Fire Safety Bill

Matthew Pennycook Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate.

It is unfortunate that this is the third time the House of Lords has felt it necessary to return this Bill to the House of Commons. That is because their lordships, like many MPs across the House, feel that the Bill cannot progress without some form of protection for leaseholders. It completely astonishes me that people in government cannot hear the screams of pain of leaseholders begging for help—people who are going bankrupt and people who are being hit with high insurance premiums. We were told only last week of an insurance premium for a building that was £11,963 last year but £242,400 this year. People are being hit with bills of £6,000 each with seven days to pay them and no recourse to help. With waking watches, there are interim bills that are going through the roof. Leaseholders cannot pay this; they cannot afford this. The reality is that these buildings will not be made safe by transferring the financial and legal liability on to leaseholders. Leaseholders do not have the funds to fix it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) said, we, leaseholders and leaseholders’ groups do not want the taxpayer to pay; we want the taxpayer to provide a safety net to help. We believe that those responsible should pay—nobody else.

Nobody wants this Bill to fail. We are nearly four years on from Grenfell. The Minister mentioned Grenfell in his opening remarks. I would like to read him a statement that has been issued by Grenfell United:

“The fire safety bill is back in the commons. Government is using the excuse that the amendment will delay Grenfell recommendations. The amendment is to protect leaseholders from charges. The FSB is separate & it is wrong to claim support of it damages recommendations. Using Grenfell Recommendations to justify government’s indifference is deeply upsetting for us and shows they’d rather protect the corporates responsible from paying for the mess they created. Our request is simple: implement Grenfell recommendations make homes safe & protect lease holders from financial ruin. Nearly 4 years since Grenfell and yet not a single piece of legislation has been passed. Homes have to be made safe this is a basic human right. We ask all MPs that committed to ensuring Grenfell 2 could not happen to do the right thing today by us and the thousands of leaseholders effected.”

Grenfell United and the people affected there have spoken. Leaseholders up and down the country are speaking. Our constituents are speaking and Members of Parliament are hearing them. The Bishop of St Albans has tabled an amendment to try to provide the Government with the opportunity of the time and space to come forward with a compromise. I urge the Government to compromise and bring forward an amendment in the House of Lords later today to help support leaseholders.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak so early in this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland). I thank their lordships for the tenacity and perseverance they have shown over many months in standing up for all the blameless leaseholders affected by the cladding crisis, including the many thousands who live in one of the more than 70 affected buildings in my constituency.

In seeking last week to persuade their lordships to cease insisting on amendments designed to protect all leaseholders from remediation costs, the Minister for Building Safety argued once again that such provision is unnecessary and that to continue to seek to amend the Bill in such a way would risk its passage in this Session, could increase fire safety risks and might “ultimately cost lives”. Yet it is the very fact that this crisis is already ruining countless lives that led their lordships to insist once again that this place reconsider, and they were entirely right to do so.

[Stephen Timms]

I agree with what my hon. Friend says. I wonder whether he has visited claddingscandalmap.co.uk, which maps 450 buildings with 60,000 homes affected by this scandal. It also shows the Members of this House who are voting to force leaseholders to pay towards the costs.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I have seen the site in question, and it brings home—I know he shares my feelings, as his constituency is so close to mine—the fact that certain parts of the country with high numbers of new build properties, including constituencies such as ours, are particularly badly affected. I have tens of thousands of constituents affected.

As welcome as they were, the five-point plan and the additional grant funding that the Government announced on 10 February are still only a partial solution to the cladding crisis, and they consciously and deliberately leave a significant proportion of leaseholders exposed to costs they cannot possibly hope to bear. For significant numbers of leaseholders, that exposure is not some theoretical future risk, but a reality that they are already confronting.

To take just one example, I had a lengthy exchange yesterday with the right-to- manage directors of a small 24-unit building in east Greenwich, Blenheim Court, which requires urgent remediation and is under 18 metres in height. As things stand, not only are the leaseholders in question living with the punishing uncertainty of not knowing if or when their building might be issued with a forced loan of the kind the Government propose, but because they do not have the funds to commence remediation works, they are struggling with myriad secondary costs, including a soaring building insurance premium, which has led their service charges to increase from about £2,500 a year per flat to more than £130,000—I have seen the invoice, and the figure is correct—and there is a very real risk of mass defaults as a result.

Every week that this House fails to act, more leaseholders are placed in similar situations and put at risk of negative equity and bankruptcy. I have absolutely no doubt that the Government will ultimately be forced to bring forward a more comprehensive solution that protects all affected leaseholders from the costs of fixing both cladding and non-cladding building safety defects. Seeking to pass the costs on to even a proportion of them will almost certainly mean that the works simply do not get done. Unless this House is content to follow that path and see many more lives needlessly destroyed in the interim, it must act today and take decisive steps towards resolving this crisis.

I urge Ministers, even at this late stage, to honour their commitments previously given from the Dispatch Box and come forward with a sensible concession. If they do not, I urge MPs from across the House to protect blameless leaseholders and support the amendment in the name of the Lord Bishop of St Albans in the Division Lobby shortly.

[Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

I rise to speak to the amendments in my name. I am grateful for the support from all parties for them. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) for the work they have done on this issue.

We have to find a way forward. We cannot continue this sterile ping-pong between the two Houses of Parliament. We need an actual plan, and I believe that my amendments set out a workable way that the Government can take this issue forward.

There are three issues that need to be dealt with, the first of which is forfeiture. The idea that people’s properties can be repossessed because they have been unable to pay cladding costs, which are unjust in the first place, is abhorrent. We need to reform leasehold legislation to prevent that from happening.

Secondly, we need a proper plan for apportionment of costs, as I set out in the appropriate persons for fire safety order costs amendment. That means that taxpayers are not asked to write a blank cheque, and nor will those with responsibility have the ability to collapse a company so that they can avoid costs at a future date. We have got to ensure that the “polluter pays” principle is applied in this case.