Fire Safety Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 29th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con) [V]]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

As other people have said, the Bill has come as the direct result of those terrible events of 14 June 2017. Like every single person in this country, I watched those events with a growing sense of shock and dismay. I pay tribute to the emergency services and apologise to all those who lost loved ones in that terrible tragedy—and, indeed, to anybody who is affected in any way by this tragedy, and may be for many years to come. It was such a needless tragedy.



I would thank the members of Grenfell United. When I sat on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, we looked into all these events. I found Grenfell United, a representative body for many of the residents of Grenfell, very good to work with and constructive. It played a huge part in getting us to where we are today.

The important thing is that when you lose, you do not lose the lesson. The whole country has lost due to this tragedy. The Government rightly acted quickly, following calls from the Select Committee and others, to ban combustible materials on the outside of tall buildings. In addition to that and the provisions in the Bill, it is right that we look at why this happened and why there were decades of mistakes that contributed to this tragedy—it is a case of decades of mistakes; it is wrong to try to use this as some kind of party political opportunity.

Having looked at why this happened with the Select Committee, I came to the clear conclusion that it was the result of unclear guidance. Approved document B, in particular, was very unclear. It had been criticised by the coroner in the Lakanal House tragedy as being very difficult to work with. If we look at clause 12.5 and the related diagram 40, it is very confusing regarding what is and is not allowed in terms of cladding on tall buildings. Understandably, people made mistakes or took shortcuts. Whatever the reasons, that gave people the opportunity not to follow the right route to ensure that those buildings were safe.

The Government moved to ban combustible cladding on new buildings, which was the right thing to do, but we then have to deal with existing buildings. Much as we talk about holding building owners responsible, that proved to be impossible in many cases. It was therefore right that the Government put together a financial package of £1.6 billion to remediate those buildings.

The reality is that many buildings have unsafe cladding on the outside. A key person in this whole debate has been Jonathan Evans of the Metal Cladding and Roofing Manufacturers Association, who provided the Select Committee with much useful and important evidence. For example, he has shown that high-pressure laminate cladding is pretty much as bad as ACM in terms of fire performance. We need to remediate these buildings urgently to prevent another tragedy.

Many of the right solutions are contained in the Bill, and I commend Ministers for bringing it forward, but we need some other measures. We need to ensure that the supply chain is there so that we can get remediation done quickly for many of these buildings across the country. We also have to question why we lost sight of the importance of non-combustible materials on buildings in the first place—perhaps it relates to the drive towards energy efficiency, or the commercial interests of the people responsible for testing these products. The Select Committee looked at the conflicts of interest that exist in the Building Research Establishment. It would be sensible to have a national public testing facility that represents the national interest, rather than the commercial interests that a private commercial organisation such as the BRE may have. We should look at that to ensure that the drafting of future guidance is informed by a national public body.

Fire Safety Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

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

[Kit Malthouse]

I am afraid that that is the fundamental risk we face at the moment. We want to get the Bill on the statute book as quickly as possible. It forms the starting block of a complex web of legislation and regulation that is required to bring about changes in building safety across the whole country. I hope that Members recognise that the potential delay that may be inserted by a back and forth between the Houses over this particular issue is not useful. As I say, this issue should be debated during consideration of the Building Safety Bill, which will be brought forward shortly, and I know that Members will embrace that particular piece of legislation.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Kit Malthouse]

I will make a little progress, if I may, just to outline why that is. These amendments, I am afraid, are not sufficiently clear or detailed to deliver on what Members say they wish to achieve. They would require extensive drafting in primary legislation, thereby, as we have just discussed, delaying the implementation of the Fire Safety Bill and the crucial measures it puts forward to improve the fire safety regulatory system.

