Social Housing and Building Safety

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Yes, that is our intention. The hon. Lady’s question gives me an opportunity to restate and underline one or two things, to make them perhaps a little more clear than I had hitherto. To my mind, and this is very much the theme of this debate, there are two big issues that the Grenfell tragedy threw into the starkest relief, which we should have addressed beforehand and which the tragedy makes it imperative that we do not forget.

The first issue is building safety. We have a compromised and weak regime that needs to change. We need to improve regulation, ensure that those buildings that are unsafe are made safe, and ensure that the people in those buildings do not pay for it, but that it is those who were contributors either to the system overall or to the state of those buildings who pay. That is one important set of issues.

There is another parallel and related set of issues. We know, because we can hear on tape the voices of those who were in that tower saying beforehand that they were not being listened to, at a time when changes were being made to their own home, that they were not paid attention to. That symbolises a wider problem of too many people in social housing not having their voices heard or their interests and lives protected. Of course, the two come together.

The tragedy raises other issues, on which I, my Department and others have reflected, and which I hope this House will return to as well. As the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) rightly says, people in the private rented sector need their rights protected. We have some legislation that we will be debating in this House in due course that is intended to better protect the rights of those in the private rented sector by, for example, getting rid of section 21 evictions. I know the very close interest she takes in housing, so I hope we will have an opportunity to look at that Bill; if she has thoughts about how we can ensure that we do an even better job for those in the private rented sector, I look forward to working with her.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s response to the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury). Not today, but will he and his colleagues turn their minds to how to provide greater security and fairness to the quarter of a million park home residents and the 6 million private leaseholders who are affected both by fire safety and by other unfairnesses, where the Government have proposals from the Law Commission to enact?

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the Father of the House. I have received hundreds, if not thousands, of letters and postcards highlighting the plight of park home residents and referencing the work that he has led. There is much more that can be done there; I will not say more from the Dispatch Box today, but I look forward to working with him on that.

On the question of enfranchising leaseholders, the Father of the House is right, and so is the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), my shadow, that we need to legislate to enfranchise them. We are going to do so in the next parliamentary Session—within this year, as it were. It is important that we do. That is a commitment we must uphold. There are urgent measures, which we debated yesterday, about housing supply, but it is absolutely right that we end the absurd, feudal system of leasehold, which restricts people’s rights in a way that is indefensible in the 21st century.

Building Safety Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

In no way does this Bill represent a comprehensive solution to the building safety crisis—not least because that will depend on a range of non-statutory Government interventions and the agreement, voluntary or otherwise, of banks and insurers—but it has been strengthened in important ways in the other place. Instead of seeking to unpick a number of those improvements, the House should vote to retain them. I urge Members on both sides of the House to join us in the Division Lobby later today to ensure that that is the case.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for the way he introduced the amendments, and I thank the Labour spokesman, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), who spoke in a non-party way about the matter. I pay tribute to those on both sides of the House who have been working on the Bill, often without proper recognition. Among them I include the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. Its first report on the leasehold disaster was critical to getting Government and some people outside to pay attention.

If anyone from a major media organisation is listening, I urge them to make sure that they have a housing editor who can pay attention to this issue and provide continuity. During the four or five years since Grenfell, several people have taken up the issue of the fire itself, but no one has provided the necessary continuity when it comes to television and radio programmes. Institutional memory is required if we are to understand how we got to where we are, and where we need to get to. For residential leaseholders, fair, detailed, expert housing coverage matters as much as coverage of health, economics, defence and other things. I commend to media organisations the idea of having a housing editor and a team who can help us to do our work better, because without media reflection of our efforts, we will not go as far or as fast as we ought to.

Bluntly, the thinking in the Treasury has been the cause of much of the delay. The tragic deaths at Grenfell, where over 70 people died unnecessarily, were a spur to action. For too long, however, people said, “Look at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea; this is all its fault.” Most of the blocks affected are not in Chelsea or in Conservative-controlled areas, so we all have a responsibility to accept that we got things wrong.

What was needed to get this right? It was best put by Ted Baillieu in Victoria, Australia, who said that it was necessary to find the problems, fix the problems and fund the problems, and then get after the people who are responsible. If we had done that, for the last four years many more innocent residential leaseholders would have been able to live in homes that they knew to be safe and saleable, and we would be many steps further forward.

I hope that my hon. and right hon. Friends in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities want to make sure that no block is left unremediated—in plain English, to make sure that every block is made safe—and then go after the money, but the Treasury is blocking that.

I put this question to my hon. Friend the Minister. Who will take claims against those other than the developers—the architects, the surveyors, the component manufacturers, the people who set the building standards and the people who did building control, whether in the public or private sector—who were involved? I am not saying that they are all responsible, but some are. In any other field, lawyers would be coming forward with a class action to put them all in the dock and claim from them the costs that would otherwise fall on innocent residential leaseholders.

For those who are new to this, I repeat that the only people who are totally innocent—the only people who do not own a single brick in the building—are the residential leaseholders, and yet they are being left with some of the costs. If it comes to Divisions, I will vote in a non-party way to try to keep the intentions of the House of Lords going on most of the issues.

I do welcome and accept what the Minister said about extending to three years the responsibilities of the Building Safety Regulator. That makes sense, given the timescale, but what is controversial is leaving residential leaseholders with some of the costs. I draw the House’s attention to the fire at Gibson Court in Woking in 2011. Six years later, those responsible were fined more than £300,000 because their fire protection work had been clearly inadequate. In that case, part of reason for the spread of the fire was the fact that lofts went right across the buildings.

I also draw the House’s attention to the point that the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich made about the fire in 2019 at Worcester Park, where 23 other blocks had to be made safe because one block went up in smoke in 11 minutes. If a fire can spread so far in that many minutes, the idea that it could be contained within one flat is not realistic; those who are vulnerable would have no chance of getting out safely.

I hope that this Bill has the power, under secondary legislation, to extend provisions on remediation costs to buildings below 11 metres, especially for the vulnerable, although I would prefer it to go as far as the House of Lords wanted, so that leaseholders do not have to pay.

Remember that a few years back, Government appeared to be thinking that costs of £15 billion could fall on these residential leaseholders, who did not have the money. I am not talking about people who live in big, expensive, multi-million-pound apartments looking out over the Thames. I ought, by the way, to declare an interest, as I have a small flat in Worthing, which does not even look out over the sea. Six of us bought the freehold and we have had no problems with this, or even with managing agents or insurance companies. I will be buying a leasehold on another property in London in time, and I hope it will not be affected either. I put that on the record, just in case someone says that I am talking from self-interest.

I am speaking in the interest of people who are poorer than I am, who live in homes that are less valuable than mine, and who have been lumbered with all the disadvantages of being a residential leaseholder—and now with this fire safety defect issue as well.

I reinforce what other hon. Members have said about insurance. Premiums are unreasonably high; I hope that the Competition and Markets Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority will quickly produce a report, and that publicity will make insurance companies bring rates down to market rates—that is to say, rates that are justified by the risk, not by what the market can be made to pay in a crisis. I also hope that all commissions, rebates and douceurs—sweeteners—paid by brokers or insurance companies and received by managing agents or landlords are disclosed. That ought to be out in the open.

For too long, too many people have got rich on the back of residential leaseholders. There are many more things that I would like to say, but I suspect that, given the amount of interest in the subject, I ought to stop now. As well as thanking those from both sides of the House who have worked on this, I thank the National Leasehold Campaign. Without it, we would not have had Victoria Derbyshire’s interest, which has been important. I thank the cladding groups, in all their manifestations. At great expense to themselves, and having given up some of their other responsibilities, they have brought these issues to the attention of Parliament.

