, they would not keep it secret—they would not be quite so shy or blushing about it—so I can only conclude that the rumours are correct, and that there is to be a drastic scaling back of Northern Powerhouse Rail, with no city centre stop in Bradford.
My constituents got little from the Budget, or the spending review. We still have no firm date for when the integrated rail plan will be published. Despite the Government’s promises, they seem happy that transport spending is set to continue to be disproportionately centred on London and south-east England. I have no doubt that more promises will come forward, but I fear that we will be asked to settle for just an upgrade of the existing train line, which will be rebadged as Northern Powerhouse Rail—more smoke, and more mirrors. Bradford needs and deserves more than that.
I am asking for fairness in funding, and a rebalancing to ensure that the economies of the north are no longer held back by under-investment. Specifically, we need a trans-Pennine route upgrade; we need High Speed 2’s eastern leg in the north; and we need a new Northern Powerhouse Rail line, with a city centre stop in Bradford. Those are not either/or options, because Bradford matters. The north matters. It is time for the Government to stop the endless rhetoric of levelling up, and to deliver some real infrastructure investment in the north.
What is more, Northern Powerhouse Rail would support carbon-free, sustainable travel, and would contribute to the next era of carbon goals, not just for northern cities, but for the whole UK. One of the biggest city-to-city journeys to work in the country is between Bradford and Leeds, and it is done mostly by car. At scale, Northern Powerhouse Rail would support a 400% increase in rail travel, and it would take 64,000 car trips per day off the road.
Time and again in this House, I have raised the north-south economic imbalance, and time and again Ministers have responded with warm words, but nothing concrete. Let us have no more shallow promises. It is time to deliver.
Building Safety Bill
Judith Cummins ExcerptsWednesday 21st July 2021
(5 years ago)
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Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of course, there are also many buildings over 18 metres that do not have cladding and are still facing the issues of fire remediation works, some of which may not be necessary. I am not clear whose job it is to decide whether they are necessary, and therefore whether a building can be mortgageable and insurable once again and people can move on with their lives. I am still not sure of that and I still do not feel that the Government are really providing the leadership and intervention that is necessary.
There is huge strength of feeling on these issues, as we can see from the number of Members wanting to speak in this debate. The toll of this crisis is immeasurable. Innocent homeowners want us to work together, and I will work with anyone to protect them from these costs. I am not interested in party political point-scoring, as it happens, but the Government have to step up on these issues.
Returning to the Hackitt test, her ultimate test of this new framework is the rebuilding of public confidence in the system. She says that the people who matter most in all this are the residents of these buildings. The honest truth is that, through the omission of cast-iron protections for today’s leaseholders, this test will not be met. It is not enough to simply will the ends; the means need real determination and focus too. We will work with all sides to protect leaseholders and meet the Hackitt test.
Mr Betts
There are major issues about the independence of building control not just on the highest-rise buildings but right throughout the building industry. The Select Committee report drew attention to that.
On product testing, we await the Government’s proposals. Hackitt identified that the product testing regime is broken and needs fixing, and the Committee stands by its view that if a product that has gone to testing and failed a test comes commercially to the market, that information should be made available publicly. That is important information. The Government rejected that recommendation, but I hope they might consider it further.
It is very difficult to make comprehensive sense of the statement published today. I hope that the Secretary of State will accept an invitation to come to the Select Committee after the summer recess and discuss the matter with us in more detail. Whatever the statement says, it still leaves out buildings over 18 metres that have defects that are not just about cladding. Even when cladding defects have been put right, people are facing bills of £50,000 that they cannot afford. Where is the help for those leaseholders? It is not anywhere in the Bill.
I turn to buildings between 11 and 18 metres. I do not understand how the Secretary of State can say that systemic defects were not found in those buildings. Where does cladding fit into that? Will the removal of combustible cladding from buildings between 11 and 18 metres no longer be required? If it is still required, who will pay for it? The Government floated the idea of a loan scheme, but there is no reference to that in the Bill. Has the loan scheme been ditched? We need clarification on these important issues because leaseholders need certainty that they are not going to have to face these bills.
There are important issues in the Bill. It is generally to be welcomed. There are still issues that we want the Government to go further on, but the explanation in this statement of who is going to pay for some of the costs that the building safety fund does not cover is still an essential matter that the Government need to think again about.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
As others have said, the Bill represents progress in implementing the recommendations of the Hackitt review, but it will not come into effect until a full five years after the Grenfell tragedy. In those five years, hundreds of thousands of leaseholders have lived their lives under the fear of fire, under a threat to their own personal safety and under the fear of being trapped in unsellable, non-mortgageable properties and bearing costs that they are completely unable to fund. In a number of cases, those costs exceed the value of the property when they purchased it.
