Fire Safety Bill

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 28th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

My Lords, I express my thanks once again to everyone for their contributions to this important debate. The other place has now consistently voted against four different amendments on the issue of remediation. It is a vital issue but it is not for this Bill. This House has a choice about whether to prioritise finalising this important Bill or to delay it to the point where it falls.

The Government’s position on the Fire Safety Bill has not changed. I will repeat our key points. We are all in agreement about the importance of getting the Fire Safety Bill on the statute book. Residents have a right to be safe and feel safe in their homes. As I have said repeatedly, without this Bill the legal ambiguity around the fire safety order will continue.

Let me be clear about what is at stake if we do not resolve this: responsible persons for multi-occupied residential buildings will be able to continue to argue that it is lawful to ignore the fire safety risk of the structure, external walls and flat entrance doors; and fire and rescue services will lack the legal certainty to support enforcement decisions taken to keep people safe.

Failure to get this Bill to the statute book will lead to a delay in delivering the Grenfell recommendations. This is not a political point. This Bill must come first as it provides the legal certainty that I have just referred to. That certainty will enable the Secretary of State to make regulations with reduced risk of challenge to place duties on responsible persons in relation to the external wall structure and flat entrance doors, as the inquiry recommended.

It might help the House if I provided an example. The inquiry recommended a frequency of checks on fire safety doors, including flat entrance doors and communal fire doors. That cannot be done easily and in a way that is relatively free from legal risk if we have not identified that flat entrance doors are within the scope of the fire safety order. Equally, enforcing authorities would not be able to take appropriate action in this regard.

I thank your Lordships for recognising the substantial government support—to the tune of £5.1 billion—for leaseholders for remediation of unsafe cladding. Our five-point plan to bring an end to this cladding crisis helps provide certainty to the housing market. Noble Lords yesterday raised some points about uncertainty in the housing market and about the concerns of lenders and insurers. Our five-point plan addresses these.

More needs to be done to ensure that those responsible for fire safety defects should contribute to paying the costs of remediation. Industry must play its part and pay its way, and through our high-rise levy and developer tax we will make sure that developers with the broadest shoulders pay their contribution.

I agree that leaseholders need stronger avenues for redress and I made that clear yesterday. The building safety Bill will bring forward measures to do this, including making directors as well as companies liable for prosecution. We are bringing about the biggest changes in a generation to the system through the building safety Bill.

Finally, I reiterate the comments I made yesterday about forfeiture. It is a draconian measure that should be used only as a last resort. This measure should be considered as part of our wider programme on leasehold reform. I beg to move.

Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A)

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

Moved by

Leave out from “House” to end and insert “do insist on its Amendment 4L”

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I first draw the attention of the House to my relevant interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, a non-executive director of MHS Homes Ltd and chair of the Heart of Medway Housing Association.

It is disappointing and frankly outrageous that the Government are doing nothing and not delivering on their promises to the innocent victims of the cladding scandal. The noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, has gone through various points. He said that the other place had consistently voted against our amendments. That is a matter of much personal regret. Most Members of the governing party do not seem to recognise the plight of the innocent victims in this scandal.

What also irritates me about this issue is the point made by my noble friend Lord Adonis. The Government are now saying, “Well, of course, the Session finishes tomorrow and we need to get the Bill on the books”. The fact is that the Government, when the House of Commons rejected our amendments some weeks ago, left them sitting there and did not bring them here. They could have done so and I do not know whether that was deliberate or incompetent. The fact is that the amendments just sat there and were not brought here. For the Government then to claim, “We cannot go any further because of where we are” is irritating, to say the least.

It is fair to say that one could never accuse this Government of acting in haste when it comes to the Grenfell Tower inquiry recommendations. This is the first piece of legislation since the fire happened four years ago this summer. The Government have not acted in haste at all. The noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, is right: I want to see the people who built defective buildings and put cladding on improperly pay. I do not want to see the innocent victims pay. I also want the companies that provided insurance honour it. They were clearly happy to provide the insurance and they should pay up. I also want to see the professionals who signed the buildings off and who pay for their professional indemnity insurance, come forward, recognise and be held to account for what they have done.

