Building Safety Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Four years on from the Grenfell fire, a fire that killed 72 people and shone a tragic light on the reality of how race, class and inequality shape the lives of working-class people in our country, we are still yet to see the changes needed to make housing safe. Four years later, hundreds of thousands of people are still living with unsafe cladding and other fire safety problems. Millions are caught up in the wider building safety crisis, yet the Government have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make any small steps forward in the Bill—a Bill riddled with major flaws. It must be amended as it passes through this House.

The Bill, together with the statement that the Secretary of State has published today, is as it stands a betrayal of those who needed the Government to step in and support them following Grenfell. Despite the promises of Conservative Ministers, many leaseholders are still having to pay. Without decisive Government action, they will pay more in the future. Legal advice for the Labour party found that the Bill will make it more likely, not less likely, that leaseholders would have to pick up the costs of fixing cladding issues.

Four years on from Grenfell, what explains the inadequacies of the Bill before us today? What explains the four years of foot-dragging and the four years of refusal to deliver the protections that leaseholders need? This year, dodgy contracts have been exposed and the stench of corruption has grown ever stronger, with polls showing that most people see this Government as corrupt. Well, those people will not be reassured by the fact that developers who build flats with unsafe cladding have donated £2.5 million to the Conservatives since Grenfell and that Conservative MPs have then voted time after time after time to block amendments to protect leaseholders from the cost of removing dangerous cladding. Nor will they be reassured that, according to the anti-corruption body Transparency International, £1 in every £5 donated to the Conservative party since 2010 came from those with substantial interests in the housing market. And, of course, we have a Housing Secretary who admitted to unlawfully signing off a £1 billion housing project which saved a Conservative party donor millions of pounds.

Tory MPs and the Government, if they want, can show that they are not in the pockets of developers by backing amendments that will come to ensure that the cost of building safety remediation is not passed on to innocent homeowners and tenants. It is remarkable that if the Minister himself were not here, not a single Conservative MP would be on the Conservative Benches today—not good enough. Members should back the amendments to improve the Bill.