What we know—we will obviously be digesting the contents of the written statement as well—is that the Bill will not do enough to overcome the damage that has been done to leaseholders or to compensate them for the costs they have already borne and will continue to bear, and that further amendments will be essential before the Bill passes into law. I was particularly struck, during the Secretary of State’s opening speech, that the waking watch has now been dismissed, in many cases, as a scam and as being unnecessary. It is a bit rich of the Government to say that, when the waking watch has been the principal means of protection that has been relied on to ensure the safety of those living in high-rise properties. People who have been paying for such waking watches over these last years will listen with amazement to what the Government are now saying and to their glib dismissal of a scheme that they themselves have been relying on.
Even five years after Grenfell, there is still clear evidence that the necessary culture changes in the building industry have not taken place. As the London Fire Brigade says, there are still developers who are gaming the system and cutting corners, and there is clearly still not a level playing field to protect the interests of the only people—the tenants and the leaseholders—who are entirely blameless in this.
I want to make a particular point that does not get covered enough. Although the fire safety and building safety problems have been a catastrophe in terms of their personal impact on leaseholders, there are also significant implications for the social housing sector. Housing associations have faced remediation costs of £10 billion, and the consequence of that is a dramatic fall in the house building programme and in the investment that is necessary to deal with other safety, repair and maintenance issues in that sector. Those tenants and those people in housing need should not also be the victims of a crisis that they had no part in, and the social housing sector must be fully compensated for its actual costs in the months and years to come.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con) [V]
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and welcome to the hot seat.
I want to highlight just one aspect of building safety that I do not believe has been covered either in the Bill or in the debate so far today. Safety on stairs might seem to be rather a niche issue compared with the many issues around fire safety that we are discussing, but it has to be more than just a case of “watch where you’re going”. As the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has discovered, falling on stairs is a significant cause of death, stretching into many hundreds per year. For every one hospital admission caused by a burn, there are 235 caused by falls.
The impact of these falls is felt disproportionately by older people, and even when a fall is not fatal, it is often the first stage of a persistent decline. Falls create fear, they impact on confidence and wellbeing, and they lead to people being moved out of their own homes and into care homes, in many cases never to return. I represent a predominantly elderly constituency and I am in no doubt about the importance of stair safety to maintaining independence in the home for as long as possible, but I am also someone with cerebral palsy, and I know that it is not just the elderly but people like me who have to be exceedingly careful when navigating staircases.
There is an existing industry standard, British standard 5395-1, regarding how stairs should be constructed, including rules on the dimensions of stairs and handrails. Stairs built to the British Standard lead to 60% fewer falls. Although it has been the standard since 2010, it has not, as yet, been enshrined in law, and is therefore often not used by builders. I have written to the building safety Minister asking for the Bill to include a mandate for the British standard to be applied in all new build homes, and I plan to propose such an amendment should he not give me sufficient satisfaction.
It is worth noting that this cause is backed by both private and social housing providers. It will create a level playing field in house building, but, more importantly, it will massively reduce the number of falls on stairs in the future, easing the burden on A&E and ambulances, and saving many families from unnecessary and premature tragedy.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab) [V]
I am not sure what is worse for leaseholders: the fact that they are in constant fear because their homes are not safe, the fact that they cannot afford to make them safe and are being harassed by greedy managing agents, or the fact that they are trapped in their flats without any easy option to sell and move on with their lives. Today’s statement and the Bill do not fundamentally change that for all the reasons the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), set out in his brief but excellent speech.
During the passage of the Fire Safety Bill, Ministers promised that these issues would be addressed in the Building Safety Bill. Lord Greenhalgh said:
“it is unacceptable for leaseholders to have to worry about costs of fixing historic safety defects in their buildings that they did not cause”
and that
“building owners are responsible for ensuring the safety of residents”,
and he said that they should
“protect leaseholders from the costs of remediating historic building defects.”
I do not know what the correct term in Parliament is for someone who make promises that they do not keep, but I know what they call them on the streets of Brent North: they call them a Government Minister.
