Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clause 3 and amendments 12 to 14. A huge number of new builds have been built within my constituency boundaries over the last months, the vast majority of which have been flatted. There have been numerous difficulties over the years, many of which I will not be able to cover today due to the time limit and your exhortation, Mr Deputy Speaker, to stay within seven to eight minutes; as the first woman to speak, I intend to do so.

I will start with Legacy Wharf in Stratford, where leaseholders have been stuck with a succession of management companies that fail them time after time. Under the former management company, shoddy—and probably overpriced—repairs were made by favoured companies at leaseholders’ expense over and over again, rather than any investment in long-term, high-quality maintenance. Residents were hugely suspicious about possible kickbacks from service firms to the management company and the use of companies under the management company’s ownership, rather than it seeking the best price and the best quality of service.

Thankfully, that management company has changed, but many problems remain. Residents have just been handed bills for 18 months of energy use all at once due to the management company’s mistakes. Service charges and insurance bills rocket year after year, with residents wondering what on earth has been done with their money: they have poor landscaping, broken lifts and inadequate fire doors; the security of communal areas is rubbish; residents have lost access to hot water and the boilers have not been serviced for as long as four years. Those are all serious concerns raised about just one building. Ultimately, when accountability is sought, there is absolutely no way to get a prompt response. When there is such as constant deficit of transparency, it inevitably looks like a way to cover up wrongdoing, mismanagement or incompetence.

I strongly welcome the provisions in this Bill on service charge transparency, and I add my support for the amendments tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook). Amendments 12 and 13 would surely provide additional support to my constituents, because they would mean that leaseholders would not have to pay service charges unless basic transparency and accountability were in place. Amendment 14 would enable a maximum cost to be set for the provision of information to leaseholders, preventing the abuse of such costs to effectively obstruct accountability—it ain’t on.

Leaseholders in every part of West Ham have faced massive difficulties getting accountability. I am reminded of events in the Hallsville Quarter development in Canning Town, where residents in several buildings had to leave their homes after a sewage ingress and power cuts. The two management companies responded in totally different ways: Grainger offered £50 a day in subsistence payments, while FirstPort initially offered just £15 a day and only raised it to £25 after enormous pressure. FirstPort had to be chased by me for multiple basic actions, and responded so poorly to residents whose lives had been turned upside down by problems that were absolutely not of their making.

Next, I would like to raise the continuing concerns of the residents of Chobham Manor about their estate charge, which has increased rapidly over recent years. The charge is supposed to help pay for the upkeep of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, but many Chobham residents believe that it bears no relation at all to the amenities available to residents near the park. Despite my support, they have found it almost impossible to scrutinise the budgets they are paying for and to make sure that they ain’t paying through the nose for poor value for money. Chobham Manor residents frankly do not see what they are getting from the park in exchange for this charge, given that they are the only local residents who pay for it. I know that they will be grateful for an explanation of how they might benefit from the changes that the Bill will make.

I also want to mention, yet again, the continuing limbo of many residents of East Village in Stratford. Leaseholders there have lived under serious financial threat for well over four years now. The remediation needed to make their homes safe is still being held up because this Government’s previous legislation left the issue open to litigation. How can my constituents be reassured that this Bill goes further? The Secretary of State himself committed to using his planning powers to call in proposals submitted by irresponsible developers. I have to ask: will he make good on that promise and target those who are continually refusing to act on fire safety and leaving leaseholders on the hook?

In a final case from West Ham, diligent and determined leaseholders have successfully taken managing agents or freeholders to the tribunal for their dire failings. I am sorry to tell the House that these failings were across the board, including rat infestations, lack of insulation causing skyrocketing energy bills, no transparency on the huge service charges, building safety problems and a complete lack of accountability. Surely it should not have come to this.

We should not be depending on individual leaseholders to battle their way through obscure systems for their plight to get the attention it needs. MPs should not have to make dozens of detailed representations over and over again. It could not be clearer who has the power in these disputes, and in so many cases leaseholders are still paying the price for a system that is absolutely broken. Sadly, the legacy of years of failure to act creates understandable scepticism that change will come now, so I want to hear from the Minister today that he believes that the Bill will finally end this injustice.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown). We share a similar part of the world: Essex and the east of London. In Romford, just as in West Ham and the London boroughs to the east of the capital, we have seen a huge increase in the number of flats and high-rise blocks being built over the last 20 years. Havering is a town and country borough and we have not had many flats in the past, but suddenly we are seeing huge numbers of that kind of accommodation being built. This brings huge numbers of problems with it, including what we are debating today.

