Fire Safety Bill

Stephen McPartland Excerpts

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

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for concluding bang on time. As the House knows, this debate is limited to three hours, and one of those hours has now passed. I did say at the beginning of the debate that there would be a time limit of four minutes on Back-Bench speeches. I make no criticism of the Minister or the shadow Minister—if I were going to criticise, I would have stopped them long before now—and I appreciate that both hon. Members have taken a lot of interventions and dealt with a great many different matters, so it was necessary to spend the first hour in this way. But that does mean that, although there will be a limit of four minutes for the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), after that, the limit will be reduced to three minutes.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate. I would also like to send my best wishes to my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire).

It is a great pleasure to see the Minister in his place and responding to this debate. I listened to him very carefully and I detect a hint that there could be a compromise, for which I and my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) have been calling for many months now. We are very keen to work with the Government. We are very keen for the Government to table an amendment in lieu, to accept our amendment today or, if the Minister feels so inclined, even to move our amendment to a vote to test the will of the House, but I imagine that, sadly, we will not have the opportunity to vote on what is called the McPartland-Smith amendment today.

I would like to pick the Minister up on the point he made about this Bill not being the correct place for the amendment. I believe it is, which I will come on to in a moment. I would also like to put on record that I, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen, those who have supported our amendment and the leaseholders themselves are all very clear that we have never asked the Government to pay for the full costs of remediation, or the taxpayer to bail people out. We just want the taxpayer to provide a safety net for leaseholders to ensure the fire safety works are actually undertaken; it has been nearly four years.

We want to be in a position whereby the Government provide the cash flow up front, and then they can levy those who have been responsible within the industry to recoup those funds over the next 10 years. That is our plan and objective. We would love to work with the Minister and the Government to get this resolved in the Lords. I say to the Minister today that their lordships have already agreed to re-table the amendment if it is not accepted. It will be tabled in the Lords on Friday. I am sure we will be back to discuss this later on—in a few months. So I hope that we can work in the in-between time to come to some solution together.

I am very proud to be the Chairman of the Regulatory Reform Committee. The Fire Safety Bill does amend the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. The reason why the Bill is so important is that it creates a financial obligation on leaseholders to pay freeholders for the costs of remedying any fire safety defects on external walls and doors, such as cladding, but not limited to cladding, so it can include fire safety breaks and a whole variety of other issues. I assume that this is an unintended consequence. The Government do not want leaseholders to pay—that is very clear from what the Minister said earlier—but they are not sure how they can resolve the problem and get the works fixed without leaseholders actually paying.

From my point of view, we are very keen to ensure that leaseholders are not responsible. In terms of dealing with that order, we have to amend the Fire Safety Bill, because we cannot wait for the Building Safety Bill. The Fire Safety Bill creates this legal obligation. It creates the position whereby a fire authority, which is a competent authority, can order a freeholder to do the works. They have 21 days to agree to do the works and provide a timescale, or that is a criminal offence. Once they have had this direction from a competent authority, the leaseholders are then required to refund the freeholder for the works that are done. Up and down the country we already have thousands of leaseholders who are on the verge of bankruptcy—some have already gone bankrupt—just waiting and, before they actually get to the costs of remediation, paying £15,000 a week for waking watch in blocks of flats and excessive insurance premiums. The costs are huge.

I urge the Government to accept our amendment, to let us vote on it, or to work with us to ensure that we resolve this issue in the Lords and that leaseholders do not have to pay.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab) [V]]

First, may I send my best wishes to the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire)? When he was Secretary of State, he and I discussed our respective illnesses, and I really feel for him and his family at this very difficult time.

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has discussed the issue of cladding remediation and fire safety works on many occasions. In June, we made it clear that

“residents are in no way to blame”

for defects from cladding

“and it is our view that they should bear none of the cost of remediation.”

We repeated those sentiments in our prelegislative scrutiny of the Building Safety Bill. Again, we said:

“The Government must recommit to the principle that leaseholders should not pay anything towards the cost of remediating historical building safety defects…for which they were not responsible.”

That is very clear.

The question is who should pay: the initial developer—the Government could help to co-ordinate action against them—the taxpayer, of course, or the industry as a whole? Unfortunately, the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland)—I very much agreed with the sentiments of his comments—and by the Labour Front Benchers seek to place responsibility on the freeholder.

For reasons that the Minister gave, those amendments cut across the contractual relationship between freeholder and leaseholder. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who raised this issue a number of times in the Select Committee when he was a member, showed that freeholders are often quite small companies that, where they were not responsible for the initial development, simply collect ground rent. If faced with the cost of remediation, they would simply walk away. Those amendments will not get the work done. That is the fundamental issue. We want to see it done without leaseholders having to pay for it.