Extending the scope and duration of the Defective Premises Act 1972 in the Building Safety Bill shows that the Government do not understand the extent of the problem. I ask the Minister to explain to my constituents who live in the Wembley Central development how it will help them. The original developer of their homes, St Modwen, has washed its hands of these defective properties. It sold them to an offshore company in Jersey in 2018, following the introduction of the new building regulations. It was in partnership with Sowcrest, which is now in a very convenient liquidation. So who exactly does the Minister think my constituents can chase here? What are the Government prepared to do about buildings with obscure corporate ownership?
I first contacted St Modwen in 2017, immediately after the Grenfell tragedy. It repeatedly assured me that the buildings were safe and in 2018 confirmed in writing that no fire safety defects had been identified. I am now told that the cladding on this building is the same as that used in Grenfell Tower and the fire safety report has identified fire stopping defects throughout the construction process. In May this year, St Modwen agreed to a takeover bid of £1.2 billion from Blackstone. Can the Minister tell me how this Bill will make them accountable for their actions? It was not the leaseholders who decided to use flammable cladding or to leave out fire stopping in voids or cut corners—developers made those decisions. My constituents have neither the deep pockets nor the legal expertise to fight these corporate chameleons, who start off in London and end up in Jersey as a different company. This Bill shows that the Government either do not understand or do not care. The companies can afford lengthy litigation; leaseholders cannot.
Finally, the Minister must explain why there is so little progress on the building safety fund. I wrote to St Modwen on 23 June. I still await a response. I have written to Fidum, the new managing agent for the new owners. I asked it about its application to the building safety fund for the removal of unsafe cladding. I have received no response, but Fidum now tells residents that it missed the closing date of 30 June for the second application because it is still waiting to have eligibility—
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement that the EWS1 forms should not be required for buildings below 18 metres; lenders were insisting on EWS1 forms, despite buildings not meeting the proper criteria in the new guidance, so it is a welcome announcement. I also welcome the announcements in the written statement on working towards market correction with regard to the total risk aversion that we are seeing in the market from lenders and surveyors, and the absolute stagnation in the market.
However, I echo the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and by the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), regarding leaseholders and the issue of clause 124. I would like to see much greater levels of legislation to support leaseholders. I am speaking on behalf not just of the leaseholders, but of the parents of leaseholders in my constituency—parents in Beaconsfield, Marlow, Flackwell Heath and Iver who have given their life savings to help support their child to buy their first home, usually in London. The children of my constituents are now stuck in homes that they cannot afford to move out of because of the spiralling cost of insurance and the cost to the leaseholder that has been incurred because of the building safety regulations.
I ask that we consider how to help leaseholders. These are Conservative voters and the children of Conservative voters, who are now frustrated and angry that they cannot move up the housing ladder. We need to consider a way forward for them and remember that they have done what we Conservatives say that we always want to do: enable people to buy a home and get on the housing ladder. We are blocking them from moving forward. I ask the Secretary of State please to consider further action to help and support leaseholders.
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con) [V]
The telly has been showing horrific scenes of flooding across the globe recently. What is infuriating is the more overtly man-made mini-flooding that my constituents in Holden Mill and Astley Bridge have been exposed to. We are talking about water ingress where what were once penthouses have become unwanted pools, decompartmentalisation leading to fire risk and issues associated with cladding, all of which are liable to increase costs for the tormented people living there. With today’s Bill, this Government, this Secretary of State and this MP have the chance to put things right for the people of Holden Mill.
The proposed reforms are welcome, particularly the extension of the Defective Premises Act 1972 and the limitation period. However, clause 124 is unlikely to be in place for at least a year and leaseholders risk having to pay ruinous costs for months to come. The only real route of redress against culpable parties is usually through costly litigation, so will the Department outline the provisions in place to help cash-strapped leaseholders and management companies pay for legal action involving extensions to the limitation period?
Some 20% of residents in the Cottonworks, a mill that has been converted into dwellings in my constituency, are affected by water ingress due to poor conversion by the developer PJ Livesey. Despite insurance cover with the National House Building Council, my constituents are facing a potential shortfall in excess of £1 million. These residents are living in torrid circumstances, and leaseholders have already had to pay into a levy, on top of service charges, to cover temporary measures concerning PJ Livesey’s alleged failings in relation to fire compartmentation. The timing of the levy could not be worse, and it is vital that these future costs are not passed on to innocent leaseholders.
How do we ensure that responsible and culpable parties do not abuse the statute of limitations by simply running down the clock? Some 280 leaseholders at the Cottonworks could face further levies, and they fear not being able to fund legal action. These companies—I am sure there are many such cases across the country—have slopey shoulders regarding poor workmanship, ping-ponging my constituents from company to company. I will be voting with the Government, standing shoulder to shoulder with these residents in Astley Bridge and across the country.
