Building Safety

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend raises a very important case. I will look at what we can do to help his constituents. I will not make an absolute promise from the Dispatch Box at this point, but the situation he describes is clearly unacceptable.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

The shadow Secretary of State said that we cannot make a building half safe, but some residential buildings are possibly more dangerous than others. In October 2020, over 800 leaseholders and students were evicted from the Paragon blocks in Brentford, with one week’s notice—that is how dangerous they were deemed to be. They were built using a modular form of construction, and the eviction came two years after the flammable cladding had already been removed. I have reason to believe that the Paragon situation—there are other examples across the country—was a result of the modular form of construction, to which the out-of-date building regulations do not apply, as well as poor, shoddy and badly supervised construction works. When will the Secretary of State bring up-to-date building regulations through the system, and when will he address the lamentable culture in the construction industry, which the counsel for the Fire Brigades Union at the Grenfell inquiry described as being driven by an

“agenda of deregulation, privatisation and marketisation”?

When will he do something about that?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about modular construction. Through the Buildoffsite Property Assurance Scheme guidance, we require appropriate adherence to principles with modular construction, which should keep buildings safe. She is right that the Grenfell inquiry has also had a number of accounts from a number of witnesses that raise issues of concern. Although it is important that we continue to take action even before the inquiry concludes, I would not want to pre-empt the inquiry’s conclusion on all the issues she mentions.