Fire Safety Bill

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Lords Chamber

I urge the Government, even at this late stage, to listen to those who are on the brink of losing their home and everything they have worked and saved for. They have done everything right and nothing wrong. I give notice that if the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, seeks to divide the House, he has the support of these Benches. If, however, he chooses not to do so, I will move my amendment and seek the opinion of the House.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

Well, my Lords, here we are again. I do not want to detain your Lordships’ House for too long, because everything has been said several times already, but I want to make a few comments, if I may.

I, too, want the Bill to pass. I pay tribute to Her Majesty’s Government and the money they have already found and put on the table, which is very significant. But since we last gathered here, the sheer scale of the crisis, which is in its very early stages, is slowly beginning to unfold before us and become ever clearer. I believe that is why the majority in the other place declines each time an amendment goes back, because those long-serving, seasoned campaigners in the other place realise what is going on. The stories are coming out absolutely relentlessly, and new research is being published.

At a few minutes to four this afternoon, I received an email from someone who works in Parliament. I will call her Claire; that is not her real name, but she will know who she is, because she emailed me at 3.56 pm and asked if I will speak up. She said, “Will you speak up for the leaseholders again and table an amendment? I bought a flat under the shared ownership scheme. I own a 25% share, yet I am liable for 100% of the costs. I am already paying an additional amount each month, and I know this amount will soon increase as further remediation work takes place. I simply cannot afford to pay for the remediation works, nor should I have to. The stress of this situation is becoming intolerable. My mental and physical health are approaching a state of collapse”. “Will you speak up?”, she said. I have not met her yet—I hope she will say hello to me one day, perhaps when she guesses who I am or sees me around the place. This is someone who we bump into, who works in this place and who serves us.

It is not just the many individuals. Since we last came to this provision, research by the Prudential Regulation Authority, which is assessing the building scandal, has said that it poses a systemic risk to the UK financial sector. Some of the work done since then is finding a huge number of flats and homes which are simply unsellable. For example, it has been reported that

“a one-bedroom flat at Leftbank, in Manchester, failed to sell despite being listed for half the £330,000 its owner had paid in 2017”.

What Members in the other place are realising is that, slowly, this will roll out, and it will mean that many people on whom this Bill relies to be able somehow to stump up the money to repair the buildings will not have that money. The buildings will not be repaired, because some of these people will have to walk away, probably very unwillingly.

We have not only those individual stories but some really worrying assessments coming out of the housing and financial market in our country. Some 3 million people, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, are affected. As we are paying tribute to fire and rescue officers, I have three emails from fire and rescue officers who were personally affected by this cladding. These are the people involved, along with nurses, police, teachers, care workers and many others—the House knows the sort of people we are talking about.

I believe that the intent of these amendments is the same: to accept that we have a very difficult problem and really want to see some sort of brokered agreement, whereby developers, cladding manufacturers, freeholders and leaseholders make their fair contribution. We realise that everybody will have to do that, but feel that there need to be protections for leaseholders and tenants over these coming months, before the government scheme comes in. I am minded to support this Motion if the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, brings it to a Division, but I continue to hope and plead that Her Majesty’s Government will be able either to come up with a compromise or make some sort of formal undertaking on what the building safety Bill will offer, so that we can all get behind it and get this really important Bill through.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my professional involvement with construction and property matters and that I am a vice-president of the LGA. We should be in no doubt that the Government have triggered an issue that is destined to cause significant damage, loss and distress to many leaseholders and tenants. My comments will be aimed at Motions A1 and A2 in the names, respectively, of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I commend them on their persistence and diligence.

I also commend the Government on committing their £5.1 billion to this matter, but the reality is that money alone is not the answer. It requires a plan that is co-ordinated, structured and comprehensive; to be honest, it was needed the day before yesterday and certainly not at some unspecified time in the future. The Government cannot, in all conscience, have been unaware that a situation would likely arise where a significant sector of property might be affected by the expansion of the fire safety regime, nor deaf to the observations of just about every informed observer, from, I believe, the Bank of England downwards, warning of the need for action.