Finally, the intention to create a system of duty holders throughout the design, construction and occupation of high-risk buildings is welcome, but can the Minister and the Department assure my constituents that this will be applied retrospectively, finally providing residents with the power to make someone—
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
Since last October, the all-party parliamentary group for fire safety and rescue, which I chair—and I am delighted to see so many of its members participating in the debate—has responded in detail to four Government consultations on various aspects of fire and building safety. A further consultation was launched by the Department for Education on 27 May in relation to the revised fire safety design guide for new schools. In a nutshell, that proposes to remove in the future the requirement for automatic fire sprinkler protection for all but a very few new schools. This is not acceptable and I am delighted that it was raised at Prime Minister’s questions today.
We are suffering from consultation overload and we could really do with a road map as to how all these pieces of work fit together. Last Thursday was my third meeting with the noble Lord Greenhalgh on fire and building-related issues since 23 June. Only last week, during a joint meeting that I chaired with the all-party parliamentary group for disability, we heard a most distressing account of a disabled resident trapped on the 23rd floor of Grenfell Tower whose son carried her down through the smoke and flames at 2.30 am, one and half hours into the fire. Her husband tragically perished, having jumped from the building.
One significant issue raised by both the APPG and the National Fire Chiefs Council in their previous responses to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 consultation was that there remains a fundamental disconnect between the non-worsening conditions of building regulations and the expectations of continuous improvements through the fire risk assessment process set by the fire safety order. Regulation 4 of the Building Regulations 2010 states that where the work did not previously comply with schedule 1, the new work, when complete, should be
“no more unsatisfactory in relation to that requirement than before the work was carried out”—
meaning that the general fire precautions may never get improved to modern standards. This runs contrary to the principles of prevention outlined in the fire safety order—that premises’ risk assessment should adapt to technical progress and reduce overall risk within buildings.
Non-worsening provisions are resulting in lost opportunities to improve building safety. An example is the refurbishment of Lakanal House following a multiple-fatality fire. The London fire commissioner told the coroner that automatic fire sprinkler protection would have prevented the death of six residents who died if it had been installed. Subsequently, the coroner recommended to the then Secretary of State that he should encourage social housing providers in high-rise blocks of over 18 metres to consider retrofitting automatic sprinkler protections. I say to my right hon. Friend the Minister: we must never make the same mistakes again.
Planning
Judith Cummins Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Judith Cummins (in the Chair)
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Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of the planning system and the upcoming Planning Bill.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummings.
I thank the Minister for being present and Members for taking part in the debate. I am very respectful of the Minister and I do not underestimate the challenges that he faces in changing a complex system. We need sensible reform, but we need to get it right, and it is in that positive spirit that I intend to speak. I will speak for no more than 10 minutes, because I want to get as many people in as possible.
I will reiterate some concerns and, significantly, suggest as many solutions as I can; some have been made by me and some by near 100 Members on the WhatsApp group. I sent those ideas to the Prime Minister and to the Housing Department a few weeks ago for thought, and I look forward to a response. I put forward an approach to planning based on three principles: that it should be community led, levelling-up led and environment led. I commend those to Ministers. First, however, I will outline some concerns.
Reform, I believe, is better than scrapping and starting again. Scrapping threatens to misdiagnose the problem. Nine in 10 planning applications are approved, but only 60% of permissions are built, so there are more than 1 million unbuilt permissions in a decade. The basic fact is that we have a flawed market. The building cartels, which build the majority of homes, restrict supply. That is not a secret; it is in their building model. They act to prevent prices falling. That is why using housebuilding alone, or predominantly, to lower prices will not work.
Furthermore, the standard method damages the levelling-up agenda. That is critical, especially given the Prime Minister’s excellent speech today. Levelling up is a moral and economic imperative. It is also a political imperative for the Government. However, a flawed planning Bill will undermine that levelling-up process. Some red wall colleagues are now beginning to see that.
Knight Frank reported that the current methodology, the standard method,
“systematically disadvantages poorer parts of the country, particularly in the North and Midlands”.
The north has 23% of the nation’s population, but its housing need is estimated at not even 16% of the total, and its share of public expenditure on housing is barely 18% of the total. The housing infrastructure fund spends £115 per head in the east of England and an astonishingly low £4 per head in Yorkshire.
