Building Safety — House of Lords, 2022-01-11
Topic: Housing
Sue Hayman (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, before I begin, I would like to pay tribute to my colleague Jack Dromey. Jack was a fearless campaigner for equality and justice, and always stood up for those without a voice. We will miss him. Moving to the Statement, the Grenfell Tower fire was, as we all know, a dreadful and shocking tragedy which killed 72 men, women and children and ruined the lives of many others. One of the outcomes from this tragedy has been the knowledge that thousands of homes in hundreds of high and medium-rise blocks have deficiencies in their construction We are more than four years on from Grenfell, and hundreds of thousands of people are still living in dangerous blocks, while many flat owners have been left with spiralling costs for insurance and service charges. People have been facing huge bills and have endured enormous stress. The Government’s announcement of new statutory protection for leaseholders is therefore welcome confirmation that developers, not leaseholders, should pay to make homes safe. We should also recognise that this is only the start of the solution The Government’s plan currently seems to cover only the cost of cladding replacement, which makes up a small fraction of the building safety work required, because remediation work is not just about combustible cladding but about missing cavity barriers, firebreaks and fire doors, for example. A significant number of buildings have both cladding and non-cladding defects I understand from the Minister that the Government have withdrawn the consolidated advice note that left thousands of leaseholders in low-rise buildings unable to move home. This is significant progress, but there remains a gaping hole in the Government’s proposals. Leaseholders will still face ruinous costs to repair many non-cladding defects. I ask the Minister why the Government are not properly and completely supporting residents who have been hit with these huge costs, through no fault of their own We welcome the Government’s change in tone, so that leaseholders in buildings of between 11 metres and 18.5 metres will no longer be expected to take out personal loans to cover the cost of the work. Instead, the Government are focused on securing up to £4 billion towards the costs from developers. However, leaseholders are concerned about how the Government will force the developers to pay and experts have questioned whether £4 billion will be sufficient to cover cladding in buildings under 18.5 metres The Secretary of State said that he will begin negotiations with those responsible and resort to increased taxation if they fail, but reports have suggested that the Chancellor could block this. Documents from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, say that no new Treasury funding will be available to pay for this extra work; that the cost of the extra cladding removal must not exceed £4 billion; and that, if Mr Gove is unsuccessful in persuading or compelling developers to pay for the costs, they must be paid from existing housing budgets and "safety should be prioritised over supply" I ask the Minister if there has been an assessment of what this would mean for the Government’s housebuilding programme. If the Government are serious about making developers pay, they should also take steps to make sure this never happens again. In the past four years, at least 70 schools and 25 hospitals and care homes have been built using potentially dangerous material, yet the Government still have not responded to a consultation on a ban on combustible materials, which closed over a year ago. I ask the Minister when we can expect to see the response Leaseholders are the innocent victims of this scandal and they need the Government to act as quickly as possible to resolve the situation, but remediation has been painfully slow. The Government continue to publish monthly updates on the progress of ACM cladding remediation, which do not include non-ACM buildings. Does the Minister agree that being transparent about the progress to make homes safe is vital to restore leaseholders’ trust? According to Labour analysis, at the current rate, it will take until 2026 for cladding to be removed from all social housing blocks and until 2024 from private blocks. Will the Government put forward a timescale to complete the remediation of all dangerous buildings Yesterday, the Secretary of State confirmed that he will meet Labour’s call for new clauses in the Building Safety Bill, when it comes to this House, to protect leaseholders. I ask the Minister to work with the Opposition Benches and other interested parties, so that we get these amendments right. Can he confirm that time will be allowed for proper scrutiny? I assure the Minister that, when the Building Safety Bill comes to this House, we will welcome the opportunity to work with him to achieve the much-needed improvements in this area The Statement before us has new measures that the Opposition welcome and genuinely want to see succeed, but the Government also need a clear plan to make developers pay for the works or leaseholders will continue to be stuck in limbo—stuck in their unsafe homes, unable to sell up and move on. People expect to live safely in their homes and I look forward to the Minister’s response to the ongoing concerns.