Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Sarah Jones and Christopher Pincher

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I certainly accept my hon. Friend’s assurance that he is playing the issue, as he always does, and not the man. As he rightly says, we propose to spend £5.1 billion of public money on remediating the tallest buildings, as directed by the Hackitt report and its recommendations.

We have also said that as a result of our tax on the development industry, which the Chancellor will consult on imminently, we will raise a further £2 billion. We have also said that we will introduce a tall buildings levy. Developers themselves are placing more money on the table. Taylor Wimpey has now placed a further £125 million on the table for remediation, and Persimmon £75 million. The amounts are building up. We have also suggested a very advantageous financing scheme for those buildings below 18 metres that may require some remediation.

I think all Members would agree that the taxpayer should not be paying for every cost associated with the provisions of the Fire Safety Bill, but that is the risk, because the scope of the amendments that have been tabled is far too broad to provide a sensible solution. Lords amendment 4L is also unclear on who should take responsibility for remediation works until a statutory scheme is in place to pay the costs. That would result in all types of remediation being delayed—a really unsatisfactory outcome for leaseholders. Leaseholders also will not thank us for voting through an amendment that will generate lots of litigation that they may need to pay for.

The amendment would prevent the passing on of remediation costs, but it does not define what those costs are. That is a recipe for litigation and a recipe for delay. There is a lack of clarity on the definition of remedial work and what may be attributable to the provisions in this Bill, in other Acts or in none. How would Members suggest that we disaggregate the legislation under which works are carried out and the definition to differentiate between remediation, maintenance or improvement? It is a recipe for litigation and a recipe for delay.

In effect, it may not be possible to relieve leaseholders and tenants from all costs for remedial works attributable to the Bill without breaching subsidy control rules—a form of state aid. Further detailed consideration would be needed about that, too. Practically speaking, drafting legislation is, as many Members will know, a complex matter that cannot be dealt with in the timeframe proposed by the amendment, and to provide an arbitrary deadline is neither helpful nor practical.

There is a common theme uniting these points. The amendments will not work. They will not help leaseholders. They are not detailed enough for a complex and intricate problem of this nature. We have seen the key elements of this amendment time and again, and this House has voted them down time and again. Yet time and again, peers and the Opposition—unintentionally, I trust—seem set on reinjecting uncertainty into the market, which cannot help leaseholders. I respectfully ask the House to reject this amendment, so that we return a further clear and consistent message to the other place.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

The Minister has made a lengthy speech on this occasion, perhaps trying to ensure that others have less time to speak. I am glad that he took an intervention from the Father of the House on this occasion—he did not do so yesterday—but unfortunately he did not answer the main point, and therefore we must conclude that the Government are content for the £10 billion of additional cost to be shouldered by leaseholders.

We find ourselves in an extraordinary position. We voted on this only yesterday, and in that debate every single speaker—the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem contributors—pleaded with the Government to support leaseholders. No one spoke in the Government’s favour, and the Government’s majority was halved in the vote. At what point does the Minister question the sense of his approach? At what point does he turn around and think, “Well, all these people who have spoken are sensible and well meaning; perhaps they have a point”? At what point does he consider that he might actually agree with us?

I suspect that the Minister has had those thoughts, and I suspect that he even agrees with us. He knows that the Bank of England is worried about a crash caused directly by the crisis. He knows that hundreds of thousands of people are suffering. But he also knows that his Chancellor and his Prime Minister do not care enough to act. They have other priorities—to their property and development donors. Fourteen separate companies and individuals with links to construction companies using potentially lethal aluminium composite material cladding on buildings have donated nearly £4 million to the Conservatives since 2006. The Prime Minister must have his new curtains, so they turn away from the screams for help from the people hit with extraordinary bills of £40,000, £50,000, £60,000, and the Minister has to bunker down, hold his nose and hold the line. I almost feel sorry for him.

Let me touch briefly on the arguments put forward by the Minister yesterday and today for not accepting these amendments. The argument that they would further delay the implementation of the Grenfell recommendations does not wash and is frankly insulting to the Grenfell survivors. Yesterday, the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) read out Grenfell United’s condemnation of the use and abuse of the tragedy to put the blame on leaseholders. It said that the Government’s excuse that amendments to protect leaseholders would delay Grenfell recommendations is “deeply upsetting”, “wrong”,

“and shows they’d rather protect the corporates responsible from paying for the mess they created.”

