argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I am sure he will welcome an invitation from the Select Committee to come and discuss these matters further in detail. Just two important issues. First, will he clarify that leaseholders will not have to pay the cost of remediation, including non-cladding work, because that is not exactly what his statement says? Secondly, will he clarify that, apart from the removal of aluminium composite material cladding, the Government will give social housing providers no help whatsoever? If developers do not pay for the measures that he announced today or taxes are not raised, and there are cuts to his budget as a result, will that come off social housing provision as well? What assessment has he done of the total impact on the future building of social housing?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Catherine Elizabeth West (Labour, Centre-left): My constituents in Eclipse House, Station Road, Wood Green have been suffering for more than a year with astronomical costs to deal with gaps relating to fire doors and external wall insulation. Can the Minister confirm that that is not covered in today’s statement? Secondly, what voice will tenants have in the future? One of the worst things about Grenfell is the lack of tenant voice to make good things stick when bad practice is all around.
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (Labour, Centre-left): When the horror of Grenfell happened, many local authorities such as mine responded immediately by inspecting all buildings and taking action as appropriate, as they should have done. The private sector did not do that for many of our leasehold properties I had a very sad conversation with a group of leaseholders a month ago. They are completely stuck. They cannot sell or move, they have expanding families and they are faced with massive bills. Can I go to them tomorrow and say that the Government will underwrite all the costs that they have been threatened with so that they can get their building brought up to standard and, if they wish, sell and move on? Or will there be months and months of delay until the private sector decides not to pay and the Government intervene? I think those leaseholders, like leaseholders all over the country, deserve an immediate answer. They have been through too much stress.
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Kim Marie Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): A retired teacher in my constituency invested in a property in 2015, but just before Christmas, they were issued with a massive bill for £200,000 for an increase in their costs, and remedial work on their property will cost a possible £9 million. Will the Secretary of State agree to meet me and the leaseholders to talk about how the policy change will benefit them?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Katherine Anne Green (Labour, Centre-left): I note that the Secretary of State said he would extend the right of leaseholders to challenge those who cause defects retrospectively for 30 years, but he will be aware that unscrupulous developers such as Mr Jason Alexander in my constituency exploit loopholes in company law with the result that there is no corporate entity to go after because it has been wound up, struck off or stripped of assets. Can he say what work he is doing with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to ensure that those loopholes in company law are closed? Can he also tell us whether the obligations that developers will now face as a result of his statement today will take precedence over their other financial obligations?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): Today the Secretary of State has told us what many all across the House told the Government three years ago—namely, that individual leaseholders trapped in unsafe homes should not have to bear the cost of making them safe. But today’s statement focuses on cladding, whereas the vast majority of leaseholders are suffering in unsafe homes as a result of other insulation and fire stopping defects. How will he address that? He has told the companies to pay up, but many have now gone into voluntary liquidation. We need a windfall tax on the whole industry now. Far too many leaseholders have been waiting for three and half years in purdah. Many of them, like my constituents in Central Square, have been waiting since 31 July even to get a response from the BSF. Can the Secretary of State get his own Department to be a bit more expeditious?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Sarah Ann Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the statement, which is certainly a step in the right direction There are many tall buildings in my constituency. Some of the issues affecting them, and the costs that they bear, are very complex, and do not involve anything that would be covered today. Two blocks, Longitude and Altitude, have to pay for compartmentalisation, and although Bridge House—which is over 18 metres tall—is cladded, its cladding is not categorised as the right type to qualify for funding under the Government’s scheme. Some of my constituents live in blocks where the developer has gone bust and the freeholder is overseas, and they have a tenuous relationship with the managing agent. It is very difficult to get any information. Can the Secretary of State say something about that wider issue and what can be done about it, and what is his estimate of the cost of making all these buildings safe?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Janet Jessica Daby (Labour, Centre-left): May I add my voice to those who have spoken of the sudden passing of Jack Dromey? He was a truly pleasant and decent person. Let me also convey my condolences to the Mother of the House, and especially to his son, Joe Dromey, who I know very well, and knew especially well when we were councillors together in Lewisham Leaseholders are feeling anxious and angry about the delays, and the uncertainty about when the cladding will be removed from buildings and associated safety problems will be dealt with. That includes residents of the Parkside development in my constituency. The developers and the housing association have said that they will start to look at doing the remediation work in the spring, but will provide no absolute guarantee that any costs will not be passed on to the leaseholders. Will the Secretary of State review this case in order to provide the certainty that leaseholders in my constituency so desperately need?