Turning to who should pay, certainly, the Government have put on the table £3.5 billion in addition to the £1.6 billion, but that does not include anything other than cladding remediation. All the other works, which for many leaseholders are as substantial in cost as cladding remediation, are not covered, and of course that funding does not cover buildings below 18 metres.

The Government have come up with a loan scheme for buildings below 18 metres, but that places the loan charge on the freeholder. Surely, we are back to the same problems: if we cannot interfere with the contractual relationship between the freeholder and the leaseholder—according to the Minister, with respect to the amendments before us from the Opposition and the hon. Member for Stevenage, we cannot—then surely that is a problem for the Government’s loan scheme too, and if freeholders are going to walk away from a direct charge on properties, as the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton said, they will walk away from a loan too. That is a real problem that the Government have to address.

I welcome that the Government are going to introduce a levy and a financial contribution from the industry, but we appear to be in a position where they cannot tell us whether the money raised from the levy will be in addition to the £3.5 billion or whether it will be taken from the £3.5 billion—in other words, that the Treasury will get some of that money back. That, to my view, would be wrong. The Minister is going to come to the Select Committee on 8 March; hopefully, we will be a bit wiser after that visit.

Finally, we have talked a lot about leaseholders, but what about social housing tenants? The National Housing Federation says that there is £10 billion of remedial work to be done in the social housing sector, and more for council housing properties, yet the only automatic right that social housing landlords have to any funding is for help with the removal of ACM cladding; everything else they are likely to have to pay for. Tenants are going to have to pay through rent increases, cuts to future maintenance or cuts to the house building programme, none of which is acceptable. So we have a perverse situation where the social housing landlord, as a freeholder, could be ensuring that tenants have to pay for the remediation of properties next door that have been subject to the right to buy. That cannot be right.

All these matters need resolving. We hope that the Minister does so on his visit to the Select Committee.

Fire Safety Bill

Stephen McPartland Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con) [V]]

I thank the Lord Bishop of St Albans and the Lord Bishop of London for ensuring that we have the opportunity to vote on the amendments today. It gives us the chance to divide the House on whether leaseholders should be responsible for paying for historical fire safety costs. I urge the Minister and the Government to accept the amendments or, if there is something wrong with them, to table their own. They should work with us and with leaseholders to try to resolve this issue.

It is unacceptable that people feel that we want taxpayers to pay. Leaseholders do not want taxpayers to pay and Members across the House do not want taxpayers to pay; we want those who are responsible to pay—the developers, the insurance companies and the building regulators who said that these properties were safe over the past 20 to 30 years, when many of the leaseholders who will be forced to pay these bills were in primary school or not even born. It is not acceptable, it is not fair and it is not right. What we are doing today is shameful.

The amendments would maintain the status quo with regard to the costs of remediation. I understand the Minister’s point that this is a small Bill and not the right place to deal with the costs of remediation. I agree with him, but it is he who is transferring the liability to leaseholders in this Bill. The status quo is that leaseholders are not responsible for the costs of anything to do with external walls or doors. It is this Bill that amends the legislation. It is this Bill that will make leaseholders responsible for paying for historical fire safety defects. Again, that is not fair.

I was at a building today and it became clear very quickly that the estimated costs of remediation are greater than the value of the properties within it. Can the Minister give me an answer? What will happen in cases where the costs of remediation are greater than the value of the building and the properties within it? Will the building be written off, like an insurance company would write off a car? Will those people be made homeless? We know that if the Bill goes through, even more leaseholders will face bankruptcy and huge issues of homelessness.

At the moment, the interim costs are bankrupting leaseholders up and down the country. Leaseholders are screaming for help; they are screaming in pain. And what are we doing? Today, we are saying to them, “Thanks for paying the interim costs. Once you’ve finished that, we’re going to load you up with the remediation costs on top.” That is tens of thousands of pounds that people just do not have.

We are nearly four years on from Grenfell, and it appears to me that the Government have given up on those who should be responsible for paying and are pushing the costs on to leaseholders. It is morally unacceptable.

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

I will be supporting the amendment moved by the Bishop of St Albans, because in circumstances where leaseholders are beset by worry, fear and uncertainty, it will provide them with the reassurance that they will not have to pay to fix a problem for which they are not responsible. It will also make the Government realise that they have to come forward with a different solution.

