Fire Safety Bill

Royston Smith Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. We heard from a lady this morning that the cost of insurance for her small block had gone up from £30,000 a year to £500,000 a year. We heard from a lady who lives in a block in Kent—I know one Government Member has stood up for her in this place many times—where the residents have already spent £500,000 on a waking watch. It is quite extraordinary.

I was alarmed to see reports this afternoon that the Prime Minister’s press secretary, Allegra Stratton, has said:

“Our problem with McPartland’s amendment is that, far from speeding things up for constituents across the country who are worried about finding themselves in these properties, it would actually slow things down.”

That mirrors the intervention that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has made, and it is an absolute cop-out. We are four years on, and leaseholders are struggling. We think that 11 million people are affected by this—not necessarily those living in dangerous blocks, but those living in blocks where they do not know, because they have not got the forms sorted and they are paying more insurance. That is a huge crisis.

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

Does the hon. Lady recall that in the Opposition day debate called by the Labour party just a few weeks ago, I asked the Minister, if our amendment is defective, why do the Government not take it, fix it, and make it work? They had the opportunity then. Does the hon. Lady think they should have done that?

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: if there were any problems with these amendments, they could have been addressed by the Government through this process. They had 12 weeks between the Bill leaving the Lords and coming here to try to effect some of these things, but have chosen not to.

The amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) are to prevent leaseholders from being billed for fire safety repairs. Labour’s amendments went further, because the McPartland-Smith amendments—supportive and good though they are—would not cover leaseholders in blocks where flammable cladding had been added at some stage following the building of the block. Labour’s amendments would have included, for example, Grenfell Tower, which was built in the ’70s but to which the flammable cladding was added later, in 2017.

In our amendments (f), (g), (h) and (i) to Lords amendment 4, we have sought to go even further, to make sure that the cost of fire safety problems from refurbishment jobs such as the cladding of Grenfell Tower cannot be passed on to leaseholders. Our amendments (f) and (g) would ensure that leaseholders cannot be passed on the cost of remediating problems issued under the fire safety order wherever the problem was created. Labour’s amendment (i) would ensure that the Bill protects leaseholders from the day it comes into law, instead of an unknown date in the future, and Labour’s amendment (h) would have ensured that if the fire safety order is extended in the future, the Secretary of State must publish an analysis of the financial implications for leaseholders—although that amendment was not selected today, as it was out of scope. [Interruption.] You are hurrying me along, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I am turning pages so that I can speed up, which I will of course do.

To conclude, Labour’s amendments in lieu are straight- forward. They are based on issues that the Government need to address and have pledged to do so, but have not acted on. The risk of fire and looming bankruptcy will not wait while the Government dither and delay, with inaction or failed proposals that keep many lease- holders in debt. Each amendment I have spoken to today corresponds to a broken promise from the Government.

Today is another chance for the Government to finally put public safety first, and bring forward a set of legally binding commitments to deliver on the promises they made to leaseholders and implement the recommendations of the Grenfell phase 1 inquiry. Blameless victims of this crisis, who are in dangerous homes and facing financial ruin, expect nothing less. As debates over the past four years have repeatedly shown, solving this issue fairly would command cross-party support, and today should be a day to deliver justice. It is not too late for the Government to put the British public first and do the right thing.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We now move to a three-minute limit. I call Royston Smith.

[Royston Smith]

I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have no axe to grind with the Government. They are my friends and colleagues. I like them and I get on with them, but I am not going to blindly follow them when I can see that the treatment of leaseholders is wrong.

First, in tabling our amendment, we have never said that we would ask for taxpayers’ money. We made that fundamentally clear right at the beginning, and it is worth repeating that. I know that many of my colleagues would have supported our amendment, but they were told that it would be an open cheque book and therefore they chose not to. Secondly, our amendment will not wreck the Bill. It will make it fair for the innocent lease- holders caught up in this crisis.

There are three parts to this, in my opinion. There is the moral issue. Who, in good conscience, could leave these people to pay huge insurance premiums, sometimes increased by over 1,000%, huge waking watch charges and crippling costs of remediation if we could do something to help? Who would do that?

Then there is the economic issue. When someone owns just 10% of their home, but they are responsible for 100% of the remediation cost, what do we think people are going to do? They will be saddled with tens of thousands of pounds-worth of debt while their home is valued at nothing. This part of the housing market is heading for collapse and thousands of leaseholders are heading for bankruptcy. The Government could and should prevent this from happening.

Finally, there is a political dimension. Successive Governments have put home ownership at the centre of Government policy. They have encouraged people to get on the property ladder. We have incentivised them through schemes such as Help to Buy and shared ownership. Imagine the howls of derision when the first Government Minister stands up and claims that we are the party of home ownership.