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Members will be aware that, as I have said, we will soon be bringing to Parliament the building safety Bill, which is a once-in-a-generation change to the building safety regime. It will bring about fundamental change in both the regulatory framework for building safety and the construction industry culture, creating a more accountable system to ensure that a tragedy such as Grenfell can never happen again.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for all the work he did as Housing Minister to resolve this issue; we met on many occasions to discuss it. Does he agree that this amendment is self-defeating in that it puts the onus for any fire safety work back on the owner, who, given debts or the cost of that work, will simply walk away? These owners have probably paid a few thousand pounds per flat to collect, rightly, ground rent. If we put a debt on them for £40,000 per flat, they will simply walk away, and who will then carry the can for the work?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend speaks with some expertise in this area and has been a constant presence in debates on this matter over the past few years. He is right. The amendment is self-defeating given the number of, for example, freeholds that are held in limited liability vehicles, which could, in the position he points out, simply put themselves into some kind of insolvency procedure. That is why any measure along these lines would need to be scrutinised carefully and thought about in a little more detail before we brought it in.

Alongside all that, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has committed to taking decisive action to end the cladding scandal once and for all through the Government’s five-point plan to provide reassurance to homeowners and build confidence in the housing market. Funding will be targeted at the highest-risk buildings, in line with long-standing independent expert advice and evidence. Lower-rise buildings with a lower risk to safety will gain new protection from the costs of cladding removal through a long-term, low-interest Government-backed financing scheme. The Government are also committed to making sure that no leaseholder in these buildings will pay more than £50 per month towards this remediation. Let me be clear: it is unacceptable for leaseholders to have to worry about the cost of fixing historical safety defects in their buildings.

I ask hon. Members to recognise that while these amendments are based on good intentions, they are not the appropriate means to solve these complex problems. By providing unprecedented funding and a generous financing scheme, we are ensuring that money is available for remediation, accelerating the process, and making homes safer as quickly as possible. I give my assurance that the Government schemes to address these issues will be launched as a matter of priority and that we will provide an update on the underpinning details, as Members have urged us, as soon as we are in a position to do so. For the reasons set out, I hope that the House will see fit to support me in my aspirations with regard to these and other amendments.

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[Sarah Jones]

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

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

The fire safety order requires regular fire risk assessments in buildings, but it includes no legal requirement for those conducting the assessment to have any form of training or accreditation. In Committee and on Report, we tabled amendments that would bring into force an accreditation system for fire risk assessors, rather than waiting for more secondary legislation. We also tabled an amendment to require the schedule for inspecting buildings to be based on a prioritisation of risk, not an arbitrary distinction of types and heights of building. On that point, I am glad that the Government have listened, having turned us down in the initial stages, and taken good practice from Croydon and other areas and introduced a risk-based approach to the Bill.

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

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

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Although I understand the point behind the hon. Member’s position—I assume she will vote for Lords amendment 4—can she answer the point I made to the Minister? What will she do when the building owners simply walk away? Where will the costs go? Does she have a solution for that? Does she not accept that this amendment is fundamentally flawed and is not the right way to achieve what she wants to achieve?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He is an expert in this area, and I very much respect what he says. The answer is that it is for the Government to resolve this crisis. It is not for leaseholders to foot the bill. We suggested a national taskforce, whereby the Government could take responsibility for assessing the costs of the remediation work and then find out who is responsible, so that, as with the polluter pays principle, we could get to the point where the people who were responsible for the problem were paying the bill. That is fundamentally what we are trying to achieve, because in law at the moment, those who can least afford to pay are the only ones having to pay. The Minister says that there are flaws in the way the amendment is worded, but he could have amended it.

Lords amendment 2 would place robust requirements on building owners or managers and implement the key recommendations from phase 1 of the Grenfell inquiry. The Minister said that he had concerns with the way the amendment was worded. Again, the Government could have tried to amend it and to fix some of the problems along the way, but have chosen not to do so.

The Government said that they would implement the Grenfell phase 1 inquiry recommendations in full and without delay, and Lords amendment 2 would be a straightforward way for them to fulfil that promise. It seeks to require the owners of buildings that contain two or more sets of domestic premises to do four simple things: to share information with their local fire and rescue service about the design and make-up of the external walls; to complete regular inspections of fire entrance doors; to complete regular inspections of lifts; and to share evacuation and fire safety instructions with residents. Those measures are straightforward and supported by key stakeholders. Indeed, a common response is incredulity that these measures are not already in law.