I also thank officials in the Department, because after a very slow start, a group of people has been brought together to support Ministers in their legitimate aim of making sure that those who are responsible pay, and those who are not responsible do not have to.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate. I thank the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), for his kind words about the Select Committee. He certainly encouraged and prodded us to do the first report on leasehold reform. It was, as he said, a first step towards what we hope will eventually be much more significant reform, which I think the Government are committed to.

Since the tragedy of Grenfell, the Select Committee has produced five reports. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is in his place, because he has been with us right the way through those reports, all of which were agreed unanimously by the Select Committee. We have repeated over and over again that leaseholders who are not responsible should not have to pay, and neither should social housing tenants; they are no more responsible, and the two should be seen together and treated equally.

I am pleased with what the Minister said today. I hope it was not just a way to get the debate over with, without pushing away too many difficult questions, and that he is still prepared to look at broadening the scope of the Government’s offer to leaseholders and to social housing landlords and tenants. If that was a genuine offer and he is keen to work on it, that is welcome.

We clearly have come quite a long way since the first offer of a £400 million package to deal with ACM cladding. That was going to solve everything, but obviously it was not, even when the Chancellor stood up and offered in his Budget the £1 billion building safety fund and said that was going to give everything the Select Committee had asked for, which it was not and did not. We have moved on since then, so it is welcome that we have now got to a better place, although it is still not quite good enough.

--- Later in debate ---

Lastly, although I paid tribute to the Government, they have created a highly complex edifice, which has been described, I think by the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, as a waterfall, because lots of things have to happen in the right order for the scheme to work. I understand why the Government have done that—because they are determined to go after the people who are in fact responsible for the scandal—but it means that uncertainty will continue for our constituents while they wait for all this to work.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, which I should have included in the list of those to be thanked. I think that representatives of the partnership and the National Leaseholders Campaign have had time to get from the rally to the Gallery, so I repeat the thanks to them. I include with them Lord Greenhalgh, who has engaged with all the voluntary groups. I can think of no better aim for a campaigning charity than saving residential leaseholders from a situation from which they could not otherwise escape.

[Hilary Benn]

I am delighted to echo the Father of the House. The partnership has been brilliant in its analysis of what has and has not been done, what the problems are and what the solution ought to be, and it has also been persistent.

I know the Minister will appreciate my final point, because he has worked very hard on this. Our constituents have waited long enough, with their lives on hold, and the sooner we can made all these bits work, the better. We have to enable them to wake up in the morning and think, “D’you know what? I don’t have to worry about the nightmare I’ve been living in for the last five years and I can get on with the rest of my life.” We owe it to them to bring the day they dream of around as soon as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Royston Smith]

I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I thank the Secretary of State, the Minister and the Department for what they have done to get us to this stage. I also pay tribute to the cladding groups, which have acted with great integrity and determination. If they are not completely content today, at least they are in a much better place than they were during the passage of the Fire Safety Bill.

That Bill now seems quite a long time ago, but that is nothing compared with how long it has felt for the leaseholders who are still caught up in this awful scandal. We were promised at the time that the Building Safety Bill would deal with the issues of leaseholders having to pay. It seems that the Government have been as good as their word and have made sure that at least leaseholders will not be held responsible—we all know that they are the only people in the entire situation who are not responsible. I was cynical when the Government said that they would deal with the issue in the Building Safety Bill, so I am particularly happy. Of course, I was not nearly as cynical as the leaseholders who were facing bills for tens of thousands of pounds and were wondering whether the issue would just be kicked down the road and into the long grass. I am pleased that at least we are now somewhere that we can all be a lot happier.

The Bill is infinitely better than what we have seen before and is definitely a move in the right direction. I have mentioned to the Minister, who has made himself available numerous times now, my concerns about buildings under 11 metres. I think it was the Chairman of the Select Committee on Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who said that if a building were 1 cm lower than it needed to be, that could be the most expensive centimetre in history. That is exactly the point: some of these numbers are a bit arbitrary.

What the Minister has said at the Dispatch Box has given me some comfort—enough comfort, as it happens, to support the Government today. Going forward, however, we need to make sure that we are all as good as our word. If we say that things will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, they must be. When I remove myself from the national picture, which I never intended to be involved in, and go back to representing my constituents first and foremost, although perhaps not exclusively, I hope that each time an issue comes up and I take it to the Government, they will be as accommodating as they suggest they will.

I know that everyone is talking about the insurers, which I spoke about in one of my first speeches on the Fire Safety Bill. In a way, I am really pleased that we are all fed up with talking about the insurers, because if we are all talking about them, hopefully the Government will hear us. We think—and it is not an unreasonable position—that insurers should be part of this. As the Chairman of the Select Committee said, when the ABI was in front of the Committee it said that some of these premiums were helping them to put money aside in the event that they would need to pay in future. The way I look at it, they think they will have to do something anyway, so let us make sure that they are involved.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

May I suggest that it would be a good idea if the Government had a roundtable with the insurers about what informal provision they are making in case there are successful actions, and about whether they would like voluntarily to contribute, say, £4 billion to £5 billion? No residential leaseholder would then carry the cost, and the insurance company would know that it would not be chased with legal claims that were likely to succeed.

[Royston Smith]

That is an excellent suggestion. The Government have been very successful in talking to developers and persuading them to sign up voluntarily, and there is no reason why they could not have similar conversations with insurers.

I do not want to make a case in defence of developers. I have made the case throughout that they should pay, but we need to be a bit careful about the possible unintended consequences of only going after them. I am pleased to note that they are taking responsibility for their own buildings, although they should have done that in the first place and they are a bit late to the party. Asking them then to remediate buildings that are not their responsibility will have all sorts of effects, not least in making them think about whether they will want to be in that particular market any more. I doubt that they will ever withdraw from the house building market, because it is their business, but if we want to ensure that we can build 300,000 homes a year—a proportion of which would, I am sure, be high-rise—we should bear in mind that some developers will now be saying, “This may not be for us in the future.”

I promised that I would not speak for too long, because we want to get through this business as quickly as possible, so I will end my comments by thanking the Minister again for what he has done and welcoming the changes that have been made. Given the Minister’s assurances today, I will be supporting the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

Yes. I think I am correct in saying that. Yes, I am; I have just double-checked.

Colleagues have mentioned the 11-metre rule, and I reiterate that they should please write to my Department if they are aware of buildings under 11 metres that are facing costly remediation. We are clear that costly remediation should not be undertaken on buildings under 11 metres, and we would be glad to look into specific cases and to question freeholders on why they are insisting on commissioning costly and unnecessary remediation works.

In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), let me say that we are retrospectively extending the limitation period under section 1 of the Defective Premises Act. The duty under the Act applies to those taking on work in connection with the provision of a dwelling, which includes architects and contractors whose actions have contributed towards defects, as well as developers.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

As I understand it, the difficulty is that a claim would need to be made on behalf of leaseholders by their landlord, who would insist on indemnity funding. The Minister and his advisers should get together with the Law Officers to find a practical way to ensure that claims to have a prospect of getting people to pay up, rather than people trying to resist. After Tony Pidgley sadly died, the new bosses resisted paying up to put right the defects in the Worcester Park block. That situation needs to be challenged.

[Stuart Andrew]

It is always wise for a Minister answering the Father of the House to take his sage advice, and of course I will speak to my officials.

The hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) asked about valuations. I am aware there has been a discussion about how the Bill proposes to assess the value and banding of individual flats. The process set out in the Bill—further detail will be set out in regulations—takes the last price at which a flat changed hands, which will be recorded at the Land Registry, and uprates it in line with the national house price data produced by the Office for National Statistics. We recognise that this may produce a value that differs from the flat’s current market value, but we are using this approach for two specific reasons. First, it uses publicly available data and so avoids any potential for gaming the system. Secondly, it avoids the need to value a large number of flats individually, which would likely be both expensive and time-consuming and could delay the needed changes and improvements to those properties.

Levelling Up

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. A little reminder that the Secretary of State should not refer to hon. Members by name.

It is going to require a lot of self-discipline if we are to have any chance of getting everybody in, so I ask for very short questions. The Father of the House will provide a marvellous example of that, I am sure: Sir Peter Bottomley.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that those in the south-east hope this will be successful, giving individuals opportunity and changing the economic geography of the parts of this country that need to be connected to the thriving country we hope to create together. Will he heed council leaders such as Councillor Kevin Jenkins in Worthing, who wants Ministers to pay attention to things that they could do that would help and to stop doing things that do not help, because all over the country we need Ministers to pay more attention to local leaders?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and in the levelling-up White Paper there is a commitment to ensure greater devolution all round. I signalled the county deals we are green-lighting for Derbyshire and Durham, but we are also devolving more power to local authorities across the country, including through the new UK shared prosperity fund. He is also right to remind us that, while deprivation is concentrated disproportionately in the north and midlands, there are pockets of genuine poverty in communities such as Worthing and Hastings that we need to pay close attention to.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady makes her point eloquently, and of course I agree entirely.

Some of us here have been on the receiving end of antisemitism—I know the right hon. Member for Barking has on many occasions. I recently received a letter telling me to teach my “Jewish Zionist wife” to “put out fires”, as they intended to burn our house down and cremate our children.

As Communities Secretary, I encouraged universities to adopt and use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, a cause taken up strongly by the current Education Secretary, but despite those entreaties some universities have not done so. Only last year the University of Bristol, one of our most respected universities, acted painfully slowly to discipline Professor David Miller, a purveyor of antisemitic conspiracy theories that went well beyond the bounds of free speech. Such incidents are one of the reasons I champion the brilliant Union of Jewish Students.

I will end my speech today as the right hon. Member for Barking would have done, by quoting a diary extract of her grandfather’s. Old, ill and interned, deemed an enemy alien at the time, in an entry before Christmas, he wrote,

“Is the present time a blip? Is Hitler only an episode? Are these ideas going to disappear and the better side of humanity re-emerge?”

We owe it to her grandfather Wilhelm, and all the survivors of genocides, to do all we can to learn from their experiences.

Today, we remember not simply the liberation of the camps, but the triumph of freedom and the human spirit. We marvel at the strength, the resilience and the faith of those survivors and of Jewish people here in the UK and around the world. We must continue to tell their stories. We must use this day to continue the fight against hatred in all its forms. Then, perhaps, one day we will have a future without genocide.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It may or may not be known to the House—it is known to the Government—that permission has been given to appeal the planning approval for the memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens. I think we need to be careful about how we speak about it. I did not want to interrupt the exceptionally good speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) on a very important subject.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, which of course is not a point for the Chair, but which might well be important as a point of information for hon. Members participating in the debate. I suppose that, to some extent, planning appeals are sub judice and we must be careful about what we say here in the Chamber.

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

I think it is too early for me to be able to predict exactly what will be in the Bill, and what its reach and remit might be, but I am sure I will be open to conversations with the hon. Member to discuss his thoughts on what could go into it.

It would be remiss of me to not mention that in fact only two weeks ago we launched a public consultation to seek views on proposals to allow more leaseholders in mixed-use buildings to take control and ownership of their building. That consultation will play an important role in shaping the next stage of our reforms to create a fairer leasehold system in England and Wales.

I thank the Competition and Markets Authority for the vital role it is playing in improving the sector for existing leaseholders. The CMA has already helped thousands of leaseholders to gain access to justice since opening its investigation, and I welcome its dedication in the ongoing fight against abuse in the sector. Let me repeat that the CMA’s action against industry players serves as a warning to others, and we expect those who continue to permit such poor practices to heed the example set by the investigation.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

To save the Minister time, may I, on his behalf and that of the whole House, thank the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, the campaigning charity, especially Sebastian O’Kelly and Martin Boyd, together with their compatriots in the campaigning groups without whom we would still be saying that there was a major problem that had not yet been recognised?

[Eddie Hughes]

I thank the Father of the House for saving me the trouble of having to offer those thanks.

I thank Welsh Ministers and their officials for their engagement on the relevant amendments, both here and in the other place. My thanks also go to the Local Government Association, National Trading Standards and the relevant tribunals, all of which have provided support with the progress of this legislation. I again thank all Members for their contributions. This legislation will make a real difference to thousands of future leaseholders across England and Wales, and I commend the Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for his kind words. It has been right and proper and a pleasure to work in collaboration with him and the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), as it was to work with Jim Fitzpatrick when he was co-chair of the all-party group on leasehold and commonhold reform.

It is 20 years since the House of Commons and the Government thought that we had brought some sense to the leasehold system. We failed and successive Governments did not pay attention to what had gone wrong, partly because the responsibility for the leasehold and commonhold sectors were split between Departments. The Ministry of Justice, as it was at some stages, did not have any resources and it did not collaborate with the Ministry of Housing, so effective action has been delayed.

The Minister has referred to the narrowness of the Bill. We have to accept that. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) raised the issue of park home residents, who have been treated even worse than some leaseholders. I hope that the Government will give some serious attention not just to the inflation rate that they are charged, but to some of the criminal and near-criminal and exploitative actions of many of the people who run those sites. It is completely appalling, and I direct investigative journalists to look at that matter.

On the question of leasehold itself, I welcome the progress made by the Bill. I am sorry that I got back in time to vote on new clause 1—I probably voted in the wrong way and I apologise for that. The sooner that we can deal with existing leaseholders and the cost to them of ground rents and of extending their leases the better. We must get to the stage where owning somebody else’s leasehold becomes a diminishing asset. The faster the freeholders sell the freehold to the leaseholders together and create, in effect, a commonhold the better. We are making progress. I am glad to have contributed in part, and I am glad that the Minister and his colleagues are taking the action that I wish had been taken many, many years ago.

[Justin Madders]

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the Father of the House. As we have already mentioned this evening, we are now four years on from the promises that were made about reforming leasehold, and the Bill, as we have all accepted, is a step in the right direction. However, as we have all acknowledged as well, it is little comfort to those who are still trapped in homes that they cannot sell because of the onerous leases with which they have been left, and we must do something about that. I tried to get the Minister to give us a year when that might happen, but we could not get anything out of him. None the less, I can assure him and the House that we will keep pushing on the issue, because justice demands that it is resolved.

It is also worth commenting on the fact that one in three houses sold in the north-west in the past 10 years is leasehold. There has been much talk about levelling up. Who can doubt that a person’s home is the biggest investment they will make? So it is simply unacceptable for so many homes in my part of the world to have been built off the back of an exploitative and unjust business model. Surely, if levelling up is to mean anything, it should at the very least mean that people’s homes are owned on the same basis wherever they live in the country.