I thank the Minister for bringing this Bill forward. I hope that it will deal with many of the issues that colleagues across the House have raised today, because they are very real. I sense that there is consensus on both sides of the House that serious action needs to be taken, because this can really destroy people’s lives and ruin them; they have saved to buy a property and they have a leasehold, yet they are fleeced by sharks and managing agents who pile on the costs, and by armies of lawyers who make their lives miserable and threaten them with losing their property all together. This is not right for the people we all represent.

I am now dealing with these cases in Romford on a daily basis. The hon. Lady mentioned many of the problems in West Ham, and I have examples in the Steelway apartments in the centre of Romford. I visited those apartments only a few weeks ago and saw the problems that people there are facing. They are failing to get responses from the management agents and those responsible, they are paying money for no service, and they are being ripped off by management agents who are not doing the job they are paid to do. I went to Rubicon Court, a fairly new development built only a few years ago, and was shocked—absolutely flabbergasted —to see how badly the residents are being looked after. The service they are paying for has completely failed. I saw mould, rats, rubbish and CCTV cameras that do not work. That is not acceptable and, when the Bill is passed into law, I hope the Minister will ensure that it is effective. It is no good passing legislation unless it is effective and comes into force quickly.

Building Safety

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is right, and he has been a fantastic champion for the residents of Cardinal Lofts and other people affected by this. I think I am right in saying that Railpen is the ultimate owner of the freehold for this building. It is the pension fund for those who work in the rail sector. There are good trade unionists on the board of that pension fund to whom I appeal to show the same degree of energy in helping working people as my hon. Friend. While pension funds of course have fiduciary responsibilities and all the rest of it, it is vital that we do right by the residents of this building. I hope I will have the chance to visit Ipswich soon, to make good on that commitment.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his care in this matter, but I still have hundreds of constituents who are in financial limbo and mental turmoil because of safety problems that are not of their making. Frankly, West Ham is a building site at the moment. Stratford, West Ham, Plaistow and Canning Town all have major building contracts ongoing. If the developers are not on the “goodie” list of those who have signed the right bits of paper, what happens to that development and the oversight of it? I know that my constituents would want me to ask this: what will he be able to do for those who have not been fully covered by the remediation contract?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for standing up so well for her constituents, as she always does. Actions have to have consequences. The overwhelming majority of developers have done the right thing by signing this contract. It would be wrong for anyone who has wriggled out of their responsibilities to be allowed to continue to make a profit when others are shouldering these responsibilities. It is the case that if a company is not on, as she puts it, the goodie list, that will be it—development will have to pause, and we will make sure that their shareholders and investors pay the price for the irresponsibility of their directors.

On the broader point, if the hon. Lady, on behalf of her constituents, would like to get in touch with my Department and, in particular, our recovery strategy unit, there may well be developments or buildings in her constituency that are not covered by this where there are freeholders or other people responsible whom we need to track down. We look forward to working with her.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an absolute honour to follow the right hon. and gallant Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and to hear again his powerful testimony about what he witnessed. He is right that we simply must never forget. His speech is one of many excellent speeches in this debate.

I will speak about the 1943 uprising at Treblinka, where very ordinary people with very little hope rose to destroy the machinery of death and to escape. Treblinka, as we know, was created for the sole purpose of exterminating the Jewish people. It was not capable of holding many people for long periods. There were no forced labour factories. In little more than a year, an estimated 925,000 people were murdered.

The people who fought back had personally seen tens or even hundreds of thousands of innocent people being murdered. They had been forced to cut off the hair of their fellow victims just before they entered the gas chambers and sort through the clothes of the newly dead. They had to pick through the ashes from every day’s thousands of corpses to remove fragments of bone, which were crushed and burned again so that no evidence of this enormous evil would be left. They had been forced to do all that, to endure all that, and still they had the strength to plan, to work together, and to fight for their right to live.

