Building Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2022-01-19
Topic: Housing
Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Centre-left): I shall speak to Opposition new clause 3 and to the amendments that, although they will not be pressed to a vote this evening, would protect leaseholders from the costs of not only cladding removal, but the remediation of non-cladding defects I can hardly believe that it is four and a half years since the horrific fire at Grenfell, and still we are fighting for the robust legal protection that leaseholders in my constituency and across the country need and deserve. It is too easy to assume that removing cladding is the beginning and end of the scandal; the costs of remediating non-cladding fire safety defects are just as ruinous, and blameless leaseholders should not be picking up those costs. I have seen for myself the extent of fire safety defects at various buildings in my constituency, including the Brindley House development, where the scale of the missing firebreaks and other defects was truly shocking. The people who were responsible for putting up that building were grossly negligent and, in my opinion, complete cowboys The regulatory failure whereby buildings were declared fit for human habitation when they contained defective or inappropriate fire safety measures, or when those measures were wholly absent, is staggering. When there were negligent and dishonest practices, the costs of remediation should not fall at the feet of my constituents. A commitment to full legal protection for leaseholders from all costs—both for the removal of dangerous cladding and for the remediation of all other fire safety defects—should have been added to the Bill today, because those issues are not new and have been the subject of intense debate for years Ministers and their officials know full well the contours of the debate and the issues at stake, so it is not good enough that the Government did not make such amendments today. Instead, we will have to wait to see whether full legal protection is made available when the Bill goes to the other place. We may understand parliamentary procedure and the different staging posts of a Bill, but to my constituents watching from the outside, every single staging post feels like a slap in the face when they are not given the full protection that they need and deserve I associate myself with the comments that have been made about insurance, particularly professional indemnity insurance, but I want to mention the increased insurance premiums that many of our constituents have faced across the country. I have been writing to the Government, the FCA and others for more than two years to ask for action against the insurance industry for the huge increase—the hike—in premiums that our cladding-affected leaseholders have faced. That increase bears no resemblance to the mitigations that our constituents have paid for to decrease the risks in their buildings People have paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for new fire alarm systems and internal compartmentation to try to bring the risk down in their buildings, yet that is never reflected in the insurance premiums that they have to pay. That is unconscionable. There are big questions for the wider insurance sector to answer, in addition to the buildings industry. It seems to me that someone who has profited from, for example, charging a building in my constituency an insurance premium of £700,000 in total, which has never come down, has some big questions to answer I hope that when the Minister brings the Bill back to this place, we get the time for adequate debate and the further amendments that we need. I hope that we take action on insurance and perhaps even—God help us—implore the FCA to do its job and stand by our constituents, who deserve the regulator’s protection. When the Bill comes back, I hope that it addresses all those issues, as it is high time that the Government did right by leaseholders.