Building Safety and Resilience

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Before we begin the general debate, I remind the House that on Wednesday last week, Mr Speaker renewed the waiver relating to matters sub judice in respect of ongoing or adjourned Grenfell Tower inquests and cases relating to cladding. This is to allow debate to take place on relevant policy matters, including the phase 2 report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry and the Government’s response to it. The waiver does not permit discussion of the details of individual cases. I remind hon. Members of the likelihood that both civil and criminal proceedings in the courts will follow in the coming months and years. Members will want to take special care to avoid saying anything in this House that could prejudice a future trial.

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[Rushanara Ali]

Having dealt with such cases in my own constituency, I am very aware of the challenges. The Prime Minister made it clear that if further action is needed we will take it, but we will use the existing laws and the powers we have to take action now. I assure my hon. Friend that officials are working closely with Members of Parliament to support them and their constituents, to ensure that action is taken. I hope that I can meet colleagues regularly to support them, with officials, to ensure that those who are intransigent do the work that they are required to do. We will take action, and we will work with Members to ensure they get the support they need.

In response to the recent fires in Slough and Dagenham, the Government are supporting local teams to assist those affected. Firefighters also attended a fire in my own borough—a high-rise building in Blackwall. I am very grateful to emergency workers for their bravery and quick response to those and other incidents. Following the fire in Dagenham, at a roundtable of regulators and partners the Deputy Prime Minister made clear that fixing unsafe buildings must happen faster.

Members across the House will share our resolve in wanting the findings of the Grenfell inquiry to be a catalyst for change. I want to assure the House that we will hold a further debate on the Grenfell inquiry report in the autumn, which I know many Members will want to contribute to. It will be an opportunity for them to share their insights, to discuss the specific recommendations that have been made and to work with us to bring about the change that is urgently needed. In the meantime, we will support the Metropolitan police and the Crown Prosecution Service as they complete their investigations and bring prosecutions.

This is about delivering justice and accountability, but it is also about treating everyone, regardless of where they live, with respect. In that spirit, we are listening to those affected. We are engaging with residents, local authorities, housing associations and others in the fire safety community to ensure that our policies and actions reflect the concerns of those affected. We are setting an expectation of industry to ensure that residents are listened to, protected and have peace of mind that action to make their homes safe is a matter of priority and taken seriously. Looking to the future, we will ensure that the security, health and wellbeing of residents and their wider communities will drive our mission to build 1.5 million new homes over this Parliament.

We will never forget the Grenfell Tower tragedy on that night in June 2017. Over the past seven years, the bereaved, survivors and the immediate Grenfell community have campaigned relentlessly to protect their fellow citizens, despite their personal loss and pain. As the Prime Minister said, in the memory of Grenfell we will change our country and we will bring the full power of Government to bear on this task, because that is the responsibility of service and the duty we owe to the memory of every single one of the 72 lives lost.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I must remind Members that contributions are made through the Chair, so it is important to make eye contact with the Chair rather than with the Minister on the Front Bench.

[Mr Betts]

I am sure you appreciate, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I always want to make eye contact with you. [Laughter.] I probably will not be called again for a long time after that.

Of course I agree with my hon. Friend that while social landlords in particular should take their responsibility seriously, and I think that most of them do, many are struggling.

My final ask of the Minister is this. Given the urgency of the issue, will she agree to meet me—together with Kate Henderson, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, and the representative of the local council who recently produced an excellent report about funding for council house building—to discuss this issue and the extra challenges that it poses to both housing associations and councils at what is a difficult time?

Let me end by thanking all my colleagues who were involved in the Select Committee in the previous two Parliaments. Its new Chair is to be elected today, and I offer to help and support whoever it is in any way I can, because I am sure that this issue is one that the new Committee will want to address.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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[Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)]

I would like to put on the record the thanks of my constituents in Kensington and Bayswater, which includes the wider Grenfell community, for the cross-party support last week when the phase 2 report of the Grenfell inquiry was published. We thank the Minister and the Government for making time today and for committing to future time, and we thank the Prime Minister for his statement and heartfelt apology on behalf of the British state for what happened. He spoke for us all, including the Leader of the Opposition.