That argument against delaying the Bill was put to us time and again when we were trying to make amendments to implement the Grenfell inquiry recommendations. On Report, the Minister for Security, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), said that accepting our amendment to implement the Grenfell inquiry phase 1 recommendations would “create uncertainty”. The Minister for Crime and Policing, the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), later said:

“It is not helpful, I have to say, for the House to keep returning to this issue.”—[Official Report, 24 February 2021; Vol. 689, c. 950.]

He added that it causes “confusion”. However, after continually voting against our amendments, the Government eventually gave in and made the concession in the other place. It was possible then, even after months of their saying it was not, and it is possible now.

The Housing Minister has the audacity to imply that the supposed delays from new amendments would mean that people were less safe, as if people are not already unsafe living in buildings riddled with fire safety issues. Has he forgotten that hundreds of thousands of people up and down the country are already stuck in unsafe buildings? I say to him again today: if the Government have not managed to work out how to pursue the money from those responsible, why do they not do what is right and stop leaseholders footing the bill now? Labour’s amendment would buy the Government time. It would protect leaseholders while the Government came up with a longer-term plan.

As Lord Kennedy of Southwark said yesterday in the other place, it is unusual to be here again so soon, but this is an unprecedented crisis and the Government should be taking unprecedented measures to sort it out. The Government know that hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to pay to fix fire safety issues that were not their fault. The Government should pay and then go after the building companies and developers who are responsible. Most MPs agree: 95% of all MPs, and 92% of Tory MPs, said that the developers who built the flats should pay to make them safe.

The tragedy is that we know that, at some point, the Government are going to have to act to fix this problem. We know that they cannot leave leaseholders to foot a £10 billion bill. Yet yesterday, many Conservative Members voted against an amendment that would have protected leaseholders. What will they do today? Will they keep voting against their conscience, against their opinions, against the will of their constituents, or will they do the right thing and vote to protect leaseholders?

Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Sarah Jones and Christopher Pincher

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend has raised that point many times, and he is standing up for his constituents in a way that I am afraid that this Government will not.

What do the Government care about? We are left with one possible answer. Do the Government care only about the donors who keep their Prime Minister in fancy furniture, so that he can spend £60,000 on curtains in No. 10, while nurses and key workers out there face £60,000 bills for cladding with no wealthy Tory donors to bail them out? Do the Government really care only about big property developers, such as European Land and Property, which developed a block of flats in Paddington that used the same aluminium composite material cladding as was on the Grenfell Tower, and which has donated £2.5 million to the Conservative party since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017? Do the Government really care only about Britain’s biggest builders, who have built up vast profits during the pandemic, such as Persimmon—

[Christopher Pincher]

Peter Mandelson. Tony Blair.

[Sarah Jones]

The Minister is shouting names at me from a sedentary position, but he is not answering the question. I do not want to be right. I do not want that to be what the Government care about. I honestly always believe the best in people and applaud my colleagues from across the House who have stood up for their constituents time and again on this, but even they are asking why else the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are ignoring a financial and human crisis on such a growing and worrying scale.

Let us vote today to start putting this right and prove me wrong. It is not just Opposition Members who support amendments to protect leaseholders. A recent poll from YouGov commissioned by the National Housing Federation found that three quarters of MPs, including two thirds of Conservative MPs, say that the Government should pay the costs of all building safety work up front and then claim it back later from those who are responsible. I have not heard a single argument that bears any scrutiny as to why it is okay to let leaseholders foot a bill for tens of thousands of pounds, or to sit by as homeowners face bankruptcy or decades of lingering debt.

We welcome the latest amendment from the Bishop of St Albans, which would put into law a guarantee that building owners cannot pass on the costs of any remedial work to leaseholders in the time before the Government introduce their promised legislation. I am also very interested in the amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), which propose that the Government should follow the polluter pays principle.

Yet again, the Government have decided to lay a motion to disagree with the Lords amendment. This is a betrayal of the promise that Ministers have made over 17 times that leaseholders will not be left to foot the bill. The Minister’s argument that it would delay further works does not work. If the Government have not managed to work out how to pursue the money from those responsible, why do they not do what is right and stop leaseholders footing the bill?

