argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Building Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Housing
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): Four years on from the Grenfell disaster, hundreds of thousands of people are still in unsafe homes and trapped in blocks, unable to move or to sell their properties—in ongoing chronic uncertainty with the added trauma of thinking that they could be consumed by fire. This is not their fault. They are not able to fund the works and they are not able to recover the costs. The answer is clear: only the Government are in a position to assess the work, fund it, fix it and then recover the costs in a systematic way, as appropriate, from insurers and developers, and to fund the residue from taxpayers. Individuals are not in a position to do that If the total cost was, say, £15 billion, much of it would be recovered. The cost of that in the first instance would be the interest of around £150 million a year. This year, the Government are saving £14 billion in interest costs on debt because of lower interest rates, so that cost—the £150 million to fund the £15 billion to fund everything—basically represents 1% of the savings they have made this year. It is therefore completely wrong and unnecessary that they should dither and delay. People’s lives have been blighted, their finances have been torpedoed, their mental health is in tatters and it is completely unnecessary The Government subsidised second-home purchasers with stamp duty in England to a total of something like £5 billion. That was completely unnecessary, because interest rates actually went down during covid and there was no need to prop up the housing market. So much for levelling up! If the Government are serious about levelling up, they should put their money where their mouth is. They should support first-time buyers, low-income buyers and the low-income homeowners who have been left in this paralysis The Government should immediately evaluate this situation, as the Welsh Government are doing in Wales. They should find it, fund it and fix it, and then recover the cost from the developers and insurers. There is no excuse for delay. Justice should be done. People are rightly angry and I would be happy to join them outside Parliament in protest before that becomes illegal in the autumn. Let’s get moving and get people sorted out on this tragic issue.
Building Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Housing
Florence Eshalomi (Labour, Centre-left): I am pleased to speak in this long-awaited debate on such an important Bill. I put on record how disrespectful it was both to Members of this House and to leaseholders that the Secretary of State chose to release details of a major policy shift just minutes before the debate began, making proper scrutiny impossible. Will he urgently clarify whether his announcement on EWS1 forms for buildings under 18 metres will apply retrospectively? Since I was elected 18 months ago, I have raised the issue of dangerous cladding with fire safety Ministers in this House on 14 separate occasions. Each time I have raised it, the Government’s answer to my question has always been the same: wait for the Building Safety Bill to come to Parliament I welcome the elements of the Bill that strengthen the fire safety regime for high-rise buildings, but I am afraid that the legislation before us today is woefully short of what is required to address properly all the issues facing leaseholders. It fails to protect them from extortionate charges for interim safety watch. It fails to ensure their homes are mortgageable, so that they have the basic right to move. Instead of rescuing leaseholders from this financial nightmare, it enshrines in law additional costs in the form of a new building safety charge estimated to cost leaseholders up to £42 a month— £42 a month that many of them simply cannot afford. That is why my question to the Secretary of State is urgent and needs clarification. Home ownership is an aspiration to be applauded, yet leaseholders who bought their homes in good faith have simply been hung out to dry I would also like to echo the comments made by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) about fire evacuation plans for disabled leaseholders. Where will that be addressed? I hope the Minister will reflect on all these injustices and take time over the summer to relax. Unfortunately for a number of my constituents, they do not have the same luxury. They are still living in dangerous buildings wondering how on earth they will address that and pay for these costs Ministers promised that the Building Safety Bill would finally address the cladding scandal. I urge them to think again and end this cladding scandal nightmare for our leaseholders.
Building Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Housing
Richard Burgon (Labour, Centre-left): Four years on from the Grenfell fire, a fire that killed 72 people and shone a tragic light on the reality of how race, class and inequality shape the lives of working-class people in our country, we are still yet to see the changes needed to make housing safe. Four years later, hundreds of thousands of people are still living with unsafe cladding and other fire safety problems. Millions are caught up in the wider building safety crisis, yet the Government have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make any small steps forward in the Bill—a Bill riddled with major flaws. It must be amended as it passes through this House The Bill, together with the statement that the Secretary of State has published today, is as it stands a betrayal of those who needed the Government to step in and support them following Grenfell. Despite the promises of Conservative Ministers, many leaseholders are still having to pay. Without decisive Government action, they will pay more in the future. Legal advice for the Labour party found that the Bill will make it more likely, not less likely, that leaseholders would have to pick up the costs of fixing cladding issues Four years on from Grenfell, what explains the inadequacies of the Bill before us today? What explains the four years of foot-dragging and the four years of refusal to deliver the protections that leaseholders need? This year, dodgy contracts have been exposed and the stench of corruption has grown ever stronger, with polls showing that most people see this Government as corrupt. Well, those people will not be reassured by the fact that developers who build flats with unsafe cladding have donated £2.5 million to the Conservatives since Grenfell and that Conservative MPs have then voted time after time after time to block amendments to protect leaseholders from the cost of removing dangerous cladding. Nor will they be reassured that, according to the anti-corruption body Transparency International, £1 in every £5 donated to the Conservative party since 2010 came from those with substantial interests in the housing market. And, of course, we have a Housing Secretary who admitted to unlawfully signing off a £1 billion housing project which saved a Conservative party donor millions of pounds Tory MPs and the Government, if they want, can show that they are not in the pockets of developers by backing amendments that will come to ensure that the cost of building safety remediation is not passed on to innocent homeowners and tenants. It is remarkable that if the Minister himself were not here, not a single Conservative MP would be on the Conservative Benches today—not good enough. Members should back the amendments to improve the Bill.