The Grenfell legacy obviously has lots of dimensions, but one of them is building safety. I urge Members to remember the 72 victims of the fire, whose legacy has to be fixing this crisis. After the report was released, there were three immediate actions that the community wanted me to advocate in this place. The first was about criminal prosecutions, which is not a matter for discussion today. However, as the Justice Secretary mentioned in questions yesterday, it is important that we ensure that the court system is prepared for any potential decisions that come through the Metropolitan police and CPS process, and that court backlogs and the complexity of any potential trials do not result in even further delays to justice.

Secondly, the accountability of the companies is not just about criminal investigations; it is about their role in public procurement and paying for remedial work. We need to continue to push on that. Finally, we are discussing policy changes today to ensure that this never happens again, but the pace of change has been far too slow. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said, that is partly due to the culture of how tenants—social housing tenants, in particular—are treated and about their agency and power and respect. There are tens of thousands of people up and down the country who are still going to bed in buildings that are unsafe.

In my constituency—quite incredibly, given the history of Grenfell—we have one of those buildings that is not yet on the Department’s list. It underwent a fire inspection just a few months ago and flammable rendering was found. This is a good example of what many Members have mentioned. It is a building with approximately 50% social tenants and 50% shared ownership leaseholders, who have scraped together the money to get on the housing ladder and have now been hit with a £400 a month increase in their service charge, primarily driven by the dramatic increase in insurance after the fire inspection took place.

I agree with the shadow Minister’s call to look at the insurance market, because in that case there was not a competitive bid for insuring the building. I know there has been a discussion with the Association of British Insurers to see how we can bring down the costs, but I urge the Government to look at this, because in the short term, while we wait for the remedial work to take place, the situation is simply unaffordable for those leaseholders. I certainly think we need to look at the insurance industry. In addition, that building is another example of the merry-go-round of buck passing that we talked about last week between local government, national Government, developers, freeholders and housing associations.

We need clear timelines to speed this up, and I really welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment on that. We need incentives in the system—carrots and sticks—to ensure that we do not have these never-ending situations where leaseholders and tenants are unclear about when the work will be done. As the Minister said, the money is there, so this is about knocking heads together and making sure that, at an individual building level, we get the speeding up that we need. I will write to her about the specific building that I have mentioned.

Speeding up this work is obviously part of the answer, but the recommendations from phase 1 and phase 2 of the Grenfell inquiry are also relevant. They go beyond cladding, as the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) mentioned. I really welcome the Government’s announcement last week that residential personalised emergency evacuation plans for disabled people will be taken forward. It is a big frustration for many of my constituents that that did not happen under the previous Government. We look forward to more detail on what those PEEPs will look like. I urge the Government in the comprehensive spending review to look at funding, for multiple years, for social landlords to implement that and at a scheme to ensure that developers and freeholders cover the costs for private buildings.

We are all still digesting the full phase 2 report, and there will be time to go into it in more detail, but one recommendation that I urge the Government to think about straightaway is the streamlining of accountability in terms of ministerial responsibility and the regulator, so that we do not have a dispersed system between multiple Departments that makes it easy for things to fall through the cracks, as Sir Martin Moore-Bick made clear in his report. I hope we will have time to discuss that in detail.

Finally, on the question of who should pay, I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement that he will be writing to the companies and looking at exclusions in the public procurement process to ensure that companies referenced in the Grenfell report will not be able to access public tenders. I also put on the record my thanks to the golfer Shane Lowry, who yesterday—belatedly, but he got there in the end—removed the sponsorship of one of the companies mentioned. I will not mention it by name, just out of caution. More broadly, these developers clearly need to need to pay for the remedial work.