I believe it is important that we understand just how difficult and extraordinary any form of resistance was within the camps, because we know that the control by the guards was almost absolute. All the prisoners knew of the immediate brutality that would be inflicted upon resisters if they were caught. But it was more than that. The Nazi regime sought to break the very spirit of the prisoners—not only their hope, but their solidarity among themselves. Chil Rajchman, who survived Treblinka after taking part in the uprising, said that the victims

“were so abused, victimised…that they wanted to die… Our vision was overcast. We did not know what was happening to us… The whole world forgot about us. Our lives were worthless.”

Despite the devastating impact of years of unceasing trauma, courage and solidarity remained and could not be broken. In the summer of 1943, news came to the camp of the Warsaw ghetto uprising a few months earlier, so against enormous odds, plans for an uprising to destroy Treblinka began. The guards had built an armoury and selected a Jewish locksmith to work on the lock. He was able to make an extra copy of the key and pass it to the organisers. Others were brought into the conspiracy, including the Jewish boys of just 12 or 13 years of age who had been given the weekly task of cleaning up after the camp guards. The uprising began on 2 August 1943. Those brave, brave young boys smuggled guns out from the armoury underneath the rubbish in their carts. The barracks were set alight, and the main gate was attacked, but the towers could not be captured and the guards fought to maintain their brutal control. All that could be done was to run and hide.

Of the 840 people in the camp that day, only 200 fully escaped the pursuit, and just 100 survived the rest of the war. Let us remember that those who rose up in Treblinka were ordinary people willing to die that day so that others would have a chance to live. They were not bound together by training or ideology, but were thrown together in the midst of utter horror. Their desire to survive and resist came from within and from each other. We must remember them. As a country, we must try to match just a fraction of their resilience as we stand against atrocities in our own time, because—as we know and as we have heard—people in this world are still systematically murdered because of their identities.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the start of acts of genocide in Darfur—horrific crimes against humanity that have happened on our watch. In Darfur, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, rape has been used as a weapon on a massive scale, and millions still endure forced displacement. Every year on Holocaust Memorial Day, we say, “Never again”, but I genuinely believe that saying and believing that requires us to act. Atrocities continue regularly in Darfur, and the people accused of those crimes against humanity have faced no justice. We need to recognise that, instead of being put on trial, some of those implicated in Darfur have built careers on the murder and destruction that they planned and organised. Many remain in positions of power and prosperity in Sudan today.

I absolutely welcome the Government’s statement at the UN Security Council yesterday calling on the authorities in Sudan to act. I hope that justice for the atrocities in Darfur is a primary UK objective as we continue to support the movement of Sudanese people who wish only for peace and democracy. We must always remember the victims of the holocaust, and we can never rest content until justice is done for the victims in Darfur and those everywhere else in our world where genocide again threatens our humanity.

Section 21 Evictions

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have a quarter share in a private rental somewhere in the country—it was an accidental rental. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), for bringing this issue to the House and giving us the opportunity to talk about it today. His speech was absolutely excellent. I am grateful for the chance to add my two penn’orth.

As we should all know by now, the economic crisis is putting families at financial risk. Spiking mortgage rates are not just affecting homeowners, but causing massive worries to renters, so it was appalling to see reports that the Government were going to drop rental reform. The Conservative party has promised these reforms over and again without, it appears, ever starting to act on its promise. I can only hope that the incoming Prime Minister will see how the issues of economic stability, renters’ rights and homelessness are linked, but I am not holding my breath. To help families in this country, mortgage rate projections need to come down, inflation needs to be controlled and the economic damage done by this Conservative Government over years needs to be repaired. We can surely all see that. To prevent homelessness from rising even further, the Government need to repair their policy on renters’ rights as well, which means honouring the promise in the Conservative manifesto and finally ending section 21.

Let me tell the Minister a little bit about Newham, just in case he has not come across it during his tenure. We have the highest homelessness rate and the second highest child poverty rate in the country. At the last count, before the cost of living crisis hit, one in 22 people in Newham was homeless. That mostly means that families are stuck in poor-quality temporary accommodation month after month, year after year. That can be a hotel with no facilities for cooking or for washing clothes, and there is a huge cost to the council and a massive cost to those who wait. Imagine having children but no cooking facilities at all. Imagine how expensive and unhealthy that is. In those circumstances, it is massively difficult for people to live a normal life and to give their children the opportunities that all our children deserve. How much worse will that get now, with rents, bills and mortgages all rocketing? We have seen estimates that private rents in London have increased by as much as 16% over the past year. Whose wages are going up by that much?

