Leaseholders and Cladding

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to my hon. Friend, who I know has been campaigning long and hard on this issue in Watford. As I have said, as a result of some considerable and lengthy negotiations with the financial services sector, we have agreed that EWS1 forms will not be necessary for buildings that are for sale that are not clad in the same way as some buildings that are in grave difficulty. That will help 450,000 people around the country, a number of whom I suspect will be my hon. Friend’s constituents. There is more work to do on this matter and we will continue to undertake it.

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

I need to declare my interest in that I am a leaseholder in an affected block, but in my case, my developer is paying for the full remediation works. The Minister must acknowledge that this is one of the biggest consumer and safety failures in a generation. For all that I chair the Public Accounts Committee—we have published a report on this issue—and I watch taxpayers’ money very closely, surely the Government need to step up, just as they did when the former Secretary of State signed a ministerial direction sanctioning the expenditure of millions of pounds because he knew that it would take too long to go through the legal process of tracking down the actual owners of buildings for the most dangerous cladding. The Government need to step up. We need 10 times the amount that has been pledged. Surely the Minister must recognise this. Too many leaseholders are trapped and will never be able to move.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I know that she is a very considerate and assiduous Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. The Government, though, have stepped up. It is why we put £600 million on the table to remediate ACM-clad buildings, and about 79% of those have now either completed or begun their remediation. Ninety-seven per cent. of social housing buildings have had that remediation completed. It is why we stepped up again with £1 billion through the building safety fund to remediate buildings that have other non-ACM-style dangerous cladding, but we must not absolve the developers and the owners of their responsibility to make sure that remediation takes place in the buildings for which they are responsible. We work with them to make sure that happens while we keep the general situation under review.