The recent Government announcement is very welcome, and I know that many people are grateful, but what sort of solution says, “We concede that it is not your fault, but we are only going to help half of you?” For those buildings over 18 metres, cladding will be removed for free, but not in buildings below that height. Worse than that, those people living in buildings below 18 metres will be saddled with unaffordable debt to pay for cladding remediation. Even worse, they will know that their taxes will be paying for their neighbours’ remediation.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I absolutely understand the spirit behind my hon. Friend’s amendment. Will he answer the point that I made earlier? How would his amendment operate if the building owner walks away? Also, does he accept that his amendment would put somebody else on the hook for the costs of remediation, not just for historical defects, but for any defects in future?

[Royston Smith]

What I will do is refer my hon. Friend to two things that he has said. First, he said, “We will carry the can”, and he has now said, “Who is going to be on the hook?” It sounds to me like he is very happy for leaseholders to carry the can and be on the hook, but not to find a solution. The Government’s problem is to find the solution. Our problem is to say that leaseholders should never have to pay. That is not an unreasonable position for us to take.

In trying to help, the Government have satisfied no one and they have upset just about everyone. The leaseholders are not responsible for this. They know they are not. We know they are not. The Government know they are not and, therefore, the Government’s position is now untenable.

In conclusion, I appeal to the Government and to all my colleagues to think very carefully before they abandon thousands of their constituents, because I know this: they will not forget and they will not forgive.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab) [V]]

I am speaking in support of all the amendments before us that seek to protect leaseholders from having to pay. First, on the Minister’s argument that this will delay matters, I think that leaseholders are left perplexed by the Government’s position. One day Ministers say that the cost of fixing historical defects should not fall on leaseholders—the Minister said it again today—but on another day, they say that it should. The £50 a month towards the loans that the Government propose to give to buildings below 18 metres shows that that is their policy. I do not think that Ministers can criticise others who are trying to address the problem—I support the speeches we have heard from supporters of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland)—because the Government are completely unclear about what their policy is on who should bear the cost. It is clear to me that it should be the people who built the blocks.

On the argument that leaseholders who are also part-owners of the freehold may walk away from their flats, that is a very fair point, but exactly the same argument applies to loads of leaseholders who will not be able to afford to meet these costs. What this tells us is that if we are to solve this we must deal with the whole problem, not just part of it.

Secondly, to argue that this is the wrong Bill misses the urgency of the situation. Leaseholders are facing bills that they cannot afford now—waking watch bills now, insurance bills now—and they still face the prospect of being asked to pay to make safe homes that they bought in good faith. That is why we should take the first available opportunity to protect them from this great injustice.

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We must remember why the Government introduced the Bill in the first place, and why its scope is so focused and specific in what it is designed to achieve. The focus of this legislation is, as should be clear, safety—ensuring that those responsible for fire safety and the safety of those living in their buildings know their duties and are held to those duties. Leaseholders, building owners and the taxpayer deserve a solid legislative base with clarity.

[Royston Smith]

I am listening carefully to what my hon. Friend is saying, and he has mentioned the taxpayer several times. I said in my opening remarks, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), that our amendment would not put any burden on the taxpayer. If my hon. Friend is worried about the taxpayer, as I am, and we are saying that the taxpayer will not be responsible, will he therefore say that we should protect all the leaseholders?

[Christian Wakeford]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Unfortunately, I think there cannot be a guarantee. A lot of the developers may no longer exist and insurance schemes may no longer be applicable. There will be gaps, and we do have to be responsible. Although his amendment is very well intentioned, and I am incredibly sympathetic towards it, there are gaps in it, and that is why, unfortunately, I will not be able to join him in the Lobby today, although I very much applaud the sentiment of it and the work he has put into it.

Leaseholders, building owners and taxpayers deserve a solid legislative base. That is what we are trying to do today by making sure that our properties and our leaseholders are safe. That is why we need to focus on those who are most likely to be affected. I do not want to see the Bill’s implementation frustrated. It has already taken far too long to get to this point, and we need to ensure that we can proceed.

As has been said many times, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) and the Minister, we have a duty: do we get this right, or do we do it quick? From my perspective, we need to get it right. Far too many people have fallen through the gaps, are struggling and are unable to afford this, so it is right that we take a fully reasoned approach, speaking to experts and to all trade bodies to ensure that we get it right. That is what I urge Ministers, the Treasury and everyone else to continue to do. I finish by thanking all Members for bringing forward some of these amendments. They do not quite deal with the Bill at hand. That is why I will not be able to support them and will be backing the Government today.

Fire Safety Bill

Royston Smith Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I will call the Minister to wind-up the debate at five to 9.