Let me talk about Syeda, who has been on the waiting list for social housing in Newham for 15 years. She lives with her husband and three children in a basement flat. She and all her children, who are between the ages of five and 18, sleep in one room. Her children are afraid to sleep alone because of the recurring rat infestation, and they have to do their homework on the floor. Understandably, they are falling behind at school. Syeda’s children have increasing breathing difficulties and frequent illnesses because of the severe damp and mould. Syeda has a disability, which makes getting up and down the stairs to the flat very difficult. Unsurprisingly, her mental health is damaged by the family’s awful living situation.

Syeda’s landlord has served them with a section 21 notice, and her family are on the verge of homelessness. The landlord says they want to make comprehensive repairs—from hearing the description, that is absolutely necessary—but instead of recognising the duty that they owe their existing tenants, they are ending the contract. They will no doubt seek a massively higher rent from new tenants once—or if, frankly—any repairs have been effected. Section 21 gives exploitative landlords a free hand to abuse families such as Syeda’s. It makes it much easier for rents to be ramped up far beyond what local people can afford and, frankly, what the property is worth.

Morgan is a single mum of four who already works almost full time. One of her children has a disability. Morgan is on the local housing register and has been waiting for a social home for 18 years. That would be shocking if it was not normal. Until she found her flat, Morgan was in temporary accommodation. She and her children were moved five times from place to place, and had to deal with rats, mould and the additional cost that moving entailed. Her current home ain’t great. It is in bad disrepair, with mould, leaks and broken lights. The flat costs Morgan £1,800 a calendar month—barely affordable even before prices started to increase so much. Having the flat avoids the need for constant moving and the consequent costs, and it is close to Morgan’s work and her children’s schools, but the landlord wants to increase her rent for that poorly maintained flat to £2,500 per month—an almost 50% increase. It beggars belief.

What can Morgan do when the law is on the landlord’s side? What will the Government do to help Morgan and the hundreds of thousands of Morgans and Syedas? I want to hear a really clear reassurance from the Minister that this Government will bring forward a Bill to abolish section 21, and will implement the comprehensive protections for renters that are urgently and desperately needed. If rapid progress is not made, there is surely only one conclusion that we can draw: that this Government and their previous incarnations in the past 12 years have not given a stuff for the plight of renters in Newham, London and across this country. What we need, not just for renters but for the entire fabric of our society, is a general election, and a Labour Government, now.

Local Government Finance (England)

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The House should also note that the Local Government Finance Report has since been updated with a small correction on page 14. Like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am grateful to the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments for its careful consideration of these reports.

Before I turn to the details of the reports, may I say a brief word of thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), who until very recently served as Minister for Housing and Planning? We will be starved of his eloquence at the Dispatch Box, because he has been translated to the Whips Office, but I know that that eloquence will not be wasted on my right hon. and hon. Friends, who will benefit from his wisdom and gentle guidance as they consider which Lobby to enter in the light of all the delicate matters that we discuss.

I should add that it was on the watch of my right hon. Friend that the number of first-time buyers in the country reached a record level, and that the stewardship he displayed, and also the imagination and attention to detail, were those of a model Minister. He will be missed. I should also add that although his shoes are both difficult to fill and always highly polished, we are nevertheless very fortunate to have in the Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), an excellent new addition to our departmental team. We welcome him to his place, and we know that he is a doughty defender of the interests of the north of England, of local government overall, and of those who aspire to live in and to own a decent home. I am therefore grateful for the fact that he has joined the team.



The local government finance settlement makes available, to local government in England, core spending power of £54.1 billion for 2022-23. This is an increase of £3.7 billion on 2021-22, a real-terms increase of 4.5%.

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that the considerable eloquence of the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) will be deployed inter alia in drawing attention to the years from 2010 to 2017-18 when there were necessary economies in local government spending. I suspect, although I cannot be certain, that she will for partisan reasons, entirely fairly, seek to contrast the restraint in public spending during those years with the increases that we are now making to suggest that the increases do not make up for the previous restrictions on public spending, but it is impossible to consider those restrictions without appreciating the context of the economic circumstances that the coalition Government inherited in 2010—I do not wish to make any partisan points—and that required us to deal with the inevitable consequences of the financial crash.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am not going to delve into history; I would just like to talk about the pandemic of the last couple of years. In my constituency, Newham Council is about £10 million shy because of covid spending, which will have ongoing consequences. Much of it has come from revenue accounts for temporary accommodation. Newham has the largest housing list in the country and the second highest rate of child poverty, yet we are still having to cope with covid costs of £10 million and counting without any respite from the Treasury.