The campaigners have done an incredible job, as the Minister said in her opening remarks. Their ask has always been for truth, which we now have from the inquiry; for justice, which we hope will come from the criminal prosecution system; and for change, which it is on all of us in this House to deliver.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Peter Fortune to make his maiden speech.

[Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have learned from the potential misstep of the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and I promise to gaze at you throughout my entire speech. A maiden speech is, by tradition and design, quite light-hearted, and that is how I have fashioned mine, but I want the House to be in no doubt that this debate is on a very serious issue. I welcome the cross-party conversation about the disaster at Grenfell, and I know that my constituents in Bromley and Biggin Hill send their thoughts and prayers to the victims and survivors and their families, and to others who have been impacted.

It is obvious that I represent the finest constituency in all of this great United Kingdom. Before I set out my case, let me say a few words about my main predecessor—noting, of course, those communities we welcome from the constituencies of both Beckenham and Orpington. The majority of my new constituency, however, is inherited from Bromley and Chislehurst and Sir Bob Neill KC. Sir Bob was and is a creature of this House, a magnificent speaker, a bon viveur and a good friend to many in this Chamber. Bob dedicated his adult life to service. He started as a councillor before moving to the Greater London Council. The GLC, of course, met its demise in 1986. Bob, unperturbed, simply hung around until it was reinvented in 2000, when he became the first assembly member for Bexley and Bromley.

In 2006, on the passing of the much-loved awkward squad Member Eric Forth, Bob fought a difficult by-election to become the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. For nearly a quarter of a century, Bob has been part of the fabric of our community, always ready to fight for those who needed a voice. Bob has a deep admiration and love for the law. He has held many positions in politics, but I believe that it was as Chairman of the Justice Committee that he reached his pinnacle. His knowledge and depth of understanding have been of unquestionable benefit to the House, but his love of the law is trumped by a love that is much deeper. It is not West Ham. It is not opera. It is not even Gibraltar, to which I know he has given so much time. His greatest love is for Ann-Louise, the woman, the wife and the friend who has made him so happy. Members will know that fate took a particularly callous decision early on in their relationship, but they will also know that Bob and Ann-Louise faced that challenge with their typical resilience and humour. I thank him for his service, and for the graciousness and kindness with which he has always treated me, and I wish his family well.

Before I move on to making the self-evident case that Bromley and Biggin Hill is the greatest constituency that has ever existed, I want to make a note of another previous Member for Bromley: the former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. As Minister for housing, he took on the responsibility of meeting new and ambitious housing targets. He was not keen at first, writing in his diary in 1951 that it was

“not my cup of tea at all”.

Despite his concerns, he met the inflated target a year early, and changed the lives of families right across the country by presenting them with the opportunity to live in a safe and secure home. I wonder how he would feel—this links to the substance of the debate—if he knew that residents of North Point in Bromley are still suffering due to a cladding crisis that is no fault of their own. This is an injustice that has gone on for too long, and it is vital that the whole House work together to free those who are impacted from the shackles of poor governance and lack of accountability.

Before I talk further about the constituency, I would like to say thank you to the best people I know. I cannot linger here for too long or I shall be reduced to an emotional puddle, but I must recognise my beautiful family, without whom I am nothing. My extraordinary children make me so proud, and I am blessed with the most beautiful, talented, funny and patient wife in Anna-Marie. She is the most wonderful and kindest person I have ever met; I will never be good enough for her, but I will keep trying.

To business. Bromley and Biggin Hill is a long, thin and elegant constituency, which is why it comes as no surprise that its constituents chose me, an uncanny physical manifestation of the place. It is a wonderful place, comprising Sundridge, Bickley, Hayes and Keston, the bit of Darwin that is in the family, along with Coney Hall, Bromley common, Biggin Hill and of course the ancient market town of Bromley. Rather than give a geographical tour, I will demonstrate the amazing contributions from across Bromley and Biggin Hill to the fields of literature, sport, science and politics, and set out how we saved the world.

