Building Safety Bill

Debate between Mike Penning and Stuart Andrew

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point. He will be aware that we are trying to avoid any leaseholders having any contributions to make at all. The first port of call will always be the people who developed the building in the first place. I hope to come on a bit later to the valuation of properties, which might address some of his points.

Importantly, we proposed that those leaseholder contributions be subject to a firm cap and that costs paid out in the past five years count against the caps. The Government originally proposed that leaseholders’ contributions be capped at £10,000, or £15,000 in Greater London, and we believe that creates a fair balance. It is the Government’s assessment that the vast majority of leaseholders would pay less than the caps, and many would pay nothing at all. None the less, the other place voted to reduce leaseholders’ capped contributions to zero. I am afraid the Government cannot accept the amendments.

We believe that in those circumstances, setting the cap on leaseholder contributions to zero is not a proportionate approach. Placing the entire burden on freeholders and landlords in circumstances where they are not at fault and are not wealthy will only increase the risk that remediation that is needed to ensure that residents are safe will not happen at all. We are therefore restoring the caps at £10,000 outside London and £15,000 in London, as originally proposed, and have made a small number of other technical improvements to those measures.

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

I welcome the Minister to his position on this very interesting Bill that is going back and forth. The one group of people who took the money right at the start for the developers and builders was the insurance companies. The developers could not have built those properties without having the legal protection of insurance. Sadly, the Minister has not mentioned the insurance companies once in this situation, but that is where the burden should fall, instead of on the leaseholders. Does he agree?

[Stuart Andrew]

Actually, the responsibility lies with those who built the building defectively in the first place. They are the ones we are chasing. I pay tribute— I should have said this right at the beginning—to officials in the Department, who have worked incredibly hard to get this new package of measures from the developers in place. It has not been an easy task, but they have done it with great passion and have been incredibly successful. As I say, it is the developers who should be paying, and we expect a minimal number of leaseholders to pay.