Building Safety Bill

Justin Madders Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I first place it on the record that I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform with the hon. Members for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and for St Albans (Daisy Cooper). Ably assisted by the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, we have been looking at issues surrounding building safety for some time. We had an informative meeting last week, alongside the fire safety and rescue APPG, with Ted Baillieu, who co-chaired the Victoria cladding taskforce and gave a frank and compelling account of his experience when his state dealt with many of the issues covered by the Bill. Put simply, we take his advice that Government have to take a far bigger role in sorting this out than currently envisaged, and will have to dig far deeper into their pockets. It is better to learn from his experience and bite the bullet now, rather than let things drift unsatisfactorily for a few more years before coming to the inevitable conclusion.

I say that partly because the biggest concern is not the expense or the uncertainty but the time it will take to get any kind of restitution. It could be years, and leaseholders—the young couple who cannot start a family; the professional in fear of bankruptcy—cannot wait that long. Too many lives are on hold, and we must not underestimate the mental toll on someone of knowing every day that they are living in a potential death trap and there is nothing they can do to get out of it. These people cannot wait.

Although the Bill is step in the right direction, it feels that, for many, resolution is still years off, and it may yet come with a heavy price tag. The only certain winners from this legislation will be the lawyers, who will have a plethora of new legal avenues to argue over.

Let us start with the extension of the limitation period. On the face of it, that is a positive thing, but it does not create any new rights; it only extends existing ones. As the Bill makes clear, the 15-year rule is available only if it somehow does not impact the developer’s human rights. Of course, developers are always going to claim that it will, so the first field day for the lawyers will be arguing over that.

Critically, of course, the extension is available only if the developer is still in business. As we know, many are not. Even if the extension does increase the number of people who can take legal action, they will still face the same hurdles of expensive litigation. If the developer is still in business and worth suing, it will be in a far stronger position to fight the action than the leaseholders. The inequality of arms in litigation will be immense.

Despite the Government’s repeated promises in recent months, there are no guaranteed means of forcing regulators and developers, who are the architects of this crisis, to be held to account. The inquiry into Grenfell continues, but it is already clear that the materials used there should never have been used. Some of those materials were certified as safe at the time but never should have been. Cladding systems had been designed by architects, planners and fire engineers, costs were knowingly cut, and safety concerns were ignored. Leaseholders are the only truly innocent party in this mess, but they still face the biggest burden to fix it, and that is wrong.