Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that the Government are committed to making sure that young people have the opportunities that they need to live and work in their local community, both in North West Durham and right throughout the country. I encourage my hon. Friend’s constituents to go to the Government’s ownyourhome.gov.uk website to check out the brilliant schemes that are available. I am also glad to let him know that later this month we will launch the first set of first homes in County Durham.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Today, on the fourth anniversary of the terrible fire at Grenfell, we first and foremost remember the 72 people who lost their lives. Our thoughts are with the bereaved, as well as the survivors of that terrible night.

The Grenfell community has steadfastly campaigned for justice and for change, but it has come too slowly. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in buildings that we now know to be unsafe, with some even still wrapped in the same flammable cladding as Grenfell. Many of those people are first-time buyers who have watched their dream of home ownership become a living nightmare, in unsellable, worthless homes.

I welcome the building safety fund, but funds alone are not enough, not least because of the extremely slow progress in allocating them. We need active intervention and leadership, so will the Secretary of State commit that all buildings will be made safe—and not just in respect of aluminium composite material cladding—or at least be in the process of being made so, by this time next year? Will he free homeowners from the burden of the costs and anxieties of being trapped in unmortgageable, unsafe homes?

[Robert Jenrick]

I join the hon. Lady in giving my sympathies, thoughts and prayers to the survivors, the bereaved and the community of north Kensington. We all want to support them to ensure that their quest for justice continues and reaches its conclusion, as a result of the public inquiry and the police investigations. Of course, we will do everything in our power to ensure that it never happens again.

Earlier this year, I set out the next steps in our plan to ensure that homes in this country are safe. We are providing £5.1 billion to ensure that unsafe materials, such as cladding, are removed from people’s homes as quickly as possible. Some 95% of those high-rise flats that have the same ACM cladding as was on Grenfell Tower have either now been remediated or have workers on site as we speak, and the work on 65% of them has been completed. I want to see that work finished by the end of this year and we will do everything we can to ensure that that happens.

We are also working with lenders, insurers and surveyors to ensure that they also play their part and we have a proportionate, sensible approach to risk, so that those who do not need to be trapped because of this issue are not unduly trapped and those who created this situation in the first place—the builders and the developers—pay their fair share. We are currently consulting on an industry levy and we will encourage, as we have done throughout this process, those developers that have not already stepped up to do so, because it is unconscionable that leaseholders are having to pay for the faults of an industry that has profited at their expense.