The standard method directs investment away from levelling up communities. It heats up the already hot and it cools down those people who need to be cooking on gas—pardon the analogy. Other people will talk about the potential loss of democracy and other concerns, so I will not dwell too much on them, because I want to focus on one or two specific issues, but it is clear from talking to colleagues that there is much variation in people’s concerns. For some it is green fields and damage to tourism or quality of life, and for others it is suburban density, building height or the absolute absurdity of building on floodplains. For others, it is a system that is simply not delivering affordable homes.
I will say that there is a slight frustration. Opponents of reform—well, opponents of scrapping the system rather than reforming it—are sometimes portrayed as nimbys. On the Island, on the Isle of Wight, we have been yimbys for 50 years—we have been in our backyard. We have increased our population by 50% in 50 years. In that time, the cities of Newcastle, Sunderland, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Blackpool, Birmingham and Stoke have all declined—not relatively declined but declined in absolute percentage and numbers. So when people say that opponents of a developer-led system in the south are nimbys, I respectfully argue that they should acquaint themselves with some basic facts about the history of development that has taken place in this country since world war two. We have barely no new infrastructure on the Isle of Wight, and our key gas supplies, water and electricity interconnectors are already operating at near capacity.
So what are the solutions? I want most of this speech to be positive. I will look at our three principles and suggest perhaps a dozen or 15 ideas in the time I have available. Some of them are community led, some environmentally led and some levelling-upled, but they all gel together to look at ways we can support the Minister in the important work that he is doing, which we want to support.
Our reforms are: first, enshrine the ability to object to individual planning applications; secondly, give greater weight to reforming neighbourhood plans; thirdly, outlaw gazumping. We know that communities with neighbourhood plans accept higher housing allocations because they see what is in it for them. We know that gazumping slows down the market and imposes costs. Good democracy and good law help good development.
On levelling up, there are many things one could say, but I will stick to one. We need to fundamentally reform the standard model and redirect infrastructure funding and house building jobs to levelling-up areas as a deliberate act of policy. Without that, we will have to explain to our voters in a few years’ time why all that infrastructure funding, or so much of it, is going down south, and it will not be a pretty conversation with southern colleagues and voters or red wall and levelling-up communities.
Finally, a series of ideas linked to the environment. We need to end the use of lazy greenfield development. I know Ministers want that, but it would be great if they could want it more. We need a recycling culture in land use. I am aware that some good ideas in the White Paper are about infrastructure levies, but it needs to price in the true cost of using up very valuable rare greenfield land. For many areas I fear that will be a markedly higher price than will be factored into the Bill. We need, in short, to change the economics of land use.
We need a greenfield tax so that money goes into brownfield clean-up in a dedicated way. If we are using, especially in a place such as the Isle of Wight, rare greenfield land, we need to get a greater good out of it than Persimmon’s bottom line. We need to zero-rate brownfield development, encourage it and build in financial incentives, especially for small-scale brownfield in small towns and communities, to make it work.
There are many loopholes that I could suggest closing, but I will not, given the time. I will just say that we need greater powers of compulsory purchase to force people to act more quickly. There are 600 unused and derelict properties on the Isle of Wight. If the Minister wants to get 600 extra properties on the Isle of Wight, he should give the Isle of Wight Council more power. Make it easier for us to enforce action on derelict and unused properties in order to force sale or to force use. Introduce a character test to screen out dodgy developers. If he wants to clean up the system, let him be the sheriff who gets rid of cowboy developers.
Buyers who turn homes—I think this was suggested by a colleague who will be speaking shortly—into Airbnb or holiday homes should be required to apply to councils for change of use. Councils should be allowed to frame localised plans to reverse and lower the percentage of long-term holiday and commercial holiday rentals in specific communities.
We help first-time buyers, so why not last-time sellers with stamp duty exemption? It will cost money. One in five over-65s would be, according to facts and figures, more likely to move. That could affect 2 million people—£900 billion-worth of property. That would free up the market and allow market-driven solutions where there is not market failure. Clearly, there is an element here.
Finally, land banking. If we want to boost supply, we need to create a use-it-or-lose-it rule for permissions within a realistic time bracket. That means more than starting a development by digging a trench six foot by six. Agreeing a start date means agreeing just that and making council tax payable on all plots after a given date, regardless of whether they are built. If the purpose of the Minister’s planning Bill is to help developers, these ideas will not be attractive to many of them, but if its purpose is to get people into homes and to help first-time buyers—I am sure it is—these ideas, and many others suggested by colleagues, will help him produce a markedly better planning Bill, or a planning Bill that is as good and as attractive as we all want it to be.
