Building Safety Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-29
Topic: Housing
Claire Fox (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): Your Lordships need to calm yourselves On Saturday, I went to visit my home in Wood Green. It looks like a bomb site: there is no roof and there are huge amounts of scaffolding and barbed-wire fences surrounding the block of 25 two-floor maisonettes. When you arrive, you see a huge multicoloured fluorescent sign with the words "Zero tolerance" and then a list of prohibited activities, all relating to safety: "Safety helmets must be worn"; "Safety footwear must be worn"; "No smoking"; "Danger: tripping hazards"; "Danger: men working ahead"; "Danger: no children on the site". We are told that "Safety signs and procedures must be observed." I therefore know, having visited my home in Wood Green, that Haringey Council is definitely keen on promoting safety Let us consider this. My home is in this state because, two years ago, there was a fridge fire in one maisonette. The roof of the block caught fire and the other flats, including mine, were drenched by the fire brigade in putting out the fire. It was not too bad and, to be honest, we were so glad that no one was hurt and we were relieved to get out safely. But that was two years ago this month—two years in which 25 families have been effectively homeless. As a leaseholder, the council, which is my freeholder, took my front door key off me—it is not a glamorous house, by the way, but it is mine, or so I thought—and basically said that I would get it back when the block had been made safe. It is now two years later and I am still not back, and I have no idea when I can go home I have mentioned this story before. My retelling it is not therapy but to show how what starts as an unremarkable but unpleasant event—a fire, albeit in lockdown—can escalate and turn into a nightmarish, never-ending misery for so many people. At every turn, as leaseholders and tenants, we have been faced with layers of bureaucracy getting in our way, more and more people to deal with, more and more issues being raised to explain why we are not returning home, and dwindling effectiveness in getting our homes back to us. We leaseholders and council tenants have been shown a certain indifference to our plight. If I am honest, all that has been much worse than the original fire, but it is okay because Haringey Council has put up lots of safety signs. Safety trumps all, and is used to say to us, "Shut up and put up." I arrived at this place during the time of my eviction from the house and was inspired by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, whom I heard speak on what was happening to leaseholders. I thought, "I’m going to join that debate." I was inspired by their dedication and what they said, and that is how I ended up here. The moral of this tale is that I want to make sure that the Bill, which is well-intentioned on safety, does not in the name of safety end up with the unintended escalation of a whole new set of problems for leaseholders, which was the point of the analogy with my flat fire. The amendment—I actually prefer a similar but better amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who is trying to do the same thing—would require the Government to commit to review the impact of the legislation in a couple of years. It says to the Government, "Can you just check in all instances that the legislation doesn’t cause more problems and is actually doing what you want it to do, or what we in the House have been told you want it to do?" We are rather rushing through the Bill. Whole swathes of new amendments have emerged. These have been put in not necessarily by noble Lords but by the Government. I was happy to hear the Minister explain that there are so many amendments because he, the Secretary of State and the department are listening. But whatever way you look at it, we, as people scrutinising the Bill, are being presented with hundreds of amendments that have been quite hard to get one’s head round in the time. In many ways, the Bill is not being fully scrutinised line by line. As the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, put it, it really is a legislative quagmire to wade through and it is very difficult It has been almost impossible to read the amendments, assess what their nuances mean and look for what the consequences might be. I appreciate that that is for me and that I am a lay person on technicalities, but luckily, as has been mentioned, leaseholders have a few important voluntary heroes who have helped the rest of us through. I know that the lawyer and leaseholder Liam Spender has already been name checked for his multicoloured sheet, which has already been shown, but if noble Lord have not seen it is well worth studying because it really does explain things. There are also all sorts of reporters for the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and intrepid leaseholders doing their own work, trying to get to grips with what all these new amendments and the Bill mean I mention that because it would be irresponsible if we passed this Bill and then let it sail off into the distance without any idea that it will be looked at again. I worry that the Government think that all will be solved once the Bill has passed. I do not want hostages to fortune. We have had lots of reassurances today, we have been told not to worry and have had great rhetoric from the Government on proportionality and common sense, but we therefore need to be able to check that that rhetoric will be fulfilled Finally, this is not all about leaseholders. My hunch is that the Bill has a range of problems because it has gone along uncritically with the picture painted by Dame Judith Hackitt that somehow every aspect of living in a flat should be seen as a potential hazard and a dangerous fire risk. For the last few years—understandably because of Grenfell—there has been a sort of hyperactive "something must be done" mentality that has led to the EWS1 crisis and caused many of the issues that informed the discussion on the previous group of amendments on innocent victims paying for excessive remediation. All I ask is that this review checks that an overzealousness does not emerge from the legislation that skews priorities and means the Government’s valiant efforts at common sense and proportionality somehow end up in a proliferation of chunky formalised procedures I will also reflect on the other people we should bear in mind. I have emphasised leaseholders throughout this contribution, but in my Second Reading speech I also talked about the construction industry. I want to make sure we do not end up stymying the house-building programme through overregulation. There is a danger that, as we have heard in some of the contributions, we describe the construction business as though they are all cowboy builders, which is a rather insulting caricature. With another hat on, at another time, I would be saying the big crisis in this country is a lack of housing and we need to "Build, build, build", so I get worried when the Home Builders Federation says that it is concerned that there will be difficulties with housing delivery if too much of a burden is put on housebuilders. You might say, "I am not going to feel sorry for them," but we do not want to get ourselves into a situation where the extraction of funds from the construction industry means that the UK home building industry—which is important to many parts of levelling up, social equality and so on—is stymied One way or another, I can think of nothing more sensible for a common-sense Minister than to say, "In a couple of years, we’ll review all this and check that your hunches are wrong, Lady Fox." That will be fine. The Minister referred to me earlier as Oliver Twist—always wanting more. This is only a little bit more, but you cannot change the world unless you want more, and I intend to demand a lot more, but only a little more in this Bill. I beg to move.