The ending of ground rents for new homes is a positive, but it will create a strange situation. There will be houses within a stone’s throw of one another that have a different form of ownership. That will just add more weight to the sense of injustice that existing leaseholders feel, which is why I am so keen for us to push on and deal with that issue.

As many Members have said, a lot more needs to be done. A whole range of issues have been mentioned tonight. We have, for example, barely touched on park homes. There are so many scandalous things going on there, and we really should be paying them more attention. For homeowners, we see the following: management fees, which are a rip-off; non-transparent service charges; the cost of enfranchisement; insurance scams; obscure penalty clauses; and other costs that appear everywhere we turn in a lease. They are all baked into the business models of those avaricious companies which, let us not forget, are still out there building houses.

I am a little concerned that the companies on which we rely to build the houses that we need are responsible for many of the injustices that we have discussed tonight. We need to keep a close eye on their practices in future. I still think that we need an inquiry into the whole industry. We have previously discussed some of the things that we touched on tonight, and the question of how close lawyers were to developers and whether they were acting in the best interests of their clients needs further examination. We need to look at the lenders and surveyors and what the developers were saying to people, often first-time buyers, who were misled about what they were buying. We need to make sure that the system is examined thoroughly so that there is no repeat of the scandal that we have seen over the past five years.

People who buy a home should have a right not to expect it to become an ongoing income stream for a third party. If we have that as our guiding principle we will not go far wrong, so let us crack on with legislating so that that can become a reality for everyone. As many Members have done, I want to acknowledge the fantastic work of the many campaigners who have been active in bringing this issue to the fore including, as we have heard, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, Martin Boyd, Sebastian O’Kelly, the late Louie Burns, the National Leasehold Campaign, Catherine Williams, Katie Kendrick, Jo Darbyshire and many others, with the Father of the House being one of the biggest cheerleaders. There are many people who have contributed to bringing the issue to the attention of the House, but there is much more that we need to do. It feels at times as if progress is painfully slow, but that should not dim our determination finally to consign leasehold to the dustbin.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

We know about some of the abuses, because people who were working in firms that I would respectfully declare to be dodgy provided information anonymously. Will the hon. Gentleman join me in saying to Richard Davidoff, who might take defamation action against people who have blown the whistle on practices that we would condemn, that the courts should not be used to stop people blowing the whistle on practices that are questionable, if not completely wrong?

[Justin Madders]

As always, I find myself in agreement with the Father of the House. Whistleblowers should be able to speak up freely. With my other hat on, it is probably time that we had a review of whistleblowing legislation to make sure that people are adequately protected. We owe a debt to people who are prepared to speak up and put their head above the parapet, possibly at great personal expense. The scams have to be stopped, and people need to be supported.

On that note, we have made a little progress tonight, and I want to keep making progress. I am sure that the majority of the House will want leasehold finally to enter the history books, rather than being something that we deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Building Safety Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which she has made in other debates in this place with regard to unscrupulous developers operating in her constituency. Changes to company law certainly warrant further consideration in that respect.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

May I add the problem that leaseholders do not have an interest in a brick of their building and that a claim would need to be made on their behalf by the freeholders to the landlord, who would require indemnity costs from the leaseholders who cannot pay?

May I, through the hon. Gentleman, suggest to the Government that between now and the House of Lords they consider taking a right to take the potential claims by the landlords on behalf of leaseholders into a public agency which can make a public claim against the developers, builders, architects, surveyors, building specification and building controllers, so that money can be brought back from those who were responsible, not the innocent leaseholders who are not?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the Father of the House for that intervention. That is a very good suggestion, which I hope the Minister will take on board and give some considered thought to.

Notwithstanding our concerns with regard to the limitations of the Defective Premises Act, we argued forcefully in Committee for the Bill to be revised so that the period for claims under the 1972 Act be extended from six to 30 years, rather than from six to the 15 years the Government proposed. In response, the Minister urged my hon. Friends to withdraw our amendment on the grounds that a 15-year limitation period was appropriate and indeed that any further retrospective extension beyond 15 years would increase the chances of the legislation being tested against the Human Rights Act and found wanting. Because that argument was never convincing, we are extremely pleased that the Government have reconsidered their position on this matter in the light of the case made by my hon. Friends in Committee, and have brought forward amendments 41 and 42, which provide for that 30-year limitation period, as well as changes to the initial period. We fully support both amendments.

We also believe that new clauses 11 and 12, proposed by the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith), warrant support. If the Government genuinely believe that litigation has a significant part to play in helping to fix the building safety crisis, they need to give serious consideration to permitting a limited class of claims relating to pure economic loss, rather than just actual physical damage.

Clauses 129 to 134 concern the new homes ombudsman scheme, the creation of which we support, albeit, as the Minister will know, with some concerns about its operational independence and the composition of the new homes quality board. While we remain unconvinced that the new ombudsman and the new code will lead to a step change in developer behaviour and thus a marked increase in the quality of new homes, we see no issue with the scheme being expanded to cover Wales and Scotland, so we support the various Government amendments to that effect under consideration today.

Finally, I want to turn to amendments relating to the fundamental and contentious issue of leaseholder liability. I know I need not detain the House for any great length of time on why it is essential that greater legal protection for leaseholders be put on the face of the Bill.

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[Stephen McPartland]

I completely accept that point, and the hon. Member will know that we are all in the same position. Every single community is affected up and down the country; there are millions of leaseholders.

The new approach that the Government are taking mirrors a lot of what we want in our amendments on these issues. For example, a number of the amendments I am going to speak to refer to redress. We asked for a period of 25 years, and the Government have come forward with 30 years. We asked for the time in which someone can make a claim to be extended from 90 days to two years, and the Government have come forward with one year. That demonstrates the communication going on behind the scenes and what we are trying to do to deliver success for leaseholders. In some ways, it does not really matter what our opinions are in this place; what matters is what we deliver for those millions of leaseholders up and down the country, so that they do not face bankrupting bills and huge mental health issues.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Without the calm persistence of my hon. Friend and our hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) in this parliamentary year and the one before, we would not have got this far and, on behalf of 1 million leaseholders in all parts of England and Wales, may I say that we are grateful for their efforts? Will they please keep going?

[Stephen McPartland]

I am very grateful to the Father of the House, and I would like to thank the cladding groups up and down the country, such as End Our Cladding Scandal UK, the UK Cladding Action Group and the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership. I record my thanks to the Father of the House and all my colleagues on both sides of the House who have done everything they can to get us to a position where we are working together to secure something that is in the best interests of leaseholders. The way in which the tone has changed, as all of us who have been working on this Bill have seen, and the way in which we now feel we can give the Government room to try to improve the Bill, give us great hope.

A number of the amendments—new clauses 4 to 13 —are specific technical amendments to give the Government examples of how we could fix the problem. The Government have tabled 70 amendments, but of course they still have to come forward with the amendments that we want in the Lords, otherwise the Bill will come back to this House and we will be in the same position, so I think it is important that we continue our efforts.

One of the issues facing leaseholders was the real frustration that VAT is levied on some of the costs. We are asking for the VAT to be scrapped, because when the Treasury puts forward £5 billion, £1 billion of it will be going back to the Treasury automatically; the frustration is understandable. Another example we give is how a previous defects Act—the Defective Premises Act 1972—could be used, as it was for properties with prefabricated concrete. The legislation exists, and these leasehold properties could be incorporated in it. There are a variety of other amendments on technical points, and they are the means of giving the Government examples of how we can support leaseholders.