The Government have even tried to water down proposals on the evacuation of disabled people, as has been reported today. They have proposed requiring personal evacuation plans for disabled people only in buildings with known safety issues and a waking watch. It is only after legal action by the families of those who died in the Grenfell Tower fire that the Government have relaunched a consultation on this.

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[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is completely right. There is the idea that someone would have a long-term loan where they pay £50 a month. If someone needs to pay off a £20,000 loan, and that loan stays with the building, they have no chance of selling their flat. Nobody is going to want to buy a flat with a bill that high.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

What evidence does the hon. Lady have for that claim? This is a maximum charge per unit per month of £50. If she understands how property transactions work, that is a maximum of £600 a year, which capitalises to about £12,000. I am not saying it would not affect the value of that property, but it does not make them unsaleable. It makes them far more saleable—I draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—than they are today and actually affects the value by a relatively small amount.

[Sarah Jones]

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

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

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

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[Royston Smith]

I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have no axe to grind with the Government. They are my friends and colleagues. I like them and I get on with them, but I am not going to blindly follow them when I can see that the treatment of leaseholders is wrong.

First, in tabling our amendment, we have never said that we would ask for taxpayers’ money. We made that fundamentally clear right at the beginning, and it is worth repeating that. I know that many of my colleagues would have supported our amendment, but they were told that it would be an open cheque book and therefore they chose not to. Secondly, our amendment will not wreck the Bill. It will make it fair for the innocent lease- holders caught up in this crisis.

There are three parts to this, in my opinion. There is the moral issue. Who, in good conscience, could leave these people to pay huge insurance premiums, sometimes increased by over 1,000%, huge waking watch charges and crippling costs of remediation if we could do something to help? Who would do that?

Then there is the economic issue. When someone owns just 10% of their home, but they are responsible for 100% of the remediation cost, what do we think people are going to do? They will be saddled with tens of thousands of pounds-worth of debt while their home is valued at nothing. This part of the housing market is heading for collapse and thousands of leaseholders are heading for bankruptcy. The Government could and should prevent this from happening.

Finally, there is a political dimension. Successive Governments have put home ownership at the centre of Government policy. They have encouraged people to get on the property ladder. We have incentivised them through schemes such as Help to Buy and shared ownership. Imagine the howls of derision when the first Government Minister stands up and claims that we are the party of home ownership.

The recent Government announcement is very welcome, and I know that many people are grateful, but what sort of solution says, “We concede that it is not your fault, but we are only going to help half of you?” For those buildings over 18 metres, cladding will be removed for free, but not in buildings below that height. Worse than that, those people living in buildings below 18 metres will be saddled with unaffordable debt to pay for cladding remediation. Even worse, they will know that their taxes will be paying for their neighbours’ remediation.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I absolutely understand the spirit behind my hon. Friend’s amendment. Will he answer the point that I made earlier? How would his amendment operate if the building owner walks away? Also, does he accept that his amendment would put somebody else on the hook for the costs of remediation, not just for historical defects, but for any defects in future?

[Royston Smith]

What I will do is refer my hon. Friend to two things that he has said. First, he said, “We will carry the can”, and he has now said, “Who is going to be on the hook?” It sounds to me like he is very happy for leaseholders to carry the can and be on the hook, but not to find a solution. The Government’s problem is to find the solution. Our problem is to say that leaseholders should never have to pay. That is not an unreasonable position for us to take.

In trying to help, the Government have satisfied no one and they have upset just about everyone. The leaseholders are not responsible for this. They know they are not. We know they are not. The Government know they are not and, therefore, the Government’s position is now untenable.

In conclusion, I appeal to the Government and to all my colleagues to think very carefully before they abandon thousands of their constituents, because I know this: they will not forget and they will not forgive.

