Fire Safety Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I was tempted for a moment to think that you were saying that I am just perfect.

I must first declare an interest, as I am a leaseholder in a building with dangerous cladding, but happily for me and my neighbours, our developer stood up and is paying for every aspect of the costs, which is what every developer should do, although clearly that is not the case. I, too, pay tribute to the Minister for Security, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), and commend him for his decisive action at the early stages of this challenge, when he issued a ministerial direction to ensure that ACM cladding was removed from blocks. He recognised that it would take too long legally to chase down who should pay, and in the meantime the urgency of the issue was so great that it needed to be done. I feel that sets the tone for what the Government should be doing.

I commend the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) for their work to try to maintain the profile of this issue, which is particularly difficult to do as a Back Bencher. I also align myself completely with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) on the impact on residents. I am are not going to go into that, because I have repeated that many times and my constituents know that I understand their challenges.

This is the biggest consumer and fire safety failure in a generation. Both the Public Accounts Committee, which I chair, and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee have said that we need to make sure this is dealt with, and that we need to deal with the many challenges. I refer hon. Members to those reports. The housing association sector alone estimates £10 billion costs, so although I welcome the Government’s recent £3.6 billion injection, we know it is not going to be enough, and we are concerned about the £50 a month loan fee, on which I hope the Minister will come back to us at the end with a bit more information.

While ideally the taxpayer should not pay, the fact that the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup recognised that that direction had to be made and that the Government needed to step in with taxpayers’ money sends, to me, a very clear signal that that is the very best way of approaching this. Yes, we should be recovering money from the developers, ultimately, but we need to get the Government to do that. The Government are not always very good at getting money back from the private sector, but I am sure we can work together, across parties, to support the Government in that endeavour.

I do welcome the Bill. It is right that it should be introduced, and I hear the heartfelt plea from the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan). It is the right thing to do, but it contains an inherent contradiction: to implement it, work needs to be funded, because without that funding the Bill cannot be implemented. That is the problem, and that is why I support the amendments. I hope the Minister will come back, in his closing remarks, to explain what evaluation will be made about the £50 a month loan scheme. I refer him to the not great success of the green deal, which also put a charge on homes and failed badly. I would also like more detail and clarity on the timing of the building safety Bill, because all our constituents need that clarity.