Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Royston Smith and Kevin Hollinrake

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[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

Debate between Royston Smith and Kevin Hollinrake

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

[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.