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

First, may I put on record my thanks to the Lord Bishop of St Albans and the Bishop of London, without whom this amendment would not be back here tonight?

Not to try to outdo the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), in my hand this evening I have an invoice. It is an invoice for service charges and remediation of fire safety defects; it is an invoice for nearly £79,000. Imagine for one moment you are trapped in a flat you have been told is unsafe. Night after night you go to bed with the fear of fire. You cannot sell your flat because it is worthless. Everyone knows that none of this is your fault, but then an envelope drops through your letterbox. When you open it, there is a bill for £78,000 to put defects right that are not of your making.

I am asking Members across the House to vote tonight to agree to the Bishop of St Albans amendment—better, or formerly, known as the McPartland-Smith amendment to the Fire Safety Bill. I am asking them to vote with us tonight because bills like this one have already started to arrive and they are not going to stop. Everyone knows what is happening, and if they do not they should open their emails and read the heartbreaking experiences of their constituents. This is not politics; it is not ideology—in fact I do not know what it is, but is it any wonder that some leaseholders feel that there is some sort of a conspiracy against them?

Are we going to let the innocent continue to pick up the tab for the guilty? What are we doing about the developers, the contractors and the manufacturers? What are we doing about the insurers and the National House Building Council? What are we doing about local authority development control and others that signed off these buildings as safe? Are they sleeping soundly in their beds tonight?

There is an economic reason for voting for the amendment, and there is a political reason for voting for it, but beyond that there is a moral reason. If this Bill becomes law, we will be abandoning hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and I am not going to have that on my conscience.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab) [V]]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak this evening. I have been contacted by and met hundreds of concerned constituents, many of whom are trapped in unsafe leasehold properties. I have also met Clad DAG, a group set up to ensure the voices of disabled leaseholders are heard, and I hope the Minister will also meet them. Many of those I have spoken to bought their first home through Government schemes that they believed would help, rather than hinder, them. They now wish to move on, but are instead facing bankruptcy due to astronomical bills. Understandably, they want to know why those who should be taking responsibility are not.

Let us look at the example of Berkeley Homes and its subsidiary St James. Unlike other developers and housing providers in the constituency, the chief executive officer of Berkeley Homes has refused three times to attend public meetings that I have organised, or to answer leaseholders’ reasonable questions about remediation costs. The company remains in dispute with the owners of Aragon Tower in Deptford about whether the fire breaks in the building are faulty. Meanwhile, more than 160 residents are fearful of what might happen while they are asleep.

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[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The first thing to say is that I agree with many of the comments that have been made. It simply cannot be right that leaseholders are faced with bills of tens of thousands of pounds. Nevertheless, I cannot support the amendment because I do not think it is effective, for a number of reasons. First, it seems to put somebody—an indeterminate person—on the hook for fire safety remediation forever. As I read it, it is not limited to historical defects.

[Royston Smith]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I do not think I should, because of the timescales, but as my hon. Friend is an author of the amendment, I will.

[Royston Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I want to ask him this simple question, which I am sure he will appreciate. We have been back here three or four times now to discuss this, over and over, and every time I have said that if the amendment is defective, the Government should make it work and have it as their own. Does he agree that that is the way to go?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

After the previous debate, I offered my hon. Friend the opportunity to sit down and look at an amendment that might work, in concert with the Government.

The other difficulty with the amendment is that it would put the onus back on a building’s freeholders. Many people would say that that is fine—that it is better than the leaseholders having that responsibility—but I do not think it would put the leaseholders in a better situation, because the freeholder would simply close down the company and hand back the responsibility, which would fall back on to the leaseholders. I simply do not think the amendment works.

I have a couple of general comments. I was a member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee at the time of the Grenfell tragedy, and the first thing for which we campaigned—straightaway, like many Members in this House—was a complete ban on combustible cladding. That is exactly what the Government stepped in to do. Of course, that ban is prospective, and it left a retrospective issue. The Government have clearly stepped in on the retrospective issue of cladding on high-risk buildings, which is exactly what the Select Committee campaigned for—those 1,700 high-risk buildings that were over 18 metres. That is what the £5 billion of funding remediates.

Many people in this debate have asked about the other elements, such as the missing fire breaks. It is of course absolutely right that we cannot expect leaseholders to take on a debt of tens of thousands of pounds; that is simply not right. We need to take a risk-based approach to the issue. Lots of buildings, particularly lower-rise buildings, can be safely remediated without necessarily replacing cladding: sprinklers, fire alarms and other systems can make those buildings just as safe.