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes a series of important points. Newham Council faces serious pressures for a variety of reasons, as do so many in local government. This provides me with an opportunity to draw attention to, and to praise, the efforts not only of elected councillors but of those who work in local government in Newham and elsewhere who, in dealing with the strains of covid over the past two years, have shown immense determination, energy and forbearance.

Whichever party had been in power, these covid costs would have been inevitable because of the nature of the pandemic. I would argue that the big choices made by the Prime Minister on the vaccination programme and the approach we took immediately before Christmas in the wake of the omicron wave have been vindicated by events. I would also argue that the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s adoption of the furlough programme ensured that our economy weathered the storm more effectively than other economies did. Because of those big decisions made by the Chancellor and the Prime Minister, we are now in a position where the spending review can increase expenditure by 4.5% in real terms.

[Ms Brown]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for mentioning how very difficult it has been to be a councillor or officer in local government over the past two years. They have had a terrible job, but it is not made easier when they were told that their costs would be covered only to find themselves £10 million shy and counting. I hope he will take that away and think about how he can give respite.

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. The position of those who are served by Newham Council has been very clearly outlined by the hon. Lady. Within the context of the settlement we are debating today, we will look at all the additional support we can give to those who are dealing with the consequences of covid.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) for his powerful and moving opening speech. May I say how sorry we were to hear of his family’s recent experiences? He has solidarity on the Opposition Benches against those racists.

Every day on my Twitter feed, I see the Auschwitz memorial’s images of people murdered. Those that grab me particularly are the faces of the babes in arms, toddlers, children and teens who were murdered in the gas chambers. Every single day, I wonder how those faces could be treated as the enemy, having their very humanity denied. Every single day, I wonder how it is possible that human beings could do this to such innocents. Every single day, I have genuinely no idea how it happened.

Today, I want to tell the story of Rena Quint, who survived the holocaust at just nine years of age. Rena lived with her mother, father and two brothers. She remembers that across the street was a kiosk that sold ice cream; she remembers her brothers pulling her through the snow on a sledge. She was just three years old when Germany invaded Poland. Her home was in the new ghetto: it took in many sick and hungry strangers, and people died before her eyes.

Then, one day, there was a round-up. All the women and children were brutally forced into the synagogue. Rena, her mum and her brothers were among them. She describes it as a scene out of hell, but she remembers a man at an outside door who beckoned to her, called her by name and told her to run. She still does not quite understand why she let go of her mum’s and her brothers’ hands, but she ran. Rena says that maybe the hand of God pushed her, because all those women and children were transported to Treblinka, and they were murdered.

Rena was given a new name. She was dressed as a boy and joined her father’s forced labour group. She has no idea how she was able to pretend for so long, but pretending kept her alive. She had to work at a glass factory at just five or six years of age, carrying heavy loads in extreme heat all day long.

In 1944, when it was decided that their slave labour was no longer needed in the factory, Rena and her father were packed into freezing cattle cars to Bergen-Belsen. They had no food, no water and no toilets, and they were locked in for three days with the dead and the dying. When they arrived, her father knew that they would be forced to strip for inspection, so they were forced to separate. Rena never saw her father again. She endured the utter horror of the camp for many months, with nothing to eat but sawdust bread and sometimes thin, greasy soup, with cold and disease all around. Rena never cried in response to any of the thousands of deaths that she would have witnessed. Murder was her every day.

And then, one day, when Rena was sick with typhus, she remembers lying under a tree. She felt that it was impossible to get up and she just wanted to fall asleep forever, but then there was a commotion. British soldiers had arrived and they were liberating the camp. Rena remembers getting some milk and bread and going into a hospital tent and being cared for.

Rena has lived a long and flourishing life to this day, but she was so young when her birth family were murdered that she no longer remembers their faces. Rena’s account reminds us of the systemic inhumanity that so many millions of Jews were subjected to during the holocaust, and it speaks of how the innocence of children was so completely disregarded and destroyed by the Nazis.