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[Kit Malthouse]

I thank the many Members who contributed to this at times impassioned debate about a matter that is of interest to all of us. I know that my fellow Ministers at the Home Office and, indeed, at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will take on board the many points raised. Given the time available to me, I apologise that I am not able to address all the questions put forward. However, I will turn to some of the main themes that have dominated the debate, not least the remediation issue, about which there has been such natural and understandable focus.

It might be worth restating at the beginning the broad task that lies ahead of us as a House and, indeed, as a Government. It falls in three areas. First, we have to deal with remediation as quickly as possible. We talked a lot about that today, and about how we can perhaps increase the pace. Obviously there have been significant steps recently, not least the money that has been put forward. Secondly, we have to restore a proper appreciation of risk and value to affected properties, so that the finance industry and insurance industry can do their work in enabling the transfer of those properties and their protection correctly, rather than the current “computer says no” system.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The Minister mentions the time that this will take. Whatever money is put forward, it will take five or 10 years to remediate many buildings. Insurance costs have quadrupled for many residents. There is a solution on the table, provided by the Association of Residential Managing Agents, in which the Government take a top-sliced risk, which would put those premiums back down. Will he look at that proposal and see whether that could be put in place to ease the burden on many leaseholders?

[Kit Malthouse]

Secretary of State—sorry; Mr Deputy Speaker. You never know. My hon. Friend raises, as usual, a constructive point. I know that the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and, indeed, the Chancellor are meeting with banks and the insurance industry to see what solutions may come forward. The third strand of work is obviously to build a system of building safety and regulation for the future, so that the terrible tragedy of Grenfell can never happen again.

I turn to some of the questions asked. First, I was asked, not least by the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), why we cannot give a firm timetable for the building safety legislation programme. I recognise that there is an intent and a desire for certainty, and we want to legislate at the earliest possible opportunity. However, Members should also be aware that making these fundamental reforms to building safety is incredibly complex, so it is important that we get this right, as a number of Members raised, by ensuring that our measures are properly scrutinised by experts and Parliament before we legislate.

The Building Safety Bill has more than 140 clauses, and I cannot prejudge the time that Parliament will need to properly scrutinise this important piece of legislation before it is put on the statute book. It is for that reason that I cannot provide specific dates for when legislation will come into force, but I emphasise again that the Government are as committed as ever to delivering the inquiry’s recommendations. We will bring the Fire Safety Bill into force as early as possible after Royal Assent. The regulations will follow as early as practicable, and we expect the Building Safety Bill to be introduced after the Government have considered the recommendations from the HCLG Committee, and when parliamentary time allows. We are therefore resisting the Labour amendment, for the extensive reasons that I mentioned in my opening speech. We think it is unnecessary and inflexible. I restated various points as to why we think that is the case earlier.

I turn to remediation, and particularly the amendments laid by my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and my good and hon. friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith). We recognise that they care deeply about this issue, as do many Members from across the House, and they have obviously worked hard to represent their constituencies with dedication and passion. Having sat with leaseholders, in my role as Housing Minister, and with the bereaved and survivors of the Grenfell community, I am aware, as of course we all are, of the terrible anguish and worry that this has caused to many. We agree with the intent to give leaseholders the peace of mind and financial certainty they crave.

Fire Safety Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab) [V]]

There is a simple question for the House to consider today: should leaseholders be forced to pay for essential remediation works that they are compelled to undertake to their properties that have come about through no fault of their own? The only possible answer is no.

We know that the cladding calamity that has befallen so many of our constituents did not come about because leaseholders have failed in any way. All the costs that are attributable to the cladding scandal are down to failures by developers and successive Governments, who have presided over shocking, scandalous regulatory failure, which has pushed thousands of wholly innocent people to the brink of financial ruin.