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Florence Eshalomi (Labour, Centre-left): It is good to see the Secretary of State acknowledge the unjust treatment of buildings under 18 metres in particular. However, it appears that what he has outlined will involve a voluntary contribution from developers, which may take a while. The leaseholders in my Vauxhall constituency do not have a while to wait. They are fed up of waiting. It has been four and a half years. They want solutions now. So will he confirm that he absolutely understands the urgency that leaseholders want to see and call on those developers to take action now?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Rachel Louise Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): I have spoken to many leaseholders in my constituency who have struggled with issues around fire safety and cladding and the impact that has had on their mental wellbeing. We raised that issue in the Building Safety Bill Committee and the response was that those people should access mental health support through their GP in the usual way. We know the pressure GPs are under at the moment, so will the Secretary of State bring forward any additional measures in the light of his statement to support leaseholders’ mental health?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): I associate myself with all the comments that have been made about my colleague, Jack Dromey I welcome the steps forward that we take every time a Secretary of State comes to the House and makes a statement, but it is the steps backwards that we make after those statements that are causing me problems. I have a property in my constituency that is about 18 metres high. The residents have done their own survey and say that it is over 18 metres. The management agency says that it is over 18 metres and should therefore qualify for the building safety fund. These issues though are difficult to resolve. Meanwhile, the residents have been paying out £28,000 a month for waking watch for nearly four years. How retrospective will these measures be? Will my constituents be compensated for what they have unfairly had to pay out? It would have been far cheaper to put in a fire alarm system than to continue paying waking watch. Will we see an end to the EWS1 forms or will RICS come back at us and say that we cannot possibly do that, as it has done before?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Fleur Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): I, too, welcome the statement’s commitment to leaseholders and the fact that it puts businesses on notice, giving them the chance to do the right thing. When will the deadline be up for that chance to do the right thing? Without it, we could just be kicking the can down the road. Leaseholders in Putney will want to know when they can expect to be able to sell their homes and to move on. Will there be a Government guarantee—a letter or similar that they can use with estate agents and others—so that they can move on with their lives? Finally, residents in a Putney building of just under 11 metres have been given a bill of £1 million for remediation. Will they be covered by this?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Neil Coyle (Labour, Centre-left): It is four and a half years since Grenfell. The Secretary of State has made clear today that the Government have failed to solve the problem, but he then said that his chief action has been to write a letter to developers to ask them to come along to a meeting. That is simply not good enough for the thousands of leaseholders affected in Southwark. The biggest threat in this statement is to allow the backdating of action against those who have installed unsafe products over 30 years, but it is leaseholders who will be forced to take on the legal and other burdens involved, including the fees. Will the Secretary of State therefore amend the Building Safety Bill to finally clarify responsibility and load the burden where it belongs—on the developers, builders and manufacturers—so as to properly protect leaseholders, as Ministers have promised multiple times but which today’s statement fails to deliver?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): Will the Secretary of State spell out how the statutory protection he has announced will help leaseholders in developments such as Waterside Park, built by Barratt in my constituency, which does not have a cladding problem, but where apartments have become valueless because of other serious building defects—missing firebreaks and unsafe insulation? How exactly will the statutory protection help them?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State has been asked by both sides of the House about protecting social landlords and tenants from remediation costs. Will he answer that point, bearing in mind that the biggest social landlords have said that their new housing programmes will be cut by 40% over the next five years if they have to cover fire safety costs themselves? Affordable housing is at particular risk, as yesterday’s fire in New York showed. Will he study the lessons from that fire, especially as some of the victims were on the lower floors, which he appears to say are at lower risk, and that lack of compartmentalisation rather than cladding was the cause of most of the deaths?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Public Lands
Emma Ann Hardy (Labour, Centre-left): Sadly, cladding is not one of the only risks to building safety: flooding is another huge risk. While the Secretary of State is open to looking at amendments to building safety in general, will he also look at strengthening the standards for all new public and private buildings in terms of flood resilience? The Secretary of State promised me a meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss my flooding Bill and, as he is a man of his word, I am sure that date will arrive soon in my email inbox.