Rena had to behave as an adult from as young as five years of age while having to deal with things that no adult, still less any child, should experience. We must never forget her story. Her story reminds me of the children growing up today in the Rohingya refugee camps. It makes me think of the children in Bosnia now facing the same rising threat as their parents and grandparents. What are we going to do to stop these young lives being brutalised, too?

This year’s theme is “One Day”. My hope is that, one day, children will no longer be dehumanised or treated as enemies, targets or soldiers. But even when that day comes, as I pray it does, we must remember Rena’s life and her family’s lives and all the other millions murdered.

Residential Leaseholders and Interim Fire Safety Costs

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]]

I am very grateful for the extra 30 seconds, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) for organising this debate and speaking so brilliantly in opening it. In West Ham, we have the highest take-up of furlough and unemployment is up 240% since the pandemic began—it is grim. That is what people in Newham already face, and the costs and stresses of so-called interim fire safety measures come on top of that really difficult reality. Interim means that until the blocks of flats have been certified and, if necessary, remediated, people are in limbo, and that is proving to be a really long time. Because of these measures, residents are still living with the constant reminder that their building is not safe. It preys on their mind, and they are paying through their nose for the privilege.

Zain’s block was found to be unsafe, but the original developer of his building is now operating another company. It has refused to take responsibility, so the costs will inevitably fall to Zain and the other residents of his block. The Minister knows full well what I think about that. I would be grateful to him if he touches on what he can do to help Zain and other residents in similar circumstances.

Before the expensive remediation work even begins, Zain has been faced with massive bills. The insurance premium for the block has rocketed from £3,500 to £280,000. Unbelievably, Zain was asked to cover 2021’s bill with one day’s notice. Then there is the cost of the new alarm system, round after round of surveys, a new managing agency and even the dreaded waking watch. Overall, that could cost Zain £20,000—probably more. His building is not a high rise, so unless the Government change tack, the estimated £40,000 per household for the cost of remediation will not be covered fully either. Zain is terrified. He is going to have a bill of £60,000 and upwards in total.

I cannot emphasise enough what a strain this issue is putting on my constituents’ lives, their relationships, their ability to move on, and their mental health. It is so unfair. Time and again, Ministers have promised that leaseholders trapped in these situations will not have to pay to fix problems that they did not cause, but as I said before, with the interim costs, leaseholders are already paying. That is why so many people were bitterly disappointed when the Government rejected Labour’s amendments and the McPartland-Smith one-two. I really hope that today the Minister will provide us with fresh assurances that we can pass to Zain and the thousands of others that this seemingly endless awful situation will finally be resolved, and that the Government will step up.

Building Safety

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. We all believe in home ownership. We want to get more people on to the housing ladder, and we know that owning a home of your own is one of the most special achievements in life. But we also know that, in recent years, some of our developers—and some of our most prominent ones, too—have built homes that are to a poor standard; they have admitted it in some cases. We need to make sure that that is corrected, so that the quality of homes in this country is high and members of the public can have confidence when making that life-changing investment.

It cannot be right that buying a home affords someone less protection than buying a mobile phone or many other things we do in our daily lives. We want to see a major change in the culture of the industry, so that homeowners get the product—the brilliant, beautiful, high-quality home—that they deserve. We have set up a new homes ombudsman, which will be passed into law as part of the building safety regulator. The new regulatory regime, which is already in existence in shadow form, will be put into permanent form through the passing of the Building Safety Bill. For higher-rise buildings—those over 18 metres—that will create a very strict, world-class regulatory regime.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) said, with knobs on. My constituents will not be reassured by what they have heard. Loans for leaseholders still are not off the table. The Secretary of State has avoided talking about non-cladding costs, and there is still no guarantee that my constituents will not be left with large associated bills for problems they did not create. A number of institutions are profiteering from this crisis, including parts of the insurance industry and others, with eye-watering premiums. Why are we still waiting for the Secretary of State to get a grip on this crisis?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am disappointed by the tone of the hon. Lady’s remarks. She has followed this issue closely and has fought for her constituents, and I praise her and recognise her for that hard work, but this Government have done a huge amount, and I entirely reject her accusations. We have brought forward the public inquiry. We have planned and are now legislating for a new building safety regulator—a world-class regulatory regime. We have brought in people to ensure that the unsafe cladding on ACM-clad high-rise buildings is remediated, and that work has progressed a great deal over the course of the year. As I said earlier, many Labour politicians, including the Mayor of London, opposed that initially, at the height of the pandemic. We have done a great deal, but there is more to be done.