Building Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Housing
Taiwo Owatemi (Labour, Centre-left): 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.
Building Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Housing
Kim Marie Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this important debate. Time and again, we have heard Members across the House relay the nightmares that hundreds of thousands of our constituents are facing—trapped in a building safety crisis that was not of their making, forced to pay astronomical bills, and suffering significant mental health problems and the ever-present fear of living in an unsafe home. In Liverpool, 10% of buildings are still covered in dangerous cladding and there are 30,000 leaseholders in Liverpool, Riverside who are facing bills for things other than cladding to make their homes safe. On top of that, they are facing increasing insurance premiums of up to 500% and are being forced to foot the bill for a situation that they did not create. This will have a particularly serious impact on the social housing sector, with councils and local authorities forced to divert scarce resources in order to address fire safety failures Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has lost more than a third of its funding in the past decade and the same proportion of its firefighters. A decade of Tory austerity and deregulation has created this building safety crisis. Let us call it what it is: a criminal dereliction of responsibility by those in power, who are more concerned with putting money in the pockets of their developer donors than with protecting the people they serve—putting profit before people One pensioner living in my constituency told me that he has been sent a bill of nearly £20,000 and has no savings and no way of paying. Two doctors who have worked tirelessly to protect and care for our community throughout the pandemic tell me that the crisis has trapped them in a flat that they cannot sell, unable to start the life that they had planned elsewhere and fearing being faced with a mountain of further debt and/or bankruptcy I have asked this before, and I will continue to ask until justice is served and the safety and future of my constituents and the people living in this crisis across the country is secured: can the Minister look me in the eye and tell me how he sleeps at night, knowing that his Government’s deregulation programme has left hundreds of thousands at risk in their homes? I ask him what it will take for this Government to act to fix historic failures, and alleviate the unbearable financial pressures caused by their deregulation and the greed of developers It is the Government’s responsibility to assess and identify the buildings that are unsafe, and to make the necessary changes with the utmost urgency. This Bill is not only a missed opportunity, but an absolute betrayal of every single one of the residents who are now at risk in their own homes. The statement issued by the Secretary of State this afternoon does nothing to allay any of the fears of leaseholders; it is entirely inadequate, and it lets those leaseholders down.
Building Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Housing
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): In the final minutes of the debate, perhaps I can provide some time for the words of one of my constituents. The latest email that I have received says this: "The impact of the Fire Safety Scandal on leaseholders’ mental health is considerably underestimated" by the Government "From the many messages on Twitter and Facebook, there are millions of devastated lives and souls in the country. Many families and young adults had to live through not just the pandemic during the last 18 months, but also the added anxiety of the unfolding and ever growing Fire Safety Scandal It is a triple hit for so many leaseholders: the pandemic, then losing jobs or being furloughed on smaller salaries (with the constant threat of losing their jobs if their employer would go bust) and then the ever increasing costs of the Cladding scandal. This government has totally ignored the cries of its citizens for help Knowing that there is a ready solution to the issue in Australia—which could easily be adopted in the UK as well…shows that the Government is simply not interested in fixing the problem for innocent leaseholders. The contempt—with which they treat their citizens—is truly shambolic." I received that email from one of my constituents this week, and I think that it reflects the views of hundreds of them In opening the debate, the Minister mentioned Ballymore. I am dealing with Ballymore; I have dealt with Ballymore since it first submitted a planning application to build apartment blocks in my constituency. I welcomed the news of developments that would provide homes for local residents, but not a single one of the planning gains that Ballymore promised has been delivered. It went bust, and was then bailed out by the Irish Government Subsequently—and since this scandal has hit us—Ballymore initially refused to meet and seriously discuss with residents the problems that they were facing. My constituents demonstrated, so Ballymore is now meeting them and having proper discussions, but it threatened them that if they demonstrated again, it would end the talks. Now it has applied for the building safety fund, but will not give any assurances that it will cover the full costs of what my constituents are facing until it knows what resources from the fund are available to it This continuous blackmail—and, indeed, emotional blackmail—of my constituents is simply unacceptable. As the email from my constituent made clear, it is having a direct impact on their mental health. We are facing a pandemic of mental health problems because of the covid crisis, but this adds to it. It requires Government intervention which is serious, which takes responsibility, but which then pursues the developers to ensure that they are held accountable as well.
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Civil Rights
Stella Judith Creasy (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for her work on this strategy. She will know that if somebody is subjected to abuse or attack because of the colour of their skin, we rightly ask the police to record that and the courts to prosecute it as a form of hate crime. Yet if somebody is subjected to abuse or attack simply for being a woman, they face no such protection under our current system. Will the Minister meet me and campaigners, who are waiting for the imminent report from the Law Commission about how to make misogyny a part of our hate crime rubric in this country, to look at how we can quickly close that gap and give equal protection to everyone everywhere?
