Building Safety Bill

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab) [V]]

The tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire exposed serious failings on fire and building safety, and I echo my colleagues’ concerns that four years after that devastating event the Government still have not learned all the fundamental lessons.

My chief concern is that this Bill makes absolutely no provisions that prevent existing and new buildings under 18 metres from using the same flammable cladding materials that were used on the Grenfell Tower. As 18 metres is about six storeys high, if this Bill passes in its current form any building under six storeys will be able to use dangerous flammable cladding that would wreak devastation upon its occupants if there were a fire. In my constituency, most new homes would not be protected from fires caused by unsafe building materials, and neither would most school buildings, care home buildings and small businesses. All the Government have chosen to do is advise that dangerous, highly flammable materials be removed from these buildings. As I am sure we are all aware, Government guidance without any legal backing or funding is completely toothless, so I urge the Government to reclassify all buildings with dangerous cladding as high risk, not just the high-rise buildings in our big cities.

This Bill also does far too little to protect leaseholders from the financial burden of making their homes safe. Right hon. and hon. Members have repeatedly asked the Government to draft protections for leaseholders caught up in the cladding scandal. Just last year, the Prime Minister stated that he was

“determined that no leaseholder should have to pay for the unaffordable costs of fixing safety defects that they did not cause”.—[Official Report, 3 February 2021; Vol. 688, c. 945.]

Where, then, is that determination today?

Despite years of promises and reassurances from this Government, they have not gone nearly far enough to protect leaseholders. Instead they have done quite the opposite. For example, they have pointed triumphantly to their policy of extending from six to 15 years the period in which a leaseholder can sue for wrongful costs under the Defective Premises Act. However, the National Audit Office published a report last year that stated that the Government have

“acknowledged that only in a minority of cases would it be financially justifiable…to bring legal action to recover money.”

In other words, the Government have already acknowledged that this new policy, supposedly designed to protect leaseholders, will protect almost nobody and make almost no difference. I ask the Government to put their money where their mouth is and protect leaseholders from footing a bill that they have unfairly inherited.

Covid-19: Community Response

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Rees. I thank the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) for securing this important debate.

This is a perfect opportunity to celebrate our community champions—individuals who go above and beyond to support their neighbourhood during this most difficult of times. I am proud that my constituency of Coventry North West is blessed to have so many people who fit that description. I could fill my time simply with a roll-call of names, but instead I will try to be selective and choose a handful who most embody the spirit of togetherness that binds great communities together in times of adversity.

With food poverty a serious issue in our city, Clare Allington-Dixon and her team at Urban Goodies have stepped forward to provide hot meals and food packages throughout the pandemic. Their community enterprise combines the best traditions of charity with a determination to make a lasting difference by teaching cooking skills that blend together all of the fantastic cultural influences that make Coventry special. Their work has given many hope in dark days over the last 18 months.

Others of our community champions have focused on imaginative ways of combating the isolation and loneliness that lockdown has created. Summer of Sunflowers, an initiative that started on the border between my constituency and the next, brings people together through the simple shared experience of growing flowers in their front garden. I have to mention two people in particular. Mark Halpin has put energy and effort into making this idea a success, and I am not the only person delighted to see how Summer of Sunflowers is spreading across our neighbourhoods and schools, encouraging neighbours to work together to turn our streets golden.

Likewise, Katie O’Sullivan’s fantastic artwork on the side of O’Toole’s Cafe has created a centre of community interest in recent weeks. In giving her time to the community, Katie has created a brand-new landmark for Coventry, one I am proud to have in my constituency. The buzz around Summer of Sunflowers has allowed communities to start socialising once more, in a responsible and covid-secure way.

I also pay tribute to Langar Aid for not only helping Coventry’s homeless community but going as far as Dover in Kent to provide meals to lorry drivers who were stranded there due to covid restrictions.

Coventry is blessed with many organisations supporting the most vulnerable in our community, and I would like to thank Hugh McNeill at Coventry food bank, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this month, for all its hard work over the past decade. I am proud to have had the opportunity to volunteer and support it with food bank deliveries.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the faith groups for their incredible work in supporting the local community by distributing food and pharmaceuticals and ensuring the success of Coventry’s vaccination scheme. I am grateful to all the gurdwaras, mosques, churches and faith institutions. In addition, the volunteers at Lawrence Saunders Baptist Church and St Oswald’s have done an incredible job in providing wraparound support for families during this difficult time through their food bank, debt relief and job club services.