It is even more outrageous when one considers what our Prime Minister—the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom—been saying for the past 18 months. I shall remind the House of one or two of his quotes—not all because there are loads of them. There are many examples and I suggest that noble Lords, particularly those on the Government Benches, would do well to reflect on some of those comments, read what he said, think about them and consider what they will do in terms of the how they are being whipped to vote. The PM said on 30 October 2019:

“I know that progress is not as fast I should like, but I am pleased to say that all such buildings owned by central and local government have now had their cladding removed, are undergoing work to remove it, or, at the very least, have such work scheduled. In the private sector, progress is slower, and too many building owners have not acted responsibly.”—[Official Report, Commons, 30/10/19; col. 379.]


He also said:

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to this injustice and what is happening with leaseholders at the moment. That is why we have put £1.6 billion into removing unsafe cladding. I do not want to see leaseholders being forced to pay for the remediation, and I can assure my hon. Friend that we are looking now urgently—before the expiry of the current arrangements—at what we can do to take them forward and support leaseholders, who are in a very unfair position.”—[Official Report, Commons, 9/12/20; col. 842.]


That was the Prime Minister on 9 December 2020. He subsequently said:

“We are determined that no leaseholder should have to pay for the unaffordable costs of fixing safety defects that they did not cause and are no fault of their own.”—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/21; col. 945.]


Everyone would agree with that. That was the reply of the Prime Minister to the Leader of the Opposition on 3 February this year. That is just three quotes but there are many others that noble Lords should look at. Those are the quotes but we then come back to the reality of where we are, which is something different, is it not? It goes on and on.

What is shocking for me is that whenever the Government are provided with the means, through the Fire Safety Bill, to do what they promised—what the Prime Minister promised—they vote against it. We get excuse after excuse after excuse from the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, or at the other end about why the Prime Minister cannot do this and why the Government cannot deliver on their promises.

--- Later in debate ---

This Government always have been and will continue to be committed to delivering the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower inquiry. I respectfully urge noble Lords to reject the noble Baroness’s amendment. I reiterate that if we do not move forward with the Fire Safety Bill and get it passed tonight, it will fall and the Government will not be able to deliver the inquiry’s recommendations in relation to external walls and flat entrance doors. Ultimately, this means that the safety of residents and leaseholders could be compromised. I beg to move.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate tonight. It is worth pointing out that for the second day in a row debating these issues not a single Member of the Government Benches has come forward to support the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, or the Government’s position. As I said yesterday, I am not surprised because the position of the Government, frankly, is a disgrace and is totally outrageous.

The Government claim that we have not got this amendment right, it lacks clarity and we do not have the time. If we were going to accept that as a serious proposition, we would not have had this Bill just sitting there for weeks and weeks not being tabled by the Government. After it was rejected by the Commons it could have been brought here. They chose not to table it. They left it sitting there. I really do not think that point holds water.

Of course, the problem for the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, is that the sums of money pledged—and I accept that they are considerable—do not deliver the Prime Minister’s pledges, or do his pledges count for nothing? I will leave that there. He makes a lot of promises and pledges. I hope they count for something or do they count for nothing?

If voting again for this amendment would change anything, I would divide the House, but I am also not prepared to mislead those affected that we can force the Government to change this Bill. Sadly, the Government are not listening and the House prorogues tomorrow.

This issue, however, will not go away. The Government will be forced to do the right thing by the leaseholders, by the campaigners, by the Cladiators and by Members of this House and the other place. They will be dragged kicking and screaming to do what the leader of their party, the Prime Minister of the UK, pledged to do. I quote the Prime Minister—I think that the House will hear this quote time and again, until the Government do what he promised. He said:

“We are determined that no leaseholder should have to pay for the unaffordable costs of fixing safety defects that they did not cause and are no fault of their own.”—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/21; col. 945.]


That was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Conservative Party, the right honourable Boris Johnson MP, in response to a question put to him by the Leader of the Opposition on 3 February. That statement was made after this Bill had been through both Houses and three weeks before the Government, in the other place, rejected our amendments for the first time. The PM’s Government voted against the PM’s pledge—his promise—at every opportunity. The position is, frankly, ridiculous; what complete and utter nonsense has come from the Government.

As I said, I will not test the opinion of the House on my Motion tonight. This issue, however, will not go away, and the Government will have to deliver on their pledges and promises. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion A1 withdrawn.