Building Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Housing
Margaret Olivia Hillier (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I welcome you to your position I must declare an interest in that I am a leaseholder in an affected block, although, happily for me and for my neighbours, the developer who built the block is footing the bill for everything. I am surrounded by scaffolding, and cladding is being removed at this moment The Bill is welcome, but it has taken a long time to get here, and, as others have said, it does not solve the problem completely. I want, in my brief remarks, to acknowledge and reflect everything that was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). She summed up the challenges, while making it clear that for us this is not about scoring cheap party political points: we need to resolve the situation for all our constituents throughout the country. We recognise that legislation is one step along the way, four years on from the Grenfell disaster, but there is nevertheless a long gap—a long time lag—between legislation and action Let me give a recent example. The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, recently examined the work of the Office for Product Safety and Standards, which has only just assumed responsibility for product safety in this sphere and has not yet developed a methodology for its delivery. I am making no criticism of the OPSS, which has a job to do, but it has only just taken it on—and this is 2021, four years since the Grenfell disaster. That is an example of how a small delay in the Government can mean a very long delay for the thousands of our constituents who are really suffering The Government delay has further compounded the situation. From the beginning, a number of us have been talking about there being too few fire safety surveyors, and there has been confusion over the EWS1 forms. I have not enough time to go into the written ministerial statement, but I concur with what was said about that by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). The insurance and mortgage industries are adding to the costs and uncertainty by doing what they do, with no recognition from the Government that some of the statements they themselves have made have caused those problems, which they should have been better at predicting The pots of money are welcome, but they are smaller than what is needed. I think that the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), summed it up very well: we must get leaseholders off the hook, and then the Government must be very canny—and all of us will support them—in trying to secure the money from developers. We must also look at social housing. Support for today’s leasehold victims is at the cost of future housing for tenants and future leaseholders, at a time when housing supply is a Cinderella to the Government’s policy of fuelling demand Today’s extraordinary written statement came so late that I hope the Secretary of State will agree to appear before our sister Committee, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. There are important questions to be asked, and I think that all our inboxes will be flooded over the next few days. We still need skills to do this work, and I urge the Minister to look at delivering that as well as this legislation. We also need clarity on the levy, and on legal action, which is out of the price bracket of most of our constituents on top of the bills that they are already paying This situation needs to be tackled. The Bill is a start, but there are many people still living in limbo.