We need to form a coalition of people right across the sector—be it building owners, contractors, managers or manufacturers—to find the best risk-based solution to the problem while minimising the cost for anybody, not least leaseholders. Of course developers should pay, and in many cases they have—Persimmon has just put £70 million to one side to remediate some of its buildings—but the difficulty is that we are often trying to deal with developers that are no longer there. The levy that the Government have introduced is absolutely the right solution, and I urge them to extend it to materials manufacturers and in particular insulation manufacturers, which I feel are principally responsible for the scandal of the situation in which we find ourselves.

On leaseholders, we of course do not want to see anybody go bankrupt as a result of these costs. There is a cap on costs for lower-rise buildings; it may well be that there should be a cap on the costs of remediating these issues for any leaseholder in any building. We should look into that, along with the possibility of the Government top-slicing the risk to make the insurance costs much lower. There are solutions and we all need to work together to provide them.

Fire Safety Bill

Royston Smith Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We now move to a three-minute time limit. I call Royston Smith.

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

The longer this debate drags on, the more damaging it becomes to the Government and the worse it becomes for innocent leaseholders. On Saturday evening, there was a fire in the tallest tower block in Southampton. That building has ACM cladding. As I understand it, it was alight. Hampshire fire and rescue responded quickly and dealt with the fire with its characteristic professionalism. Fortunately, the fire was not too serious, but it could have been. What would we be saying today if the worst had happened, I wonder?

I have said from the start that there are three dimensions to the fire safety scandal: the moral, the economic and the political. The moral obligation is obvious: this Government have a duty to hold those who are responsible to account and to defend the innocent leaseholders. There should be no disagreement on that issue.

Secondly, on the economic, the Government clearly think that my concerns about toxic debt, mass bankruptcy and repossession are wrong, but it is not just me who thinks it is a risk. The Bank of England is concerned, too—so concerned that it is assessing whether the fire safety scandal could cause a new financial crisis. With up to 1.3 million flats unmortgageable, perhaps the Government should be a little more concerned about the economic issue.

Finally, on the political, the Government believe in the home-owning democracy. It defines us. We have encouraged it. We have incentivised it. In fact, many people would not be in their own property without the support of Government. How do we look ourselves in the mirror when we have helped people to buy a home in a dangerous building that is worth less—sometimes much less—than they paid for it? The truth is that most MPs, including Conservative MPs, agree that the Government should resolve this issue. They believe, as I do, that it should not be the taxpayers who pay, despite what some in government have been saying. It should be those who are responsible—the manufacturers, the developers, the National House Building Council and development control. Some of those, of course, are local authorities. The Government can underwrite what is needed and then take it back from the industry. It may take years, but we will charge interest. It should be those who are responsible who pay.

We have been accused of wanting to kill the Fire Safety Bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the Government wanted the Bill to succeed as much as I do, they would do what was necessary to get the Bill through this place and the other place, but they have thus far chosen not to. After today, the Bill will go back to the Lords, and it will, in all likelihood, come back again. The amendment may come back with a different name and moved by someone else. If that happens, the Bill may well fall. That will not be my fault or our fault. That will be the Government’s fault.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab) [V]]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith). Here we are again debating a Lords amendment to protect leaseholders from having to pay to fix construction defects and unsafe cladding that never were and never should be their responsibility, and yet Ministers continue to resist, even though they have repeatedly said that leaseholders should not have to bear the cost. The trouble with this endless debate is that the clock is ticking and innocent leaseholders continue to face unreasonable costs as bills now start to arrive demanding sums of money that they simply do not possess. One constituent wrote to me last week enclosing a photograph of the bill he has just been sent, for £27,000. Another thinks that their bill will be £40,000. They obviously cannot remortgage their flats. So I ask the Minister: what are people in this situation meant to do? Sadly, we know that the Government do not have an answer to this, or indeed to the mental and emotional torment that these people are being put through. That is why this amendment is needed, and needed now.

Even taking account of the Government funding already announced, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership estimates that about two thirds of the total cost will still fall on leaseholders: the very people whom the Government say should not pay. The Association of Residential Managing Agents estimates that the average remediation bill will be about £50,000 a flat and that insurance costs have risen by 400%. The Government estimate that the average cost of a waking watch outside London is over £2,100 a year for each flat. Leaseholders in shared ownership properties are in a particular bind. The building safety fund is moving too slowly. There is a shortage of companies who can, or will, do the work. There is total uncertainty as to what is meant to happen when we know that there are other works that have to be done to make buildings safe but for which the Government are not prepared, so far, to offer funding. I find it very hard to believe that Ministers do not understand that the remedy they have come forward with so far is patently insufficient, or that, without a comprehensive plan, leaseholders will, month by month and year by year, inevitably face financial collapse because of the huge burden of costs being put on their shoulders.

In conclusion, can I assure the Minister that the growing number of MPs who support the Lords amendment are not going anywhere, and that is because our constituents have nowhere else to go?