Building Safety Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

If I may, I will finish this point. I am also conscious of time, as many Members want to contribute to the debate.

Secondly, in the small number of cases where there are known to be concerns, these should be addressed primarily through risk management and mitigation.

Thirdly, there should be a clear route for residents and leaseholders to challenge costly remediation work, and to seek assurance that proposals are indeed proportionate and cost-effective.

Fourthly, the Government should work with the shadow building safety regulator to consider how to implement an audit process to check that fire risk assessments are following guidelines and not perpetuating the risk aversion that we are witnessing and which in some instances are taking unnecessary costs to leaseholders.

Finally, fire risk assessors and lenders should not presume that there is significant risk to life unless there is credible evidence to support that. This will ensure that they only respond to the evidence and adopt a far more proportionate and balanced approach.

This advice is supported by the National Fire Chiefs Council and the Institution of Fire Engineers. The Government support and will act on the recommendations. Delivering real change for leaseholders requires a concerted effort from all those actively involved in the market. The Government have in recent weeks been working intensively with lenders, valuers and fire experts in this regard. We welcome the expert advice and support the position that EWS1s should not be needed for buildings of less than 18 metres.

I am pleased that all major lenders have today welcomed this advice, with Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and others agreeing that the expert advice and Government statement should pave the way for EWS1 forms no longer to be required for buildings below 18 metres, which will further unlock the housing market.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will not.

I am extremely grateful to those in industry who have already engaged and shown the necessary leadership. This is a highly complex issue, but the Prime Minister and I expect that the appropriate next steps will be taken expediently. The market is shaped not only by the Government but by lenders, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the fire and rescue service, and fire experts. All of us need to act to achieve a market correction and relieve the pressure on homeowners. There can be no bystanders in this action. I am hopeful that other lenders will follow soon, and that RICS will rapidly reflect on the expert advice and update its guidance accordingly. This concerted cross-market approach will open up the housing market for the remaining affected leaseholders.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

The expert advice that I commissioned has concluded that there is no systemic risk to life from purpose-built flats in this country and in particular—this was the question that I asked of the experts—from those flats that are low and medium-rise, meaning those of 11 to 18 metres. The experts’ advice, following on from that, is that they do not see a need for lenders to ask for EWS1 forms in the ordinary course of business. They also recommend that fire risk assessments are conducted in the usual compliance cycle, rather than on demand, in order to satisfy a market transaction such as purchasing or remortgaging a property. They do not conclude—as one would not expect them to do—that all buildings below 18 metres are safe. One can never say that, and there will be buildings that need remediation below that level, but because there is no systemic risk and the number of buildings is likely to be very small, it is not appropriate, in their opinion, which the Government have accepted, that lenders and other parties in the market should act as if there was a widespread and systemic issue. That is a subtle but important change of tone and one that I hope will lead—the initial support of the lenders suggests that this will happen—to a significantly different housing market.

[Meg Hillier]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will, and then I would like to conclude my remarks.

[Meg Hillier]

On first reading, there are bits of this written ministerial statement that are very welcome, but it raises many questions. I put on record my regret that we have only had this chance to digest it. The Public Accounts Committee and our sister Committee, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, have been looking at this issue, along with hon. Members in this House for several years. We have been making recommendations along these lines. Our constituents have been paying for safety works and dealing with the fear and anguish created by the very issues that our Committees have raised as problems. What the Secretary of State has come to the House with is a start, but why so late, when this issue has been raised by Members of this House and the Select Committee corridor for some time? I am just puzzled by the late timing.

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not agree with the hon. Lady in this regard. In the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy, advice was published by Government that sought to provide information to the market where there was a significant absence of expert opinion. The market in the years since then has reacted and taken what I have described as a safety-first approach.

In more recent times we have seen—Dame Judith Hackitt, our expert adviser, has used these words herself recently—extreme risk aversion, and that is leading to fear and anxiety above all for members of the public who have a sense of risk with respect to their homes that is not borne out by the evidence in terms of the number of fires or the likelihood of dying in a fire in a high-rise or a purpose-built flat. Secondly, that risk aversion is leading to other market participants, whether lenders, insurers, surveyors or assessors, seeking remediation of those buildings over and above what might seem to be absolutely necessary to achieve an acceptable level of life safety.