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Daniel Stephen Zeichner (Labour, Centre-left): It was a good weekend for Cambridge United, but sadly the misery continues for so many people in and around Cambridge who find themselves trapped in buildings that were not built to the expected standards. As we have heard, it is not just about cladding; it is also about fire breaks and so on. For so many of those people, lack of an EWS1 form means that they cannot move—they are absolutely trapped. What in the Secretary of State’s statement can give them confidence that they will be freed from that trap?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Ruth Margaret Cadbury (Labour, Centre-left): The shadow Secretary of State said that we cannot make a building half safe, but some residential buildings are possibly more dangerous than others. In October 2020, over 800 leaseholders and students were evicted from the Paragon blocks in Brentford, with one week’s notice—that is how dangerous they were deemed to be. They were built using a modular form of construction, and the eviction came two years after the flammable cladding had already been removed. I have reason to believe that the Paragon situation—there are other examples across the country—was a result of the modular form of construction, to which the out-of-date building regulations do not apply, as well as poor, shoddy and badly supervised construction works. When will the Secretary of State bring up-to-date building regulations through the system, and when will he address the lamentable culture in the construction industry, which the counsel for the Fire Brigades Union at the Grenfell inquiry described as being driven by an "agenda of deregulation, privatisation and marketisation" When will he do something about that?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Paul Christopher Blomfield (Labour, Centre-left): In opening his remarks, the Secretary of State acknowledged that the problem is not simply developers’ negligence but a failure of regulation, for which the Government are responsible. Leaseholders will fear that today’s announcement will have the effect of kicking a solution further down the road, causing delays for those who have been trapped in an intolerable position for far too long. Does the Secretary of State accept that the best way of seeking a solution is for the Government to fulfil their responsibility by acting to fix the faults without delay and then using all their powers to recover the money from developers and those responsible?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Housing
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): As a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, I pay tribute to all the campaigners up and down the country who have done a sterling job at keeping this issue on the political agenda. They will certainly welcome the principle, set out in the statement, that innocent leaseholders must not shoulder the burden. I hope that applies equally—not just to cladding, but to any other fire safety defects and to the cost of the interim safety measures that have been necessary. The Secretary of State recognised that in the statement by referring to the extra £27 million for waking watches, but leaseholders will have already paid out thousands of pounds for waking watches. Should they now expect some reimbursement for those costs?
Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-01-10
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Alan Patrick Vincent Whitehead (Labour, Centre-left): That is precisely why we wish to put in the Bill that there should be a direction in which the Government should go. Of course they should have flexibility in how they work, but we think this is an important backstop that will ensure customers do not lose their shirts in a company that goes bust after they have invested large amounts of money in its operation We will seek to divide the House on amendments 2 and 3 in the absence of any clear further Government commitments today in relation to. We may well be minded to support amendment 9, tabled by the SNP, should that also be put to a Division. However, I emphasise that we are happy to support the Bill overall. We want it to go through Third Reading, but we would like it to be strengthened as much as it can be by the addition of the amendments we have put forward today.
Small Boat Channel Crossings — House of Commons, 2022-01-17
Topic: Immigration
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): Is there any truth in the reports that the Government want to have asylum seekers processed offshore in countries such as Gambia? Has any such country actually agreed to this? Does the Secretary of State accept that having people processed hundreds or thousands of miles away might meet the letter of our obligations to asylum seekers but certainly does not meet the spirit?
Small Boat Channel Crossings — House of Commons, 2022-01-17
Topic: Mixed Topics
Holly Jamie Walker-Lynch (Labour, Centre-left): With your permission, Mr Speaker, I join the Home Secretary in paying tribute to our dear friend and colleague, Jack Dromey. We very much look forward to the tributes later this month. Especially today, at Home Office questions, we very much miss his kindness, his passion and his wit alongside us on the Front Bench We hear that responsibility for ending dangerous crossings of the channel is to be taken away from the Home Office and handed to the MOD, but we have been here before. In 2019 the Government brought in the Navy to patrol the channel, and those patrols ended after just six weeks, having cost £780,000 and without a single boat having been intercepted. Can the Home Secretary explain how today’s proposal will be any different from 2019 and prevent lives from being lost at sea?