I also thank Jac Danielle, Robin Synnott and all the fantastic volunteer litter pickers for keeping our streets and parks clean. They have played an incredible role in bringing pride to our local area and showing that we value our environment.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the remarkable women who have been selected as the 14 modern-day Godivas, representing our city as community champions as we celebrate Coventry being the city of culture this year.

I could go on listing individuals, but for the sake of time I will close by giving thanks to everyone who has gone the extra mile to help our city weather the storms of the past year and a half. They are the glue in our neighbourhoods that binds us together, and I am incredibly grateful to each and every one of them for all they have done over the past 18 months.

Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Of all the problems that my constituents bring to me on a regular basis, it is planning and development that, time and again, possesses some of the greatest difficulties. The Government’s plans to take power from communities and hand them to developers will be nothing short of a disaster for our green spaces. Already, local people have too little control over which developments are built near to them. Communities such as Keresley in my constituency risk being subsumed into the city suburbs by plans that they did not approve and are now fearful of losing much of their unique village identity. Even when comparatively few homes are under construction, those scrutinising plans often lack the powers needed to ensure that new additions are in character with existing homes, with strict enforcement made virtually impossible by loopholes created by Whitehall.

In addition, local councils such as Coventry City Council are being forced to build tens of thousands more homes than residents require and, if they refuse, not only would yet more homes be foisted upon them, but those developments would be unleashed to sprawl outwards with zero control for those most affected locally.

Worse still, new developments often include little decent social housing and too often lack the local public services required to support new homes. Put simply, our planning laws are already widely unbalanced, and it is time that we put local people before the big developers’ profit margins.

As the Government craft their latest changes to planning policies, Ministers must at last take the time to engage with those affected by development—those who feel powerless in the face of mass building projects. When local voices are ignored, the result is the wrong houses built in the wrong places. Instead of lucrative estates constructed by Conservative party donors, Britain needs planning and development rules that listen and respond to local people and local needs. Handing power back to communities and their representatives in local government can unlock a brighter future for how we meet our housing needs. No community can be expected to support a development that it was powerless to shape.

Once, those on the Conservative Benches spoke of a property-owning democracy, yet now they seek to strip away the last few democratic safeguards in our planning system. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of families are left renting poor quality houses for sky-high rents, while others are forced to move away from the only community that they have ever known thanks to development designed to serve only property investors.

The Government are putting the profits of a greedy few ahead of the concerns of thousands whose communities are faced with bulldozers, so I call on Members from all parties to stand up to be counted against the Government’s proposals as they seek to permanently rob communities of the powers to shape their neighbourhoods and their own futures.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The wind-ups will begin promptly at 7.10, and apologies to the probably 17 Members who will fail to be called.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab) [V]]

It is an honour and a privilege to speak in today’s debate. A staggering and heartbreaking 6 million Jews—women, men and children—were murdered during the holocaust. Today we collectively commemorate and remember them. Today we collectively grieve and say, “Never again.”

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s theme for this year could not be more fitting: “Be the light in the darkness.” This theme invites us to reflect on the murky depths to which humanity can sink. We saw it in the holocaust and in the genocides that followed, from Cambodia to Darfur, Bosnia and Rwanda—dark stains on all of humanity. The light derives from communities who defied evil and those who rose to save lives—those who put their own lives on the line to stand up to and against hate. We salute those people, we commemorate them and we remember them.

The holocaust was not something that happened long ago. It is our recent history, and it should always remain engraved in our consciousness. Millions of Jews and non-Jews were murdered through forced labour, starvation, bullets and gas chambers. We should rightly be proud of the role that British forces played in liberating those who were sent to die in concentration and extermination camps such as Bergen-Belsen.

In the aftermath of the war, more than 3,000 holocaust survivors settled in Britain. In putting together my remarks for this speech, I was inspired by the story of Martin Kapel, who grew up in Coventry. Martin was born of Polish parents in Germany, and I welled up as I read about the horrors he witnessed as a young boy. Fortunately, he was selected to be transported to Britain through the Kindertransport programme. He was one of the thousands of Jewish children who survived by escaping to Britain while the communities they came from were destroyed. I am proud that he chose to make Coventry his home.

I am proud that, today, Coventry still holds its status as a sanctuary city, home to refugees fleeing violence. I join the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust in calling on us all to be the light in the darkness. In doing so, we make a commitment to continue to stand against hate. We make a commitment to not be complacent in the face of intolerance and not to look the other way. We must do right by those who are fleeing persecution. Never again should we stand by and watch genocide take place or forget our most important humanitarian principles.