The Bishop of St Albans’s amendment would buy the Government some time. It would protect leaseholders while the Government come up with a longer-term plan. We ask the Minister again, if he does not think that the proposed amendments are right as they are, why not amend them? Why, when it is directly in their gift, will the Government not pay to fix these problems and then go after the building companies and developers that are responsible? Leaseholders deserve justice now.

Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Sarah Jones and Christopher Pincher

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman later on; let me conclude my initial remarks.

This will be targeted on the highest-risk buildings—that is, those buildings over 18 metres tall that have unsafe cladding. The scale of this investment should not be underestimated, with over £5 billion of taxpayers’ money, and more when the developer levy and the developer tax are taken into account. We have an ambitious timescale to ensure that remediation of unsafe cladding is completed at pace. We are also now seeing tangible progress from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors revising its guidance on EWS1 forms, lenders committing to adhering to RICS guidance, and more developers now allocating significant funds for remediation.

As parliamentarians, we have a duty to implement a clear framework and transparent legislation to support fire and building safety reform. I am afraid to say that, despite the best intentions of these Lords amendments—I absolutely accept the sincerity with which they have been posited—they are unworkable and impractical. They would make the legislation less clear, and they do not reflect the complexity involved in apportioning liability for remedial defects. I have had extensive conversations about the effects that the amendments might have with my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood, who has pressed me hard on this, as have others. These amendments would also require extensive redrafting of primary legislation, resulting in delays to the commencement of the Fire Safety Bill and to our overall programme. They could also have unintended and possibly perverse consequences for those that the amendments are intended to support, and we would still be no further forward in resolving these issues.

I shall give way to the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) when I return to speak later, but let me say in concluding my opening remarks that we cannot accept these Lords amendments and we encourage the House to vote against them and for the Government amendments.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I am pleased that so many Members have put in to speak today. I will keep my remarks fairly brief, but I want to make three points. First, thank goodness I am not standing at this Dispatch Box again and pleading with the Government to agree at the very least a timetable to implement the vital fire safety measures from the first phase of the Grenfell inquiry. I am pleased that the Government have agreed in the other place to Labour’s suggestion of a timetable. Before the second anniversary of the Grenfell phase one recommendations, the Government have committed to regulations to implement them, and that will be by October this year. They said that this would delay the Bill, that it would be too complicated and that it would be too hard to do, but they have now agreed to a version of it. It is not quite what we wanted, but it is something close.

I have lost count of the number of times we have voted on the Grenfell recommendations and the number of times we have been pushed back, and it is quite extraordinary that the Government have taken so long to get us here. Labour’s previous amendment, which the Government have now agreed on a timetable to deliver, would do four things: the owners of buildings that contain two or more sets of domestic premises would share information with their local fire and rescue service about the design and make-up of the external walls; they would complete regular inspections of fire entrance doors; they would complete regular inspections of lifts; and they would share evacuation and fire safety instructions with residents and the fire service. These measures are straightforward and are supported by key stakeholders.

In the Minister’s letter that sets out details of the Government’s concession, he wrote that the Government would lay regulations to make responsible persons produce and regularly review evacuation plans for their building. The Grenfell recommendation, and our amendment, said more than that. They said that that information should also be shared with local fire and rescue services and residents. I would like the Minister to clarify in his closing remarks who these evacuation plans will be shared with and how this will be enforced, but I am grateful to him for seeing sense and heeding our calls to do the right thing, because it has been ages.

I come to the second point that I want to make. It has been nearly four years since 72 people so tragically lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire. In those four years, Grenfell United, the families, the survivors and the entire community have fought tirelessly for change. It is thanks to their hard work and dedication that the Government have finally agreed to implement the recommendations by October 2021. I pay tribute to them and their ongoing fight for justice. I pay tribute to our firefighters who keep us safe every day. We know that cuts to their service have hit hard—response times are inevitably affected, and morale is affected—and now they have a pay freeze, which is no way to thank them for going above and beyond during the covid pandemic.

I come to my third and final point. Leaseholders should not have to fund the cost of fire safety remediation works when they are not to blame and they are the least able to pay.