There is a huge opportunity with new clauses 4 to 13 for the Government to think a little further outside the box. For example, I have a property in my constituency, Vista Tower—one of the famous properties—where the remediation costs are £15 million for 73 flats. The leaseholders paid £200,000 for their flats, and their remediation costs are £212,000, so hon. Members can understand what we are doing and why we originally got involved in this debate. Those people are beyond bankrupt. The mortgage companies are losing money, and that was before the leaseholders got into paying over £300,000 for waking watch and all the other interim costs that have added to the bills.

The Government have come with us and are working in a place where we can try to fix the problem, but there is still a lot more to do. Collectively across the House, we have to find a way forward. For that particular property, with the announcement that the Secretary of State made, leaseholders’ costs went from £200,000 down to £60,000. If we can get commitments from Ministers to include internal developer-responsible fire safety defects such as missing firebreaks, where the developers illegally constructed the building, leaseholders’ costs will collapse again.

I keep asking the Minister every time he looks at me, speaks to me or walks past me whether he will commit to protecting leaseholders in law with his amendments in the Lords. Obviously we all want that, and it is what leaseholders want, because we want to be in a position legally where we can say to a management company or freeholder, “You can’t charge them for this, and you can’t tell them”—as the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) has referred to—“that they’ve got 28 days to make this payment.” That is ridiculous, and it is not fair. The Government are working with us and listening to us, but there is a lot more work to do. I would like to continue working with the Government to ensure that we get out there and protect leaseholders.

Madam Deputy Speaker is now staring at me, so I shall bring my remarks to a swift conclusion. I would like to thank everybody who supported us throughout the campaign. We are not there yet, but we are very close to getting there and supporting millions of constituents up and down the country. I will not be pressing my amendments.

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[Sir Mike Penning]

I do not think there is a conflict, but I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As an ex-fireman, although my concerns and thoughts are with the victims of the Grenfell fire and their families and loved ones, I say that we must put on the record our thanks to the emergency services, and particularly the firefighters, who have to live with what they saw—most of them will never have seen such an incident in their life. They went in one direction while, quite understandably, the public went in the other.

I do not disagree with anything I have heard in the House today. My constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), and I are as one. If this is not sorted in the other House, as promised, we in this House will sort it. That is not a threat but a promise. The Minister, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, as we heard, have been brilliant in changing direction. They realised the risk that no thought at all had been given to leaseholders.

I declare an interest because my daughter has a leasehold property. When she bought it, why would she have dreamed that this situation would occur and she would face such penalties?

When I intervened on the Minister, I said I would mention a way out. Those hon. Members who have been here long enough will remember that I took the Mesothelioma Act 2014 through this House. The Act compensated people whose lives, through no fault of their own, had been devastated by asbestos. We could not fine the insurers, the companies, the directors or the shareholders, so they had suffered and they had not got compensation. This Bill is an opportunity to resolve the problem for leaseholders where we cannot impose fines.

There is no reason why leaseholders should drag themselves through the courts. We are trying to sort the matter out in this House. We should put a levy on the insurers. Without any doubt, the insurers got the premium from these companies, because otherwise they would not have been allowed to build the properties, so liability insurance was in place. The fact that we cannot find the developers—some have gone offshore in parts of my constituency—is irrelevant now. If we can find them, fine, but if not, we will levy the insurers.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We have already done it with the mesothelioma Bill. Originally, we gave the victims 80% of the compensation that they would have got through the courts. Eventually, we gave them 100%. This House was unanimous in its support of the Bill as it went through its stages. It was probably one of the easiest Bills that I have taken through the House—apart from having to pronounce mesothelioma, which, to this day, still troubles me, as Members may have notice.

This is an option that I have mentioned to the Minister before. I have said that his civil servants can come and talk to me, or to anybody at the Department for Work and Pensions who took that legislation through. I am more than happy for that to happen. Sadly, though, no one has talked to me about this—I am gently looking towards the civil servants in the Box, which I am not meant to do. This is a great opportunity to right a wrong that we can see coming down the line here.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Were claims to go through the courts, they would be aimed at the developers, the builders, the architects, the surveyors, the component suppliers, the building controllers and the building regulations specifiers, all of whom were insured or operating under Government. We need to get them altogether around the table and say, “What will be the total liability?” We would save the lawyers’ costs and get the money in very fast. Leaseholders will be protected. Their homes will be safe and they will be saleable.

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[Sir Peter Bottomley]

To use the words of a former Prime Minister, I agree with Matthew. I thank the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) for his contribution to Third Reading, and thank the Minister, who over the months has moved progressively—if I may use that expression in relation to a Conservative—to do many of the things that, frankly, ought to have been done within months of Grenfell, if not before.

I have two major regrets. One is that the reaction to Grenfell was to make it party political, even though most of the 12,000 buildings affected were not built by Tory councils and have problems just as great as those at Grenfell. The second, which is a different point, is that when the sad crash in the tunnel in Paris, in which three people died and one survived, occurred, the media, instead of saying on the first day that the survivor had been wearing a seatbelt and the three who died had not and that the driver was twice over the legal limit, allowed that point to be lost behind the paparazzi story. If the truth had come out straight away, the number of deaths in Europe over the next year would have been halved.

In terms of fire safety and building safety, in my view it was wrong to say that 18 metres was the cut-off point. It may have been arbitrary that that was the highest level the fire could get to, but analysis of the risk to people in homes is that most deaths are at lower heights, not higher ones. We have also learned lessons on dealing with fires that will not be forgotten.

The Bill goes a long way to meeting some of the needs that were reasonably obvious at the beginning. The underlying problem is that Dame Judith Hackitt was not, I think, properly briefed on the law on residential leasehold, and that caused the mis-steps that are now beginning to be put right. I hope that as a result of the Secretary of State’s consultations with people such as Philip Rainey and other barristers and solicitors who are expert in this field, we will be able to modify the simple polluter pays principle into a practical measure.

We need to stop homes being lethal. We need to stop legalities getting in the way of justice and effective action. We want to take away the financial burden and nightmare from residential leaseholders. We want to make sure that social landlords are not left with the costs that, frankly, should not be theirs. We have a lot more progress to make. It is a matter of faith in the Government that, together with the amendments made today—I congratulate the parliamentary draftsmen and the officials in the Department on the progress they have made so far—we can hope to see further progress and better amendments and supplementary ones tabled in the House of Lords, which can come back here and be both successful and acceptable.

I have two further points for the Minister. Outside this Bill, we look forward to the Law Commission reforms being put to Parliament in an effective way. Last, on the question of forfeiture, which has come up occasionally in today’s debates, I want there to be no question that a leaseholder’s equity should be forfeited just because their home is sold to pay some debt. We must change the law to say that any remaining equity goes back to the leaseholder and is not put in the hands of the landlord. William the Conqueror was king over 950 years ago. His feudal memory should not be continued in our housing system. It is time to enact in practice provisions that the House of Commons passed in law—ineffectively—in 2002. Let us have justice for residential leaseholders.

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[Stephen McPartland]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on Third Reading. I am hopeful this evening and, like many Members from all parties, I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith), to the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), and to colleagues across the House who have worked so hard to get us where we are today.

This is a huge Bill that tries to deal with some of the after-effects of the tragic events at Grenfell Tower. I have been to meet residents at New Providence Wharf, who have also had a very difficult time. Some of the issues they have had are heartbreaking and it is incredibly difficult to speak to them and hear what they have been through. We talk about fire safety in this place, but meeting people who were involved in fires and who were trapped in properties really brings it home.