The Future of the High Street

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

My home city of Coventry was placed in the most restrictive tier, tier 3. That news came after weeks of steadily declining transmission rates, and my constituents cannot understand why their high street businesses are suffering from financially crushing restrictions when in places such as London, where covid rates have risen steadily for weeks, businesses are only under tier 2. Coventry’s high street matters just as much as Oxford Street, and that truth must be reflected in how the Government choose to apply covid-19 restrictions, instead of the last-minute, non-uniform way they have done it so far.

While it is true that the high street faces difficulties due to a long-term shift in the way that people shop, many high street businesses are in less immediate danger of being supplanted by modernising trends than they are by the lack of pandemic-related support. As Coventry has opened more museums, restaurants and other high street businesses, the Telegraph Hotel was meant to open in October to accommodate an expected increase in tourism. After lockdown-related delays in its opening, it had to stay closed because of tier 3 restrictions and cancel the hundreds of reservations already made through Christmas. The Telegraph spent millions of pounds to not only preserve the beautiful post-war newspaper building it occupies but to construct outdoor terrace space to make it covid-safe. Concerned about the uncertainty of future guidelines and unable to access covid funds, its business is suffering.

Businesses such as the Telegraph are not just part of the high street; they attract customers to their neighbour businesses as well. We must do what we can to support them and not hang them out to dry. An antique sleigh ride outside the Transport Museum is an annual Coventry high street attraction. Because of the pandemic, sleigh rides will not be feasible this year. However, one businessman in Coventry invested £50,000 in a virtual reality sleigh, so that people out shopping could take covid-safe turns on the VR sleigh ride. Unfortunately, under tier 3 restrictions, he was told to cancel the operation.

It is of course crucial to ask what we can do to ensure the future of our high streets. However, in my city, resilient business owners with dedicated business improvement districts and networks of supportive neighbours have already been coming together to find ways to preserve the experience-driven businesses that keep high streets at the centre of our community. Perhaps one of the most important things we can do to help them is not to stifle them in their efforts. Moving forward, I call on the Government to provide a business support package that reflects the level of business need and the severity of restrictions in different areas.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

Every once in a while, a piece of legislation comes that goes to the very heart of our character as a country. The internal market Bill is one such piece of legislation. It goes to the very heart of our economy, our national identity and our constitution. There is no doubt that the legislation is necessary. We need a strong internal market so that businesses can trade freely across the UK’s four nations, which will be vital for our shared prosperity, and we want the Government to get on and deliver what they promised: an oven-ready Brexit deal in place for 1 January, so that we can get on with tackling the coronavirus crisis.

However, whether seen through the prism of the economy, of our national reputation or of our constitution, the Bill is fundamentally flawed. On the economy, it creates the conditions for a race to the bottom. Mutual recognition of standards without common frameworks in place simply opens the back door to hormone-injected beef and chlorinated chicken becoming the norm.

Internationally, the Bill will severely damage Britain’s standing in the world. The Government have freely and openly confirmed that the Bill will breach international law by overriding elements of the withdrawal agreement signed only nine months ago by the Prime Minister himself. As the Foreign Secretary himself stated in January:

“global Britain is…about continuing to uphold…our heartfelt commitment to the international rule of law…for which we are respected the world over.”—[Official Report, 13 January 2020; Vol. 669, c. 768.]

Our country’s reputation is on the line. Surely, we want to be seen as a trustworthy nation with which other countries can do business in good faith. Surely, we want to strike good trade deals across the world. Surely, we want to be able to stand up to the world’s authoritarian regimes with credibility. I know many Government Members are extremely concerned about the damage the Government are doing to Britain’s standing in the world. I hope that that concern will be reflected in the Division Lobby this evening.

As a Welsh MP who believes passionately in a strong Wales within a strong United Kingdom, I am profoundly concerned that the Bill risks the integrity of our Union. Devolution is based on the principle of informed consent, but the UK Government are hellbent on cutting the devolved Administrations out of the conversation. Surely, one of the lessons of the covid crisis is that the overcentralised control freakery of this Government is simply not working. The days of being able to sit behind a desk in Whitehall, pull a lever and expect it to deliver the desired outcomes in places such as Aberavon are over. Modern Government should be built on consultation and co-operation, not top-down diktat. As chair of the all-party group on post-Brexit funding, I am profoundly concerned that this approach will be applied to the shared prosperity fund. There is a risk that the UK will undertake both a money grab and a power grab from the devolved nations with regard to how that development funding will be spent. Further still, we hear that the Government plan to funnel money directly into Conservative seats in what can only be described as the worst sort of pork-barrel politics.