Earlier this year, as I have set out in my remarks today—Members will see this in the written ministerial statement, which merely summarises what I have already said to the House directly in somewhat more detail, which is why I chose to say it to the House directly, rather than simply via written ministerial statement—I asked a series of experts to conduct a serious review and analysis of this issue and to present their findings to me. That is what they have done today, and we are publishing them later. We have chosen to accept those and have worked very closely with as many market participants as we could, bearing in mind the market sensitivity of the issue.

I am pleased that a large number of those organisations have welcomed this step and have chosen in one form or another to support it. I do not want to overstate that, because this is a highly complex market and the Government are merely one player within it. It will now require all market participants to think carefully about what the consequences are for their own practices and organisations. I hope that in time they will strongly support the Government’s position, and that this will lead to a significant market correction to the benefit of all our constituents and the whole country.

I will conclude my remarks simply by noting a few other points within the written ministerial statement. With the Health and Safety Executive, we will explore ways to deliver a fire risk assessment audit process that ensures assessments are carried out in a risk-proportionate way, avoiding unnecessary and costly remediation works where they are absolutely not needed. We will explore options to provide a clear route for residents and leaseholders to challenge costly remediation work. That will be progressed alongside the steps we are taking to ensure a proportionate response to risk is embedded in the market, including: developing guidelines for fire risk assessors, such as, and principally, PAS 9980 and the withdrawal of the consolidated advice note; and launching a Government-backed professional indemnity insurance scheme for qualified professionals conducting external wall system fire risk assessments to help ensure there is sufficient capacity in the market to allow EWS1 forms to be completed in a timely manner, where they are necessary, and that those conducting them feel the confidence and security to be able to do so in the most sensible and proportionate manner.

Taken together, all these measures should provide a measure of reassurance to the market and to those living in blocks of flats of any height. I am hopeful that they will have a significant impact, but of course much depends on the willingness of the other market participants to show leadership and commitment and to work together through these complex challenges.

The fire at Grenfell tower was a terrible tragedy, and those who lost loved ones remain in our thoughts. The issues that became clear following the tragedy are multifaceted, and so our response must be as well. It is clear that the actions we have taken and will continue to take, and the world-class building safety regime delivered by this Bill, should deliver a robust but proportionate regime, meaning that people in this country should never feel unsafe in their home.

I commend this Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I welcome you to your position.

I must declare an interest in that I am a leaseholder in an affected block, although, happily for me and for my neighbours, the developer who built the block is footing the bill for everything. I am surrounded by scaffolding, and cladding is being removed at this moment.

The Bill is welcome, but it has taken a long time to get here, and, as others have said, it does not solve the problem completely. I want, in my brief remarks, to acknowledge and reflect everything that was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). She summed up the challenges, while making it clear that for us this is not about scoring cheap party political points: we need to resolve the situation for all our constituents throughout the country. We recognise that legislation is one step along the way, four years on from the Grenfell disaster, but there is nevertheless a long gap—a long time lag—between legislation and action.

Let me give a recent example. The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, recently examined the work of the Office for Product Safety and Standards, which has only just assumed responsibility for product safety in this sphere and has not yet developed a methodology for its delivery. I am making no criticism of the OPSS, which has a job to do, but it has only just taken it on—and this is 2021, four years since the Grenfell disaster. That is an example of how a small delay in the Government can mean a very long delay for the thousands of our constituents who are really suffering.

The Government delay has further compounded the situation. From the beginning, a number of us have been talking about there being too few fire safety surveyors, and there has been confusion over the EWS1 forms. I have not enough time to go into the written ministerial statement, but I concur with what was said about that by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). The insurance and mortgage industries are adding to the costs and uncertainty by doing what they do, with no recognition from the Government that some of the statements they themselves have made have caused those problems, which they should have been better at predicting.

The pots of money are welcome, but they are smaller than what is needed. I think that the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), summed it up very well: we must get leaseholders off the hook, and then the Government must be very canny—and all of us will support them—in trying to secure the money from developers. We must also look at social housing. Support for today’s leasehold victims is at the cost of future housing for tenants and future leaseholders, at a time when housing supply is a Cinderella to the Government’s policy of fuelling demand.

Today’s extraordinary written statement came so late that I hope the Secretary of State will agree to appear before our sister Committee, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. There are important questions to be asked, and I think that all our inboxes will be flooded over the next few days. We still need skills to do this work, and I urge the Minister to look at delivering that as well as this legislation. We also need clarity on the levy, and on legal action, which is out of the price bracket of most of our constituents on top of the bills that they are already paying.

This situation needs to be tackled. The Bill is a start, but there are many people still living in limbo.