We all know that the costs of the regulatory failure that has created this crisis are in the many billions of pounds, but they must not fall on the ordinary people who are not responsible for this mess. There are other ways, I believe, that the Government can raise the necessary money. They should introduce a levy on developers and the construction industry to fund the cost of remediation —both cladding removal and remediating the many other fire risks that many of us in the House have been raising for quite some time.

The Government should also strengthen procurement regulations so that local authorities and metro Mayors can prevent developers and construction companies that are failing to live up to their moral obligations and put right the fire hazards that they are responsible for creating from bidding for any further publicly funded development contracts. In that way, we can reward those who are doing the right thing and putting right the cladding issues in the buildings that they were responsible for putting up and, hopefully, force a rethink on the part of those who are failing to live up to their responsibilities by preventing them from bidding for further taxpayer-funded contracts.

But what is clear is that the Government must not pin the spiralling costs of this crisis on the ordinary people who are currently facing financial ruination. I urge all Members to keep the amendment tabled by the Bishop of Saint Albans in the Bill, because to do anything else is a dereliction of our duty. This House must do the right thing by leaseholders this evening.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The first thing to say is that I agree with many of the comments that have been made. It simply cannot be right that leaseholders are faced with bills of tens of thousands of pounds. Nevertheless, I cannot support the amendment because I do not think it is effective, for a number of reasons. First, it seems to put somebody—an indeterminate person—on the hook for fire safety remediation forever. As I read it, it is not limited to historical defects.

[Royston Smith]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I do not think I should, because of the timescales, but as my hon. Friend is an author of the amendment, I will.

[Royston Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I want to ask him this simple question, which I am sure he will appreciate. We have been back here three or four times now to discuss this, over and over, and every time I have said that if the amendment is defective, the Government should make it work and have it as their own. Does he agree that that is the way to go?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

After the previous debate, I offered my hon. Friend the opportunity to sit down and look at an amendment that might work, in concert with the Government.

The other difficulty with the amendment is that it would put the onus back on a building’s freeholders. Many people would say that that is fine—that it is better than the leaseholders having that responsibility—but I do not think it would put the leaseholders in a better situation, because the freeholder would simply close down the company and hand back the responsibility, which would fall back on to the leaseholders. I simply do not think the amendment works.

I have a couple of general comments. I was a member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee at the time of the Grenfell tragedy, and the first thing for which we campaigned—straightaway, like many Members in this House—was a complete ban on combustible cladding. That is exactly what the Government stepped in to do. Of course, that ban is prospective, and it left a retrospective issue. The Government have clearly stepped in on the retrospective issue of cladding on high-risk buildings, which is exactly what the Select Committee campaigned for—those 1,700 high-risk buildings that were over 18 metres. That is what the £5 billion of funding remediates.

Many people in this debate have asked about the other elements, such as the missing fire breaks. It is of course absolutely right that we cannot expect leaseholders to take on a debt of tens of thousands of pounds; that is simply not right. We need to take a risk-based approach to the issue. Lots of buildings, particularly lower-rise buildings, can be safely remediated without necessarily replacing cladding: sprinklers, fire alarms and other systems can make those buildings just as safe.

We need to form a coalition of people right across the sector—be it building owners, contractors, managers or manufacturers—to find the best risk-based solution to the problem while minimising the cost for anybody, not least leaseholders. Of course developers should pay, and in many cases they have—Persimmon has just put £70 million to one side to remediate some of its buildings—but the difficulty is that we are often trying to deal with developers that are no longer there. The levy that the Government have introduced is absolutely the right solution, and I urge them to extend it to materials manufacturers and in particular insulation manufacturers, which I feel are principally responsible for the scandal of the situation in which we find ourselves.

On leaseholders, we of course do not want to see anybody go bankrupt as a result of these costs. There is a cap on costs for lower-rise buildings; it may well be that there should be a cap on the costs of remediating these issues for any leaseholder in any building. We should look into that, along with the possibility of the Government top-slicing the risk to make the insurance costs much lower. There are solutions and we all need to work together to provide them.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Sir Robert Neill, who must resume his seat at 8.55 pm or before.