The Prime Minister loves to present himself as a Churchillian patriot, but is it patriotic to divide our country? Is it patriotic to tarnish our country’s reputation overseas? Is it patriotic to undermine our economy and the standards we hold so dear? Absolutely not. The key elements of the Bill are holding our country back. We need competence and consensus, not bluster and bullying. We need to deliver on this deal and move forward.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be able to contribute to the debate.

This House and all our constituents were promised an oven-ready deal. Now, it seems as though the Government are not only failing on that promise, but increasingly showing that there was nothing in the oven at all. Britain’s greatness is built on our values and the fact that we have long stood up for the rule of law. However, the Bill represents the disregard of an international treaty the Prime Minister himself personally negotiated and signed up to. If the UK Government can break international laws with their former friends and allies, what will they do to others? Is that the basis and dreadful reputation on which we are seeking to negotiate and agree trade deals with others?

The Government promised to get Brexit done and indeed they should: not by any means necessary, but with the strongest protections in place for my constituents in Coventry North West and for constituents across the UK; and not through a no-deal Brexit, which would decimate jobs and businesses across the country, causing untold harm to our own communities. We need a Brexit deal that will protect jobs and safeguard our health and social care sector. Research from the University of Sussex estimates that the failure to secure a Brexit deal would reduce exports in the manufacturing industry by up to 20% and reduce jobs. The Prime Minister promised to protect our manufacturing industries, which are crucial to our economy and any recovery we hope to see in Coventry. Even a former member of his own Government, Margot James, appealed to the Government to support manufacturers in Coventry, which are already strained by the coronavirus pandemic. How can the Prime Minister safeguard jobs and commit to job creation in manufacturing in my constituency if he is committed to selling the UK short on delivering a Brexit that my constituents are proud of?

Coventry North West and the west midlands in general stand to lose the most from the Government playing fast and loose with both UK and international law. A University of Oxford study found that car production could halve by the middle of the next decade if the UK crashes out of the EU with no deal. We are already losing manufacturing jobs in Rolls-Royce Annesley, so what is next? We have so many thriving small businesses in Coventry North West, but the Bill does not serve them and makes a catastrophic no-deal Brexit more likely. Nor does it serve our health and social care sector, and my caseload attests to the fact that the Government do not have their eye on the ball. Breaking international law will severely impact the UK’s ability to negotiate trade agreements with countries that set a higher bar, as well as to protect the health sector and public health in the UK and to enhance health globally.

Despite what the Government would like people to think, Labour wants a Brexit deal negotiated so that we can press ahead with tackling issues such as the coronavirus, securing important trade deals—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am terribly sorry, Taiwo. We have to move on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. Of course, health and education providers should already be engaging with local planning authorities about infrastructure requirements in the areas in which they should be delivered. The implementation of our manifesto commitment—I have already mentioned the single housing infrastructure fund—will build on that approach, and will ensure that we can deliver the health and education infrastructure that is needed to support house building. I spoke to my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary just as a few days ago about the £2 billion or so that is available to the Department for Education to spend on school improvements, and I shall of course be keeping in touch with him.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Since the election in December, I have received countless emails and letters about our green belt in Coventry. In any upcoming review of the green belt, how will the Government ensure that local authorities can both deliver the homes that people need and protect our green spaces? Just this morning, Conservative West Midlands mayor Andy Street called for more funding to clean up brownfield sites so that new homes could be built. It is important for members of the next generation to have the opportunity to grow up in a healthy environment where they can play, explore, and learn about the natural areas in their communities, while also having homes that they can afford.

[Christopher Pincher]

We are working with the mayor of the West Midlands to ensure that the right homes are built in the right places, through, for instance, a brownfield strategy. Of course the hon. Lady is right—we want green spaces that people can enjoy—but we also want homes that people can live in, and she cannot have it both ways. We want to build homes that people can afford to rent or to buy so that they have a stake in the country and a right to aspire to homes that they can enjoy and pass on to their families, and that is what this Government will deliver.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I have great sympathy with the issue that my hon. Friend raises, and it will be addressed in our forthcoming White Paper on the planning system.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

T4. Victims of domestic violence are often forced to choose between staying with an abusive partner or becoming homeless. What help are the Government providing to local authorities to ensure that no one is faced with that decision?

[Luke Hall]

The hon. Lady raises an extremely serious and important matter. On 17 February we announced £16.6 million for 75 local authority projects, for the delivery of support to victims of domestic abuse and their children in safe accommodation, helping up to 43,000 survivors. The fund will allow local authorities to maintain existing services until the new duty comes into force in April 2021, subject to the successful passage of the domestic abuse Bill.