I do not know what the hon. Lady’s proposition is with respect to other materials beyond cladding. All the expert opinion says, “Focus on cladding. That is the primary risk here—that is the focus that Government should have.” I will keep following expert advice. If the Labour party’s position is that we should not follow that, and that in fact the Chancellor should write a blank cheque and say that absolutely any building safety defect on any building of any height should be paid for by the taxpayer, that is a very substantial cost, and I would be interested to know how she intends to fund that. With respect to the insurance companies, I do now expect them to step up and ensure that their premiums are proportionate and risk-based, because I think some of them have been exploiting leaseholders in a very difficult position.

Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

My constituents will be absolutely furious that the Government appear to be rejecting not only our amendments, but those of the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith). My constituents have been constantly told that they will not be made to pay for fire safety problems they are not responsible for, but leaseholders are already paying for them, with huge bills for waking watches, outrageously inflated insurance premiums and eye-watering variable mortgage payments. My constituents are paying through the nose now. These costs are inescapable, and they are taking a real toll on already stretched finances and on the mental health of my constituents—lives are on hold. This is the result of a crisis my constituents did not create.

Let me again raise with the Minister one of the biggest cases in my constituency. Stratford East Village, the former Olympic park, has fire safety risks that go way beyond cladding: defects that violated fire safety regulations in place long before the Grenfell tragedy. The Olympic park contractors were working for the Government, and they should not expect my constituents to pay for it, but they are doing so through huge insurance premiums and watch costs. In one case, the cost of insurance has been raised sixfold in a year.

However, the Olympic park is far from the only area affected in my constituency. In West Ham we find problems no matter where we look, and the same is true in Canning Town. I have been asked to make representations to housing associations so that they understand the impossible circumstances residents are in and to ask them to be flexible. They have to look at their policies on staircasing, sub-letting and buying back from the leaseholder. It is really important that Ministers do not forget how over-extended my constituents already are. London is different—I am sorry, but it is—simply because of the cost of housing here. In 2019, the median house price in Newham was 13 times the median earnings of residents; in 2017 and 2018, it was even higher. It is the legacy of utterly unaffordable housing. When we add in the recession and the financial impacts already experienced, threatening leaseholders with further costs just is not fair. It is cruel.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]]

I want to start by paying tribute to Olivia Marks-Woldman and the staff at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and Karen Pollock and the good people at the Holocaust Educational Trust, for their tireless work to educate us all. “Be the light in the darkness”—what an amazingly powerful theme. It is a reminder that the anti-fascist values of those who stood against the Nazis are so important today.

I have always been awed by the Warsaw ghetto uprising—a few streets that held out against overwhelming Nazi force for 28 days—and today I am remembering Tosia Altman. She was just 20 years old when she joined comrades in Lithuania, but she was the first to go back into Nazi occupied areas—such courage at such a young age. She spent the next few years, at enormous risk, travelling in and out of Jewish ghettos in occupied Europe. She spread information about the horrors that were being perpetrated. She also spread hope. She organised the resistance.

Tosia’s incredible resilience in the darkest of times helped to bring about the Warsaw ghetto uprising. She helped people to know that state-enforced hatred could be challenged. She smuggled weapons into the ghetto. She strategised. Over and over again, she went into burning buildings to rescue others. She saved lives and, tragically, burns finally killed her. After being handed over to the Germans by collaborators in the Polish police, she died on 26 May 1943 after two days of untreated, unmitigated agony. She was the first from her movement to return to the greater danger in Poland, and she was the last of them to fall. Tosia Altman, a light in the darkness—remember her name.

We know in this place that racial hatred and genocidal violence is still with us in this world. That is why I was so disappointed that last week, despite the pleas of holocaust survivors, the Government refused to change the law to prevent trade deals with countries committing genocide. We must have clear pathways to identify and prevent another genocide. “Never again” must not be a platitude. It is an instruction. We must be the light in the darkness.