There are two problems here: the first is dangerous cladding and the second is other fire safety defects, which have been discovered in building after building. The Government appear to be in the position where the funding they have announced will pay for the remediation of missing fire cavity barriers where they are integral to the replacement of dangerous cladding, but not where they are not—in other words, where they are elsewhere in the building. I do not really understand that. Can the Minister say whether, if the works the Government are prepared to fund through the scheme are completed, the buildings in question will be declared safe so that the waking watch and insurance costs disappear even if the other fire safety defects have not been fixed?

Time, however, is not on our side, because we know how long making all of these homes safe is going to take, even if all the necessary funding had already been identified.

There are detailed inspections to be done, tenders have to be put together, firms found who are willing to do the work, and scaffolding and building materials have to be ordered before the work can even begin. So, given the scale of this, it is going to take a long time. But that is the one thing that leaseholders do not have, because, as we have heard, they are paying bills that they cannot afford.

Even worse, the bills are now starting to arrive on their doormats demanding payment to fix the cladding. One recent example was a demand for £71,000. It might as well be for £1 million, because there is no prospect of leaseholders being able to find that kind of money.

So the longer this goes on, the more likely we are to see leaseholders becoming bankrupt. What are the local authorities going to do when they turn up at their door and say, “I’m homeless; I need somewhere to stay”? And make no mistake: the anger that leaseholders are feeling at the moment will be something else again when they find themselves being made homeless through no fault of their own.

So, let us do the right thing today to protect leaseholders, and then the Government can turn their attention to finding an answer that will actually work. At a time when people are getting bills to the tune, as I have just said, of £71,000 through the letterbox, to stand up and say, “I’m really sorry, but this isn’t the right legislation” demonstrates a failure to understand the nightmare that so many of the people we represent are living through.

Fire Safety Bill

Stephen McPartland Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[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?

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate.

It is unfortunate that this is the third time the House of Lords has felt it necessary to return this Bill to the House of Commons. That is because their lordships, like many MPs across the House, feel that the Bill cannot progress without some form of protection for leaseholders. It completely astonishes me that people in government cannot hear the screams of pain of leaseholders begging for help—people who are going bankrupt and people who are being hit with high insurance premiums. We were told only last week of an insurance premium for a building that was £11,963 last year but £242,400 this year. People are being hit with bills of £6,000 each with seven days to pay them and no recourse to help. With waking watches, there are interim bills that are going through the roof. Leaseholders cannot pay this; they cannot afford this. The reality is that these buildings will not be made safe by transferring the financial and legal liability on to leaseholders. Leaseholders do not have the funds to fix it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) said, we, leaseholders and leaseholders’ groups do not want the taxpayer to pay; we want the taxpayer to provide a safety net to help. We believe that those responsible should pay—nobody else.

Nobody wants this Bill to fail. We are nearly four years on from Grenfell. The Minister mentioned Grenfell in his opening remarks. I would like to read him a statement that has been issued by Grenfell United:

“The fire safety bill is back in the commons. Government is using the excuse that the amendment will delay Grenfell recommendations. The amendment is to protect leaseholders from charges. The FSB is separate & it is wrong to claim support of it damages recommendations. Using Grenfell Recommendations to justify government’s indifference is deeply upsetting for us and shows they’d rather protect the corporates responsible from paying for the mess they created. Our request is simple: implement Grenfell recommendations make homes safe & protect lease holders from financial ruin. Nearly 4 years since Grenfell and yet not a single piece of legislation has been passed. Homes have to be made safe this is a basic human right. We ask all MPs that committed to ensuring Grenfell 2 could not happen to do the right thing today by us and the thousands of leaseholders effected.”

Grenfell United and the people affected there have spoken. Leaseholders up and down the country are speaking. Our constituents are speaking and Members of Parliament are hearing them. The Bishop of St Albans has tabled an amendment to try to provide the Government with the opportunity of the time and space to come forward with a compromise. I urge the Government to compromise and bring forward an amendment in the House of Lords later today to help support leaseholders.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak so early in this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland). I thank their lordships for the tenacity and perseverance they have shown over many months in standing up for all the blameless leaseholders affected by the cladding crisis, including the many thousands who live in one of the more than 70 affected buildings in my constituency.

In seeking last week to persuade their lordships to cease insisting on amendments designed to protect all leaseholders from remediation costs, the Minister for Building Safety argued once again that such provision is unnecessary and that to continue to seek to amend the Bill in such a way would risk its passage in this Session, could increase fire safety risks and might “ultimately cost lives”. Yet it is the very fact that this crisis is already ruining countless lives that led their lordships to insist once again that this place reconsider, and they were entirely right to do so.