Building Safety Bill

Mike Penning Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am sure that it is in order, and that is the question that the hon. Lady is asking me as the Chair. It is in order for the Minister to lay a written statement when he decides it is the right time to do that, but if there is a question of information that the hon. Lady is suggesting ought to be before the House in order to inform Members about the Bill that is before us now, I cannot make a judgment because I do not know what is in that statement. However, if the Secretary of State would care to answer that point, it might help the House.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. All the documents that are relevant to this debate on Second Reading of the Bill are on the Table except the written ministerial statement that the Secretary of State has just referred to. For some of us who have been in the Chamber for some hours now, I am sorry, Secretary of State, but that is not acceptable.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The right hon. Gentleman is not speaking to the Secretary of State; he is speaking to me. I cannot see what is on the Table, and the Clerk is not telling me that the right hon. Gentleman is wrong. Let us just clear up this matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

Welcome to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and perhaps I should declare an interest as a former firefighter and a former fire Minister.

I took the promise of the Housing Minister, who is a good friend and an honourable Gentleman, that the previous Bill, the fire Bill, was not the vehicle in which to bring forward measures to protect the leaseholders in my constituency. I tabled or signed some amendments as probing amendments, but then withdrew them, and I took a lot of flak from leaseholders in my constituency, who said I had let them down. I am not going to let them down with this Bill, because it was supposed to address their concerns.

Thousands of my leaseholders are trapped within their properties. Thousands of them have already paid unbelievably large amounts of money which they cannot afford, and even if they could afford to pay it is morally wrong in the first place.

[Royston Smith (Southampton, Itchen) (Con)]

While I understand that the ministerial statement was late in being shown to us, does my right hon. Friend agree that there is much in it to be optimistic about?

[Sir Mike Penning]

I agree. There is a lot in it that is good. I did not have a chance to read it while the Secretary of State was still making his speech because I am not that brilliant at doing such things, but I have read it since the Secretary of State sat down and there are some good things in there. There are questions about it and I hope to serve on the Bill Committee; I hope those on the Treasury Bench listen to me on that, although that might be slightly difficult for Ministers.

I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), I agree with the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and I agree with much that was said from the Opposition Front Bench as well. This should not be party politics; this should be about what is right and what is wrong. This is a homeowning nation, and that includes freeholders and leaseholders, and the party I am proud to be a member of is a home- owning party.

On Grenfell, I pay huge respect to the families who lost loved ones or whose loved ones were injured, and to my former colleagues who went in the right direction with their paramedic friends and the police when the rest of the public quite rightly got out of the way— the bravery of the firefighters at that incident is to be commended.

However, there are issues that are not addressed in the Bill. This is not all about cladding. It is about the remedial works people are being charged for and the fire watch. I have heard of situations where residents in one block—a fairly low-rise block, actually—were told they could not have any mats outside their front doors. As a former firefighter, I think that is bonkers. They were told to take pictures of the wall in the communal areas. That is not what went wrong at Grenfell; what went wrong at Grenfell was a systematic failure across the picture—including within the fire service, to be fair. I was trained on high rise and in high-rise fires we told residents to stay in their flats. We told them they were safe in the stairwell, but often they would not be.

There is one area that fascinates me. We have heard about insurance and keep talking about insurance premiums, but where are the insurance companies paying out on premiums paid by the developers and contractors? When I was a builder I could not walk on to a building site without having liability insurance.

We can do this; we did this as a Government when the mesothelioma Bill went through this House and we compensated people dying from asbestos who could not find an insurer or a contract. The Government intervened to compensate those families and loved ones, and that is what we will have to do here, too.

I will be joining my colleagues on amendments that we have signed, and if I cannot serve on the Bill Committee what a great opportunity there will be for me on Report, not because I want to be difficult, but because I want to get this right for leaseholders. I was promised the previous Bill was not the answer. This has to be the answer to put things right.