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Civil Rights
Rupa Asha Huq (Labour, Centre-left): In today’s Times, the Home Secretary wrote: "Nowhere should be off limits to women and girls. Nobody deserves to be victimised or feel unsafe." This week the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment stated in the House that nobody should be intimidated when accessing legal healthcare, so when will the Government join Australia, Canada and France among others in legislating for consistent national buffer zones around abortion clinics? Surely the status quo, with women and girls protected only in the areas of three local authorities—and they have to stretch antisocial behaviour order provisions in order to do so—creates an unsatisfactory, unequal situation of justice that is subject to legal challenge all the time and cannot stand.
Forced Repatriation of Chinese Seamen from Liverpool After World War Two — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Civil Rights
Sarah Mei Li Owen (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) for bringing this historical injustice to the House and her brilliant campaigning on behalf of her constituents. I know it means so much to the east and south-east Asian communities living in the UK now. These Chinese merchant seamen were subjected to the cruellest racism, which we have seen rear its ugly head again during the pandemic. Will the Minister take this opportunity to condemn the anti-Asian racism that we have seen raise its head again during the pandemic, because a historical injustice has taken place and it is time that we learned lessons and actually saw progress on this issue?
Forced Repatriation of Chinese Seamen from Liverpool After World War Two — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Civil Rights
Navendu Prabhat Mishra (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), on securing this very important debate. I would also like to pay tribute to the work of my good comrade, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), on this issue. I wonder if the Minister agrees with me that this historic injustice is a blatant form of racism against the Chinese seamen. Would he come forward with a full acknowledgement and apology for this community?
Planning System Modernisation — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Housing
Steven Mark Ward Reed (Labour, Centre-left): It is not surprising that the Secretary of State is refusing to be transparent, because we all know who benefits the most from their developers’ charter. Just weeks ago, this House passed Labour’s motion to guarantee residents’ right to a say over local planning applications in their own neighbourhoods. This week, councillors of all parties—including the right hon. Gentleman’s—in Medway and Richmond passed similar motions. How many more councils will need to do the same before he ditches the developers’ charter and his plan to pay back developers by selling out communities?
Planning System Modernisation — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Housing
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): I hope that the Secretary of State has seen the Select Committee’s report into the planning reforms. We were supportive of a number of aspects, including the need to strengthen local plans and how they are drawn up. Could I ask him two things in relation to our recommendations? We need to recognise the serious change in moving to a zonal system and the importance of getting the details right, and I wonder if he might consider the recommendation to move, at the next stage, to a draft Bill, so that we could give it serious pre-legislative scrutiny as to what it would mean in practice. Secondly, will he have another look at the distribution of housing under his latest proposals? Under the proposals, large areas of the north outside the major cities will see their housing numbers fall, which seems to be in contradiction to the Government’s levelling-up agenda.
Social Housing — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Housing
Michael Whitley (Labour, Centre-left): Every day, millions of people across the country grapple with the realities of the housing crisis, from overcrowded and unsanitary housing, to rip-off rents and negligent landlords. Our country is calling out for a new generation of high-quality, sustainable social housing, but the much-delayed social housing White Paper has failed to deliver on promises made by the then Housing Secretary in 2017, while the Government’s planning reforms could remove the main remaining route to social house building by abolishing section 106. So will the Minister tell the House what steps the Government are taking to build the social housing that people up and down the country so desperately need?
Social Housing — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Housing
Mary Elizabeth Twist (Labour, Centre-left): Too many families spent lockdown in overcrowded homes. Housing and health go hand in hand, as we know; overcrowding not only increases the risk of catching covid-19, but puts a strain on mental health. Building back better must mean building good-quality, affordable housing. What plans does the Minister have to reverse the trend whereby we are losing more social homes than we are building?
Health Inequalities: Levelling-up Fund — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Mixed Topics
Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Centre-left): Health inequalities are a clear and persistent indicator of the growing gap between and within regions. Swim England forecasts that, because of the impact of the pandemic, by 2026 just 35% of children in the most deprived areas will meet the required national swimming standard when they leave primary school, compared with 77% in the most affluent areas. More than 400 leisure centres—including West Denton swimming pool in my constituency—have already closed and many more are under threat. Will the Minister give assurances that he and the Chancellor will use the levelling-up fund to address such glaring inequalities? They could make a great start by backing Newcastle’s levelling-up fund bid to develop a new swimming and leisure development in the outer west of Newcastle.
Leaseholders: Protection from Unfair Practices — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Housing
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): There is, finally, much in the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill for many people to welcome going forward, but people like Tracy in my constituency, and many millions of existing leaseholders, remain trapped, with unjust and feudal charges. Will the Minister commit to supporting Labour’s amendment, which is to be considered in the other place tomorrow, to extend the ban to the many leaseholders and not just the new?