We need solid principles behind the planning Bill. It should be community led, levelling-up led, and environment led. We need to be sensitive to local democracy. We need a levelling-up agenda that spreads prosperity and hope around our country. To make it environment led, we have to move away from unsustainable, lazy, car-dependent and carbon-inefficient greenfield development, and we need to build for communities and in communities.
Judith Cummins (in the Chair)
I ask hon. Members to limit their contributions to around three to four minutes, because I plan to start calling the Front Benchers at 2.38 pm.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful, Mrs Cummins, for that ruling. I am conscious that I probably have only about six minutes left in which to conclude my remarks, to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight time to sum up the debate.
A number of Members have raised the issue of infrastructure. We all know that when we build homes, those homes need the requisite infrastructure to support them: the GP clinics, the parks, the schools, the roads and the roundabouts. We want to make sure that we have a system that provides those things when they are needed and not way down the line. We do not believe that the present system—a mixture of section 106 agreements and community infrastructure levy payments—meets that requirement.
Indeed, 80% of local authorities tell us that section 106 does not work for them. It is loaded in favour of developers, especially the bigger guns, and often means that infrastructure comes late or not at all. If it does appear to be coming, it is often negotiated away in a manner that local authorities and local communities do not want. That is why we have proposed an infrastructure levy, which will provide up front the infrastructure that local communities want and need. We will make sure that, in doing so, we deliver just as much affordable housing as is delivered in the present system.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) made the very important point about the challenge that some rural communities face. I am open to considering ways in which we can help local people to remain living close to where they come from or where they work. One of the initiatives that we have announced is the first homes initiative, paid for through developer contributions, which will ensure that local people will be able to buy, at a discount of at least 30%, a home in their local community. Those homes will be covenanted, in perpetuity, to ensure that when or if they are sold on, the buyers, who will be local people—they could be key workers—will also buy at 30% at least below the then local market rate. However, I am open to hearing from colleagues about what other opportunities there may be to encourage local people to stay close to their communities.
My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight also raised the issue of neighbourhood plans. I am very keen that we build, and bake, neighbourhood plans into the new planning system. They can be very effective and engaging. The trouble is that there are fewer of them the further north—or further into urban areas—we go, so in our planning reforms we are looking at ways to ensure that more neighbourhood plans are produced across the country so that additional housing is identified, with good designs and local infrastructure, to support those communities.
My hon. Friend also mentioned the importance of recycling. We have already made it very clear—in our national planning policy statements, and in the national planning policy framework—that brownfield ought to come first. We have backed that up with fiscal spending to ensure that we are paying for remediation in and around our country. Some £400 million was made available last year for the remediation of brownfield sites in mayoral combined authorities, with a further £100 million made available by the Chancellor in the latest Budget. We are determined to put brownfield first.
In our permitted development rights reforms—I know some colleagues are not so very keen on those—we also encourage the development of redundant sites, or shops that are no longer viable, in towns and city centres. That means we are building homes in the places where people need them, which takes the weight off the transport infrastructure as they are close to GP clinics and other services that people want and need. We are addressing that issue of recycling, too.
In the short time that I have left, I will speak about build-out. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), talked about a ten-minute rule Bill. I would suggest that it is a “ten-minute thought” Bill, because we do not really know from their proposals how the Opposition would deal with issues like gaming or whether they would help and support small and medium-sized enterprises, rather than making the system more difficult for them. We do not know whether they are proposing that the timetable system should relate to the permissions granted or the building commencement date.
However, we are keen to ensure that we find sensible mechanisms to encourage the build-out of permissions where they exist. We have heard what people have said, both across this Chamber and in response to the consultation, and we are determined to ensure that, where appropriate, permissions are built out rapidly.
Wera Hobhouse
On a point of order, Mrs Cummins. I want to put on the record the fact that the Minister gave this Chamber incorrect information. Bath and North East Somerset Council has a fully updated local plan in place. It is going through a partial revision and is halfway through the terms of its current plan. But while the partial revision is taking place, the local plan is fully updated.
Judith Cummins (in the Chair)
The Minister is here and your point of order is now on the record.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful, Mrs Cummins. I can tell you that the information I have is that the plan was last updated in 2014—some seven years ago.
We are determined to ensure that our reforms meet the tests that my hon. Friend, and others, have set—to speed up the planning system to make it more effective, engaging and transparent. I look forward to the support of all colleagues across the House when we bring our proposals forward later this year.