Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

2. What plans he has to help leaseholders affected by potentially dangerous cladding with increases in insurance charges.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

17. What recent progress he has made on cladding and non-cladding remediation for residential buildings.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)]

The Government intend to enact reforms to improve the buildings insurance market by banning commissions, increasing the transparency of information and preventing unjustified legal costs when premiums are challenged. We are also pressing the insurance industry to launch its scheme. In 95% of all identified unsafe high-rise aluminium composite material buildings, and in 400 buildings supported by the building safety fund, remediation works have been either completed or started.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I have raised before in the House the predicament of residents of Barrier Point, in my constituency, whose insurance premiums have risen sixfold. The Secretary of State told me in January that such insurers were

“squarely in our gun sights”.—[Official Report, 30 January 2023; Vol. 727, c. 55.]

Can the Minister offer any prospect of imminent relief to my constituents, some of whom face a demand of an additional £6,000 this year?

[Lee Rowley]

I completely appreciate the point the right hon. Gentleman makes. That is why I have met with the Association of British Insurers multiple times in the last few weeks alone. I am hopeful that the scheme it hopes to bring forward with the insurance industry will come forward in the next few weeks. Later today, I am meeting the British Insurance Brokers’ Association again to talk about how it will reduce commissions, in advance of the work that the Secretary of State has already announced to ban such commissions.