I understand why the Government want to bring the Bill forward as quickly as they can. They have tabled 70 amendments and I understand their desire to work with Members across party lines to get to a much better place in respect of the bits we want. Although it is a very large Bill, a lot of us in the Chamber are focused on a small part of it: the provisions on leaseholders and leaseholder protections. That is the bit on which my colleagues and I mainly focus. It is important for me and for leaseholders up and down the country that they are not held responsible for historic fire safety defects and construction defects.

Let me remind the House where we have come from. When we started our campaign about 18 months ago, the Government’s original offer was around £20 million to deal with these issues. After the statement from the Secretary of State last week, we are now on course to have more than £9 billion of Government support, with probably another £100 million for waking watch, alarms and a variety of other issues. The Government have moved forward massively.

I do not always support the Government but, in fairness to them, on this issue we have asked and they have negotiated. There is a new tone and a new willingness to work both across party lines and within the governing party to resolve this issue for leaseholders, so we have hope. Tonight, millions of leaseholders up and down the country, many with huge mental health issues and facing massive financial ruin, have hope. That hope encourages us to believe that we may finally come to a position where we can resolve things for those millions of leaseholders.

We are in the position we are in because, although a lot of people will not realise this, the Prime Minister has intervened directly on a number of occasions to get us to a state in which we can support each other, negotiate and get more than £9 billion-worth of support for leaseholders, which is an amazing achievement. I am delighted with the work we have done behind the scenes to get us to where we are. Because of that hope and the constructive way in which the Government have worked with us behind the scenes, we want to give them the room to work with us a bit further and to table amendments in the House of Lords to protect leaseholders in law. That is what we want—that is our first request.

The second request that I continue to make is that amendments are made to protect leaseholders in respect of internal fire safety defects and not just external ones. At Vista Tower in my constituency, which has more than £15 million-worth of remediation costs, the fire breaks are missing. They would have been in the plans and signed off by the developers and the building regulatory regime, but they are missing. We have to think about how we can support constituents like that.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Will my hon. Friend allow me to add to what he is saying? The insurance companies are claiming premiums that are 10 or 20 times higher than before because there are additional fire risks. All this work should lead to reduced fire risks. Will he support me in asking the Government to get together with the technical sides of the insurance companies and the Competition and Markets Authority to get those insurance premiums back down to what they were before so that leaseholders may pay £300 a year to insure a building they do not own rather than £3,000 a year?

[Stephen McPartland]

I completely support the Father of the House, as he knows, in all matters.

It is important that the Government have accepted the principles of everything that we have asked for throughout this 18-month campaign. I am very grateful for that. With all the technical details, that campaign has demonstrated how complicated this issue is and the many millions of people and tens of thousands of buildings it affects in many different ways. In fairness to the Minister and the Government, it is very difficult to put all that into a Bill, so they do need time. As long as they are prepared to work with us, we are prepared to give them that time so as to support leaseholders and ensure that they do not have to pay for these historical fire safety defects.

I have one final request for the Minister on behalf of those constituents of mine in Vista Tower who have been affected by the building being no doubt shoddily built and not to the plans of the time. Will the Government be prepared to provide support so that those leaseholders can take action against the original developers, or will the Government take the action on their behalf, because a lot of these leaseholders have been going through this for a number of years and no longer have the mental resilience or ability to take these fights on and take legal actions for the next five or 10 years in the courts? Will the Minister provide further support to those leaseholders? Will he agree to continue to meet and work with me so that we can ensure that leaseholders are not held responsible and they are the innocent parties throughout this crisis?

Building Safety

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I will co-operate, Mr Speaker, and may I say, through you, to the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), that the tributes to her husband Jack Dromey for his work on people’s interests at work and at home will be long remembered, together with that of David Amess, who for 20 years worked on the all-party group on fire safety and rescue with Ronnie King and others?

I believe that this is another step forward that is greatly welcomed and greatly needed, but I think the extension of the liability to 30 years is wrong for those who knew that what they were doing was wrong: 30 years may be fine for those who did it by mistake, but for those who knew what they were doing, there should be unlimited liability both in time and in money.

I hope that the Secretary of State will have a roundtable. If he wants to take over the all-party group roundtable for a summit on this, he can pick up some of the other issues that no doubt he has been working on, but which, to keep his statement reasonable, he may not have covered today.

One problem is the insurance premiums paid by leaseholders for a property they do not own, which may have gone up from an illustrative £300 a year to £3,000 a year. I believe that the Association of British Insurers should be told that the Competition and Markets Authority will look to see whether there is price gouging, in simple terms, and, that if there is some kind of catastrophic reinsurance needed, the Government should help them to make communal arrangements to deal with that, because insurance premiums should come down to the £300 they were before.

The last point of very many I would like to make is that the Treasury will expect to get the benefit of the levy and tax towards the £5 billion already announced, and the contributions that will come in from developers will relieve burdens on residential leaseholders, but the Government should also get the VAT on money that is spent, which is 20% of the total cost. If the total cost comes down from £15 billion to, say, £12 billion, my right hon. Friend can calculate and discuss with the Treasury how much extra the Treasury is getting. The Treasury should not be making a profit out of all this catastrophe.

[Michael Gove]

I thank the Father of the House for his questions. He is quite right that Sir David Amess, before his sad death, was one of the most prescient and most effective campaigners for improved building safety. His memory is very much in my mind.

The Father of the House makes a point about the need to potentially look at unlimited liability for those who consciously and deliberately operated in a reckless fashion. I will consider that and I am sure it will be considered during the passage of the Bill. On his point that we should work with others, particularly the broad leasehold community who have done so much to identify the way forward, we absolutely intend to do that. The point he makes about insurance premiums is absolutely right. That is why my noble Friend Lord Greenhalgh will be talking to Baroness Morgan of Cotes and others in the Association of British Insurers to ensure that more insurers, like Aviva, do the right thing. I very much note his point about VAT and Treasury contributions. In the ongoing conversations we have with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I will reflect on the very important point that he made.

Building Safety Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

As I understand it—I stand to be corrected if I have the wrong information—the 900 figure that the hon. Lady cites was a misinterpretation of the figures that were released earlier. None the less, the actual number is significant, albeit fewer than 900. We want to see waking watches used only in cases where they are absolutely necessary. The recent statement from the National Fire Chiefs Council has suggested that they are being used too often and that they can be reduced significantly. If she has constituents in that situation, as I am sure she does, in the first instance I would recommend that they make use of the waking watch relief fund to install a fire alarm, which can cut the costs very considerably.

This Bill takes an unusual step of retrospectively extending the period during which compensation for defective premises can be claimed—it more than doubles the current period, from six to 15 years. This significant step forward was requested and campaigned for by groups impacted by the cladding issue. We are going further, expanding the scope of the work for which compensation can be claimed also to include future major renovation work to buildings. These measures will not help everyone, but they do provide a step change in redress for raising issues. I hope that, in time, builders will extend their warranties to cover this period and provide the maximum amount of confidence to house purchasers.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

While my right hon. Friend is considering this point about the extension, will he please consider the point made by Robert Ayling, at Grosvenor Waterside, that the Building Act 1984 provision should be extended to six years after the plaintiff is aware of the defect? I am not asking for an instant answer, but such a measure would help to deal with the current situation very well.

[Robert Jenrick]

I will give that further thought and revert to my hon. Friend on it.