I will start with literature. If readers have enjoyed exciting stories of time travel or invisible men; or secretly encouraged William, the unruly schoolboy; or empathised with the buddha of suburbia, they have been enjoying a writer from Bromley and Biggin Hill. H.G. Wells, Richmal Crompton and Hanif Kureishi are all connected to the constituency. Enid Blyton was one of the first teachers at Bickley Park school, and academic writers and thinkers, including Sir Anthony Seldon, have spent time scribbling in the constituency, but perhaps the greatest intellectual offering came as a pre-ironic criticism of consumerism and a reflection on the UK’s struggling agricultural base, all expressed in musical form. Produced by an epoch-defining philosophical movement from the ’70s, the song went:

“Spam, spam, spam…spam, spam, spam, spam...lovely spam”,

and was set in the fictional Green Midget café in Bromley.

I have a pub quiz question for the sports round. Who can tell me the only English football league club in the constituency of a Conservative MP? It is indeed the mighty Bromley FC, recently promoted and going great guns, clearly due to the sound political stewardship of the constituency—and I look forward to chants of “You’ve got the only Tory” from Opposition Members when we take on Notts County at home in Hayes Lane later this week.

We have also added to the canon scientific. In 1843, Thomas John Hussey, the rector of Hayes, noticed anomalies in the orbit of the recently discovered planet Uranus. He wrote to the future astronomer royal and talked of

“the possibility of some disturbing body beyond Uranus”.

[Interruption.] Members are making their own jokes up; stop it. This led to further investigation and discovery, ultimately contributing to our modern understanding of the solar system. What I am saying is that we invented Neptune.

Moving on to politics, while we had our fair share of lefty types, notably anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin, who lived with us for a bit, my favourite local communist has always been Coney Hall’s irrepressible Elsy Borders, who led the famous mortgage strike of 1937. Elsy intentionally defaulted on mortgage payments, demanding that the structural flaws in her newly acquired building be repaired. I cannot but help think how this relates to the substantive issue we are debating.

While I have some Labour Members onside, I can delight them further by informing them that we in Bromley and Biggin Hill also invented the modern income tax—but allow me to win back Conservative colleagues by explaining that the revenue raised was used to fight the French. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I got them back. The tax was introduced by our local boy done good, William Pitt the younger, who was born and resided in the constituency. He was assisted into his political position by his father, William Pitt the elder, another resident. This original political nepo-baby went on to have an extraordinary career, with perhaps the highlight being the conversations he held with his colleague William Wilberforce around a tree in the grounds of the Pitt residence. A Wilberforce diary entry in 1788 reads:

“At length, I well remember after a conversation with Mr. Pitt in the open air at the root of an old tree at Holwood, just above the steep descent into the vale of Keston, I resolved to give notice on a fit occasion in the House of Commons of my intention to bring forward the abolition of the slave-trade”—

evidence that we in this House do occasionally get something right.

Finally, I turn my attention to the wonderful town of Biggin Hill. It is more Kent than London, with its rolling green hills and rural lifestyle, but Biggin Hill has given us so much. I urge Members to visit the wonderful Biggin Hill museum and chapel, hear the stories of “the few”, and imagine those young men strapping themselves into their Spitfires and Hurricanes, accelerating down the runway at Biggin Hill, gently pulling back on the stick and gliding free from the bonds of Earth. Imagine the cognitive dissonance that must have arisen from the exhilaration of floating in the blue Kentish sky, and the terror of the strife awaiting them across a freezing channel.

This Sunday, 15 September, is Battle of Britain Day, when we remember the service and sacrifice of those who gave their life so that we can debate the issues of the day in this place, and be both safe and free. They delivered this freedom with a bravery and selflessness that I can never begin to repay. As the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill, I recognise the honour and responsibility of forever remembering them, and I know that my privilege of serving the whole constituency was delivered by the sacrifice of those who were so much better than me.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

That speech has set a very high bar. The next maiden speech is from Josh Fenton-Glynn.