Building Safety Bill

Debate between Royston Smith and Peter Bottomley

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[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.