Building Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2022-01-19
Topic: Housing
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): The principle that leaseholders should not have to pay for issues that are not their responsibility, as they bought properties in good faith, was first established in the Select Committee report in July 2018. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) on the excellent work he has done in pursuing this issue from the Conservative Benches. The Select Committee, on a cross-party basis, has pursued it as well. I checked today, and we have done five separate reports, all of which have said that leaseholders should not have to pay. The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who is in his place, has been party to all those discussions and reports. We have worked on an absolutely cross-party basis, as is correct. It is welcome that the Secretary of State made his statement the other day and effectively confirmed that as well. We have made it clear that this problem does not just apply to cladding; it applies to other defects as well. That has been an important issue, which the Government did not accept to begin with but have now got to the point of accepting The Government have responded with the initial money to deal with the aluminium composite material cladding that was on Grenfell, and then with the £1 billion—extended to £5 billion—building safety fund. That has been a step forward, but it will not cover the totality of the cost. We on the Select Committee have said right from the beginning that those who are responsible for defects on individual buildings should have to pay, but we recognise the impossibility of leaseholders taking on legal actions and being successful with them. Certainly, the Government are stepping in and adding some weight to try to involve the developers of buildings—the building firms that did the construction work—and the product suppliers. Of course, an awful lot of responsibility lies with them; Dame Judith Hackett’s report identified how many of the suppliers of products and materials were hawking their wares from one testing station to another until they found one that approved them. That is completely unacceptable, and they should be held to account as well. In the end, there will be many buildings for which even the owners, and certainly the initial developers, cannot be properly traced, and there may have to be a responsibility placed on the whole industry I come back to the point that I just raised with my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook): what happens if the industry does not volunteer the money that is necessary? Let us make it clear that social housing providers are already having to pay some of the costs. On the initial scheme for ACM cladding, social housing providers were treated equally with private owners. That has not been the case since with the building safety fund. A social housing provider has to show almost extreme distress to get any money What is happening now? An interesting article in Inside Housing says that social housing providers, particularly housing associations, are passing on 500% increases in service costs—not just to leaseholders, but to tenants. It is absolutely wrong that among people living side by side in a flat, the leaseholder should eventually be protected through the legislation that we hope eventually to see from the Government, which is to be welcomed, while the tenant next door has to pay extra costs—not merely for their own flat, but possibly to take up the costs on the flat next door, which is now owned by a leaseholder. That cannot be right, that cannot be fair, and that cannot be just. The challenge is to treat social housing tenants the same. We are hearing evidence all the time—from housing associations, the National Housing Federation, the Local Government Association and councils—that the costs that are being incurred by social housing providers are not merely adding to the costs of their tenants but mean that they are cutting back on future house building programmes. That is what is happening and it has to be addressed.