It was clear after the fire at Grenfell Tower that action was required to address safety concerns with respect to existing buildings, and my predecessors rightly took a safety-first approach, as I have also tried to do. We have provided expert advice and accelerated inspections of all high-rise buildings, and that work continues, with substantial progress having been made by the National Fire Chiefs Council on the building risk review, which is likely to be concluded by the end of the year. We have provided £5 billion in grant funding to carry out vital remediation work targeted at the buildings we know to be at the greatest risk from fire spread—those over 18 metres—and we have banned the use of combustible materials on the external walls of high-rise residential buildings, providing industry with a clear standard for the construction of new builds.

Some 474 buildings have been identified as having Grenfell-type ACM—aluminium composite material—cladding. We are now well on the way to remediating all of those buildings. Over 95% of the buildings identified at the beginning of last year have either completed or started remediation work; 70% of those have now been fully remediated, and that is rising every week. That means that around 16,000 homes have been fully remediated of unsafe ACM cladding, an increase of around 4,000 since the end of last year. Despite many building owners failing to provide adequate basic information, almost 700 buildings with other types of unsafe cladding are proceeding with a full application to the building safety fund. We have already allocated £540 million, which means that owners of 60,000 homes within high-rise blocks can be reassured that their remediation will be fully funded.

We currently forecast that over 1,000 buildings with non-ACM unsafe cladding will receive support of the same form through the building safety fund, providing a guide to the cohort of high-rise buildings where remediation is actually required. That is being progressed by a dedicated team in my Department and our two delivery partners, Homes England and the Greater London Authority. The Government have played their part: the unprecedented £5.1 billion we are providing gives assurance to leaseholders in eligible buildings that unsafe cladding on their blocks will be replaced at no cost to them.

I know that there will be strong feelings across the House about industry needing to fix and pay its fair share for problems that is has helped to cause. I recognise that some house builders have stepped up, too, thus far committing over £500 million for remediation since my statement in February. But some have not stepped up, or at least not in the way I expect them to. Ballymore, for example, has yet to commit to fully funding the remediation of its buildings.

The industry needs to go further. That is why we are introducing a new levy on high-rise residential buildings. We have published today a consultation document on the levy and I welcome views from all interested parties on its design. The levy will sit alongside a tax being developed by the Chancellor to raise at least £2 billion to contribute to the costs of historical remediation. This Bill also introduces the building safety charge to provide residents with clarity and certainty on the costs of building works, and we have listened and ensured that that charge only includes the cost of management of building safety in their building.

As I said at the outset, in bringing forward this new building safety regime we need to take a sensible, proportionate approach driven by expert advice. The Bill ensures that the building safety regulator will regulate in line with best practice principles, be proportionate and transparent, and ensure that the interests of leaseholders are protected. In 2020, only 9% of fires were in flats of four storeys or more. In 2019-20, only 7% of fires spread beyond the room of origin in such buildings. And, while every death is of course tragic, thankfully only 10 people died in 2020 as a result of a dwelling fire in flats of four storeys or more. We strongly believe that our proportionate approach is in line with these facts, ensuring that remediation works are undertaken only where absolutely required, and leaseholders should not be landed with bills for unnecessary work.

Unfortunately, that is not the position today and we need a significant reset. Too many people living in lower and medium-rise buildings have told us of feeling trapped in their properties, held back from selling their homes because of excessive caution in the lending, surveying, insurance and fire risk assessment markets. Understandably, this has caused residents to worry over safety and has led to unnecessary costs. I want to be clear that the vast majority of residents in all homes in this country, including blocks of flats, should not feel unsafe. Driven by these concerns, earlier this year I asked a small group of experts on fire safety to consider the evidence and advise me on the steps that should be taken to ensure a proportionate, risk-based approach to fire safety in blocks of flats. I thank them for their time and their expert advice, which I will publish later today.

The key finding of the experts’ advice is clear: we cannot and should not presume systemic risk of fire in blocks of flats. I quoted some of the statistics earlier, but let me repeat them. Dwelling fires are at the lowest point that they have been since we started to collect comparable statistics in 1981, despite the fact that in 2020 people spent significantly greater amounts of time in their homes as a result of covid restrictions. On that basis, the expert advice includes five significant recommendations to correct the disproportionate reaction that we have seen in some parts of the market. First, EWS1 forms should not be a requirement on buildings of less than 18 metres.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for what I consider to be properly a point of order. The Secretary of State has most courteously explained to the House that the statement that is now forthcoming is market sensitive. I have had a chance to glance at it and I understand that it is indeed market sensitive, so I can understand, and I think the whole House will now understand, why the Secretary of State issued it at the point that he did.

I have to say to the House that there seems to have been some delay in the Vote Office and in the workings of the House, and for that, on behalf of the House authorities, I apologise to Members and to the Secretary of State. I thank the Opposition Whips for giving me a copy, since nobody else did—

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am still finishing my response to the point of order, Sir Peter.

I think there are some points in the statement that the Secretary of State will wish to clarify. I am not putting a time constraint on him, as I normally would, for finishing his Second Reading speech, because in addition to that speech it would be appropriate for him to take two or three questions on his written statement.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The written statement has the number HCWS228; an online search brings up one with a similar number from January 2015. Could the House authorities see whether they can get the statement online so that those Members who are participating virtually also have the chance to read it?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point of order and I reiterate it. I wonder whether the House authorities have done that—I do not know but I ask them to do so immediately.

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[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and welcome.

Paragraph 19 of the National Audit Office report says:

“The Department has acknowledged that only in a minority of cases would it be financially justifiable for building owners to bring legal action to recover money.”

But the building owners will only make a claim if they are indemnified by the residential leaseholders, who do not have the money, so it is not going to happen, and the sums that the Department has reclaimed are very low. What is clearly obvious is that they will not get money from leaseholders. That follows on from the report of a working party set up two weeks after the Grenfell fire by Ted Baillieu, the former Premier of Victoria in Australia, and an architect. It reported within two years. He gave a presentation to the all-party fire safety group and the all-party leasehold and commonhold reform group. As they will not get money from leaseholders, they have to find the problems, fix the problems, fund the problems and then see how to get the money back. We know that the Ministry of Housing has got just over £5 billion from the Treasury. It expects to get perhaps £2 billion back in tax and £2 billion back in levy. If £15 billion is spent, there will be £3 billion back in VAT. So the Treasury seems to make money out of this, and who is left with the £10 billion of funding? The residential leaseholders, who cannot afford it.

It is quite clear that the Government have to do two things: first, as I said to the Secretary of State during his speech, extend the Building Act 1984 so that people can make a claim within six years of knowing that there is a problem; and secondly, make sure that the insurance industry knows that it is ultimately liable for what the architects, designers, component suppliers, builders, regulators and building control groups have done and must get most of the money back by agreement. There is no point in having individual leaseholders, or groups of them, taking legal action; it will not work. I say to the Secretary of State: in this case, please listen to those who know and try to make sure that no examination takes place without leaseholders being part of the committee. They could have told the Secretary of State four years ago that his approach was not working.

We are grateful for some progress, but we need much more.

Fire Safety Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Commons Chamber

Lords amendment 4L lacks clarity, just like the others. Just like the others, it prohibits all kinds of remediation costs from being passed on to leaseholders, which means that were there to be even minor costs as a result of wear and tear, or even where leaseholders themselves are responsible for the damage, they would not be expected to pay. I do not believe, and I do not believe this House believes, that that is a proportionate response.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

I will, of course, give way to the Father of the House, as I was unable to do so yesterday due to time constraints.

