Leaseholders: Safety Remediation Costs — House of Lords, 2021-11-04
Topic: Housing
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, for his choice of subject for this debate, which I hope will come up with some helpful suggestions for resolving the crisis facing leaseholders, resolving the current impasse and enabling Michael Gove to respond to the rumoured injunction from the Prime Minister to "sort out the cladding crisis". I begin by thanking my noble friend the Minister for his tireless work behind the scenes to get a better deal for leaseholders caught up in the post-Grenfell cladding scandal. The steps the Government have taken so far to help leaseholders, which I welcome, have been in part due to his interventions in the intergovernmental discussions that have taken place. These started with the Treasury taking the view that there was no role for taxpayer funding in finding a solution, so we are making some progress My concern is that the combination of government help, freeholder support and voluntary action by developers still leaves a very substantial shortfall and, unless further steps are taken, we are likely to see bankruptcies, repossessions and evictions of people who took every reasonable precaution to protect their interests. As the noble Lord has just said, some 1.5 million householders are potentially caught up in this crisis, which is likely to come to a head next April when the bills fall due and land on leaseholders’ mats I agree with the unanimous recommendation of the Select Committee in another place, which it repeated in its report earlier this year: "It has consistently been this Committee’s position that leaseholders should not have to contribute towards any of the costs for a problem they played no part in creating." Indeed, I believe that was also the Government’s initial position, though not the Treasury’s. The Select Committee’s proposal was that there should be a comprehensive building safety fund, fully funded by government and industry, and the Government should establish clear principles regarding how the costs should be split between the two. Total contributions should not be capped. I regret that the Government have not accepted the recommendation and have instead come up with a capped contribution from themselves and an inadequate contribution from industry There is a precedent for more generous intervention than the Government have offered so far. I refer to the Housing Defects Act 1984, which I put on the statue book 37 years ago. That provided for a 90% grant towards the cost of repairing the defect of a property, subject to an expenditure limit, or repurchase of the property at 95% of the defect-free value. That legislation covered Airey houses, built after the war, that were discovered to be defective in the 1980s. The background is similar in many ways to the problems confronting today’s leaseholders Under that legislation, properties were designated if they were defective by reason of their design or construction and if their value had been reduced substantially because the defects had become generally known. Designation was reserved for serious inherent defects that owners, councils or professional advisers could not have known about on survey, sale or purchase —a close parallel to today’s problems for leaseholders. Compensation was provided by the Government on the terms I have outlined So I pose the question: if it was right for the Government—a Conservative Government—to intervene generously then to protect innocent home owners, is there not a case for more generous intervention now? In this case, I am not suggesting the Government should pay 95% and I make no apology for repeating a suggestion I have made on earlier occasions, supported by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and my noble friend Lord Blencathra, namely that there should be a retrospective levy on the developers who initially sold the defective flats—the "polluter pays" principle referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell Instead, the Government have announced a prospective levy of a 4% tax on profits over £25 million on future residential development, to raise just over £1 billion in five years. There are three problems with that solution. First, it does not produce enough money. We are looking at a shortfall of some £10 billion between the cost of remediation at about £15 billion and the £5 billion now on offer. The levy falls well short. Secondly, the buildings on which the levy is payable will not be defective but built under the new higher building regulations. Thirdly, the levy will not fall exclusively on those who benefited from the sale of defective property. Many future developers who had no part to play at all in the Grenfell tragedy will pay, potentially passing the cost on to future purchasers So my suggestion to Michael Gove is that he meets the £10 billion gap with a £5 billion retrospective levy on the developers of the offending flats, most of whom are still around and have substantial reserves, and a further £5 billion from the Treasury, belatedly delivering the recommendation of the Select Committee that costs should not fall on leaseholders. I believe a solution along those lines would enable us to begin to draw a line under this problem and relieve thousands of leaseholders of the nightmares they now suffer from.