Business of the House

Matthew Offord Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

That the hon. Gentleman has gone green shows that the peace process really has worked. I can assure him that the Government are committed to ensuring that the UK meets its green energy commitments and that hydrogen plays an important role in that. I am in full agreement with the Prime Minister—well, I am always in full agreement with the Prime Minister, but particularly on this subject. I think the opportunity for hydrogen is extremely exciting and interesting, and it may be good enough to overturn this anti-car prejudice that some people have. If we have hydrogen cars, we can go back to enjoying all our motoring.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con) [V]]

Thousands of my constituents, mostly young, hard-working people, currently find themselves owning properties that have no value and are unsaleable due to fire safety-related issues. Will the Housing Secretary make a statement on the progress made in ensuring that leaseholders, such as my constituents in Zenith Close, Ridgemont estate, the Pulse development and Millbrook Park estate, do not have to bear the cost of fixing historical safety defects in their buildings and funding interim safety measures such as waking watches? Will he also make funds available to support remediation work in buildings under 18 metres?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend raises an important question. The Government are certainly looking at it and have appointed an adviser, Michael Wade, to accelerate the work on developing financing solutions to ensure that leaseholders are protected from unaffordable remediation costs while also ensuing that costs do not fall unreasonably on the taxpayer. We will provide an update on this work when the building safety Bill is introduced to Parliament.

To tackle historical safety defects, we have provided £1.6 billion in remediation funding, £1 billion of which, through the building safety fund, is specifically to address unsafe non-aluminium composite material forms of cladding systems. The objective of the building safety fund is to make homes safer faster, which is why funding is targeted at remediation costs of high-rise buildings.

We recognise that many leaseholders are anxious about potentially increasing costs from interim measures such as waking watches. We are keen to support leaseholders so that such interim measures are used in the short term and are not a substitute for remediation, and we are urgently investigating what can be done to reduce the costs of waking watches. For information, a waking watch is having people physically walk around the building to see that it is not at risk of catching fire. We are gathering evidence on cost data and will publish this information shortly.