Removal of Failed Asylum Seekers — House of Commons, 2022-01-17
Topic: Immigration
Feryal Demirci Clark (Labour, Centre-left): Hundreds of people in my constituency of Enfield North are residents in this country on the European Community Association agreement visa, also known as the Ankara agreement, which allows them to set up businesses in this country. When they try to extend their stay in this country, the majority of them are not able to renew their visas. There have been hundreds of emails in relation to this from across the country. The delays in some cases are 14 months, and they mean that those people are unable to renew business leases and housing and residential contracts. What assurances can the Minister give to my constituents whose lives are at a standstill that these timings will be reduced and that they will receive a timely response to their applications?
Windrush Compensation Scheme — House of Commons, 2022-01-17
Topic: Mixed Topics
Catherine Elizabeth West (Labour, Centre-left): A recent report criticised the Home Office, which was forced to apologise to charities and community groups that were meant to be supporting victims with their applications. The budget remains as full as ever and underspent. It took two years for one of my constituents to receive a reply, which is an absolute disgrace considering the age profile of Windrush victims. What will the Minister do to put that right? Will he outsource the process to a proper independent group that will get on with the job?
Windrush Compensation Scheme — House of Commons, 2022-01-17
Topic: Mixed Topics
Naseem Akhtar Shah (Labour, Centre-left): I remind the Home Secretary of the legal maxim, "Justice delayed is justice denied." This Government promised to try to right some of the wrongs with the Windrush compensation scheme in a time-limited manner. In November, the Home Affairs Committee found that only 20% of claimants had applied, and that only 5% had received any compensation. Twenty-three people have died before receiving their compensation. Is it not high time that the responsibility to provide justice to the ageing Windrush generation was passed on to an independent body capable of delivering it?
Pending Asylum Applications — House of Commons, 2022-01-17
Topic: Immigration
Mohammed Afzal Khan (Labour, Centre-left): The Conservatives say that the asylum system is broken, but having been in power for more than a decade, the truth is that they are the ones who broke it. Asylums seekers are some of the most vulnerable individuals. The Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit revealed the emotional and physical trauma they experience—the anxiety, insomnia, self-harm, depression, deterioration of relationships with friends and support staff and reduced engagement with vital services. How has the Home Office’s ability to make initial decisions been allowed to collapse so completely under this Government? What steps will the Minister take to intervene to ensure the situation is addressed with urgency?
Foreign Interference: Intelligence and Security — House of Commons, 2022-01-17
Topic: Civil Rights
Sarah Mei Li Owen (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. It is truly sickening that anyone would attempt to infiltrate our Parliament, circumventing the security of this place and even of Prime Ministers. I am also deeply concerned that, following a massive spike in racist attacks levelled at east and south-east Asians during the pandemic over the last two years, this serious incident may cause an entire community and ethnicity to become targets for abuse yet again. What will her Department do to ensure that does not happen?
BBC Funding — House of Commons, 2022-01-17
Topic: Mixed Topics
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Before I call the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture Media and Sport, I want to point out that there were extensive stories in the media over the weekend about the future of the licence fee and the BBC’s funding arrangements. I also understand that the Secretary of State tweeted about the subject—either that or she lost her phone—stating: "This licence fee announcement will be the last." These are very important matters that affect all our constituents, and this House quite rightly has a keen interest in them. Any statement on a substantial policy development should have been made to this House before being made to the media I am glad that we have a statement today, but it is not good enough for this House to come second to the media, especially on subjects such as this that are of interest to us all. When the House is sitting, important policy statements must be made here before being made to the media, as required by the Government’s ministerial code. In any event, I will always ensure that the House has the opportunity to scrutinise important policy announcements, and the Government may well find that such opportunities are more frequent and more extensive if announcements are made to the media first I have the greatest respect for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and for the Secretary of State, but can we please ensure that such announcements are made here? If it was leaked and the Secretary of State felt that she had to respond, let us have a leak inquiry, because we have a major colander right across Government, and I do not want to see this happen again.