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[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am grateful to the Minister, and he knows I am trying to play the ball and not the person. The question is not the small amounts but the large amounts. It is estimated that the cost of remediation may go up to £15 billion. The Government are providing £5 billion, which leaves £10 billion that may fall on the shoulders of leaseholders. We are moving from a situation that might be ironic for some, to one that is irenic for more. The point of the amendment is that it needs to be met by Government, and it needs to be met in good time, or else many people will not be able to meet the demand to pay for the cost of remediation, and forfeiture will follow. That will happen in a shorter timescale than the one talked about by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox).

[Christopher Pincher]

I certainly accept my hon. Friend’s assurance that he is playing the issue, as he always does, and not the man. As he rightly says, we propose to spend £5.1 billion of public money on remediating the tallest buildings, as directed by the Hackitt report and its recommendations.

We have also said that as a result of our tax on the development industry, which the Chancellor will consult on imminently, we will raise a further £2 billion. We have also said that we will introduce a tall buildings levy. Developers themselves are placing more money on the table. Taylor Wimpey has now placed a further £125 million on the table for remediation, and Persimmon £75 million. The amounts are building up. We have also suggested a very advantageous financing scheme for those buildings below 18 metres that may require some remediation.

I think all Members would agree that the taxpayer should not be paying for every cost associated with the provisions of the Fire Safety Bill, but that is the risk, because the scope of the amendments that have been tabled is far too broad to provide a sensible solution. Lords amendment 4L is also unclear on who should take responsibility for remediation works until a statutory scheme is in place to pay the costs. That would result in all types of remediation being delayed—a really unsatisfactory outcome for leaseholders. Leaseholders also will not thank us for voting through an amendment that will generate lots of litigation that they may need to pay for.

The amendment would prevent the passing on of remediation costs, but it does not define what those costs are. That is a recipe for litigation and a recipe for delay. There is a lack of clarity on the definition of remedial work and what may be attributable to the provisions in this Bill, in other Acts or in none. How would Members suggest that we disaggregate the legislation under which works are carried out and the definition to differentiate between remediation, maintenance or improvement? It is a recipe for litigation and a recipe for delay.

In effect, it may not be possible to relieve leaseholders and tenants from all costs for remedial works attributable to the Bill without breaching subsidy control rules—a form of state aid. Further detailed consideration would be needed about that, too. Practically speaking, drafting legislation is, as many Members will know, a complex matter that cannot be dealt with in the timeframe proposed by the amendment, and to provide an arbitrary deadline is neither helpful nor practical.

There is a common theme uniting these points. The amendments will not work. They will not help leaseholders. They are not detailed enough for a complex and intricate problem of this nature. We have seen the key elements of this amendment time and again, and this House has voted them down time and again. Yet time and again, peers and the Opposition—unintentionally, I trust—seem set on reinjecting uncertainty into the market, which cannot help leaseholders. I respectfully ask the House to reject this amendment, so that we return a further clear and consistent message to the other place.

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[Sir Peter Bottomley]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Would it be within the Standing Orders of this House for the Government, if they chose to, to propose a carry-over motion, so that the Bill would not be lost as this Session comes to an end and the Government could then improve the amendment, which keeps coming back, quite rightly, from the House of Lords?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. As ever, his experience shows in the idea that has occurred to him. I do not know whether that idea has occurred to the Government. I do not know whether, if it has occurred to the Government, they have decided to pursue it or not. Actually, I do know that: if the idea has occurred to the Government, they have decided not to pursue it. Therefore, it is not a matter for me to decide what ought to happen, nor a matter for the Chair. It is up to the Government to decide how they take this matter past this rather difficult and unusual point, where the other place has sent a Bill back on several occasions. I expect that, like me, the hon. Gentleman eagerly anticipates the outcome of this Division and then we shall see what will happen next.

Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 4L.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. If he were seeking to further the exchanges that took place during Scottish questions, his point would not, strictly speaking, be a point of order for the Chair, but I appreciate that he is asking a serious question about a serious matter. I can point him in the direction of the Public Accounts Committee, which is concerned with the regularity of spending; the Scottish Affairs Committee, which deals with non-devolved Scottish matters; and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which is concerned with the operation of the devolution settlement. In pursuing the question that he raised, he might wish to take the matter up with the Chairman of one or other—or, indeed, all—of those three Select Committees.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

On a point of order, I am grateful for your clarification of the situation on the Fire Safety Bill, which is what I suspected it might be. It is obvious that the House of Commons has the opportunity of a carry-over motion only when dealing with business that is in front of it, and the other place has procedures that are similar but not exactly the same. There seems to be no precedent for what happens to a Bill that has been in both Houses, and that may be something that could properly be considered by the Speakers or the Procedure Committees of each House. In this particular case, as a carry-over motion is not possible, were the House of Lords to go on sending back helpful amendments and this Bill were to fail, if it were re-presented with the problem of the future burdens for leaseholders solved, it could pass both Houses within a day.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The Father of the House raises a most interesting point. He is right in saying that if the Bill were now to fail, a similar Bill with similar purposes could be brought forward by the Government in the next Session of Parliament. As to whether it could pass quickly through both Houses, or either House, is, as ever, a matter for Members of this House and, indeed, of the other place. If Members choose to make very short contributions and allow a Bill to pass through quickly, and if the Government choose to put all stages of a Bill in one day before this House and, indeed, the other place, the House of Commons as a whole and the Government could make those decisions, and it is not for me to anticipate what might happen. I thank the Father of the House for his second interesting point of order.

I am obliged to suspend the House for three minutes to allow arrangements to be made for the next item of business.

Fire Safety Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I thank all hon. and right hon. Members for their contributions today. The House will know that we have a duty to implement clear and effective legislation to support fire and building safety reform. We have an obligation in this place to make good law. While I entirely accept that the motivations of all those who have contributed today are not to damage the Fire Safety Bill, I have to tell them that the practical consequence of passing the Lords amendments would be to do that, because they are ineffective and defective. Let me explain why, before moving on to some of the other points that Members have made.

The amendments would prevent any type of remediation costs being passed on to leaseholders, even if the cost was very minor or if the leaseholder was responsible for damage, and that is not a proportionate response. There is no framework in the Lord Bishop of St Albans’ amendment to distinguish between different works. I think all Members would agree that the taxpayer should not be paying for minor costs, such as replacing a smoke alarm, and that if the leaseholder is responsible for breaking a smoke alarm, in all likelihood they should fix it. The amendment is also unclear on who should take responsibility for remediation works until a statutory funding scheme is in place to pay or direct the costs, and that would result in remediation being delayed, even in the case of minor defects, if routes of cost recovery are unclear.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

If my hon. Friend does not mind, I will not give way, because I have to conclude my remarks. Perhaps if I have a bit of time at the end, I will.

These orphan liabilities would leave leaseholders continuing to live in unsafe properties with no further clarity as to who will pay. It is important to ensure that taxpayers’ money is protected as much as possible and that remediation is not delayed unnecessarily in extended litigation such as we might find ourselves in. It is not the solution that leaseholders need or the one that the taxpayer deserves.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

In order to observe social distancing, the Reasons Committee will meet in Committee Room 12.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It will be observed that the Government’s majority without the Scots Nats was halved in the last vote.

I would not ask for guidance from the Chair in the Commons about procedure in the Lords, but were the Lords to send back another amendment different from the one we have been considering, but trying to take up the points raised in this Chamber, am I right in saying that the Government could table their own amendment tomorrow, which would absorb the points made in this House, so that leaseholders are not penalised in the way they would be if the Bill went through as it is at the moment?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the Father of the House for that point of order. Obviously it will be a matter for the Lords and the business managers to say how it will proceed from here.