Fire Safety and Sprinkler Systems

I beg to move,

That this House has considered fire safety and sprinkler systems.

It is a pleasure to see you presiding this morning, Mr Gray. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for providing time for the debate, which the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and I requested on behalf on the all-party parliamentary fire safety rescue group. It is good to see a number of members of the group present to support the debate. I am also grateful to various organisations for their briefings, including the Library, the London Fire Brigade, the Fire Brigades Union, the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Fire Protection Association, the Business Sprinkler Alliance, the Association of British Insurers, the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

This is the first dedicated debate on this subject since 2014, when the first ever Fire Sprinkler Week took place. Several colleagues who were present at that debate are here again today. Although this is the first dedicated fire sprinkler debate since then, sprinklers have been mentioned many times in other debates over the intervening years, not least because of the Grenfell tragedy. The all-party group has been campaigning strongly on various matters, especially since the 2013 coroner’s report on the Lakanal House fire. The four key issues are: a full review of approved document B to update building regulations and fire guidance, which is well overdue; an assessment of the progress made in deploying fire sprinklers in Scotland and Wales, which is clearly affording better protection to homes and businesses in those countries, leaving England behind; a reversal of Government guidance on fire sprinklers in new build schools; and a requirement to install fire sprinklers in all domestic dwellings, especially new high-rise buildings, and the retrofitting of them in all high-rise buildings, especially post Grenfell. I will look at the first three briefly before focusing on the last item.

The Government are hiding behind the various inquiries after Grenfell: the public inquiry, the Dame Judith Hackitt review and the police criminal investigation. There is almost a standard response: “Let’s not anticipate their conclusions.” I say almost, because the Government did not wait to pronounce on cladding. They recognised that there was urgency and made a decision, which was a good job. That means that we do not have to wait for everything. On approved document B, the all-party parliamentary group was told in 2011 that the review would be completed and published by 2016-17. Not only was that not the case, it had not started properly, and Dame Judith is now overseeing a lot of that work.

In Scotland and Wales, better protection is now required for commercial coverage, and in Wales for domestic dwellings. On schools, last Friday the Government launched a call for evidence on “Building Bulletin 100: Design for fire safety in schools”. In 2007, the Labour Government issued revised guidance that encouraged new schools to be covered by fire sprinklers, but the coalition reversed that guidance. Whereas previously the number of new schools that were being sprinklered rose to 70%, after the coalition’s reversal that figure dropped back to 30%.

However, the main issue—the issue that I want to focus on, that is uppermost in the minds of the public, and on which the Government can take action—is the retrofitting of fire sprinklers in high-rise buildings and sprinklers in all homes. It has been well documented that sprinklers were considered for the Grenfell refurbishment at a cost of around £200,000 from an overall budget of nearly £10 million, but were not fitted. What a mistake. Had Grenfell been a new building, it would have been a requirement. If the Government think that sprinklers are needed for new buildings, why not for those already built, where the majority of people living in high-rise buildings actually reside?

Turning to the points raised by those who supplied briefings, the London Fire Brigade said that sprinklers save lives; they are not a “nice to have” or a luxury. The London Fire Commissioner, Dany Cotton, has said repeatedly that they are a “no-brainer”. They are highly effective in detecting fires, suppressing fires rapidly and raising the alarm. Sprinklers are not expensive; if included at the design stage, they can cost as little as 1% of the total build. There is also overwhelming public support for sprinklers. It is deeply concerning that in recent years, on the two occasions when the Government have reviewed sprinklers, protection has moved in the wrong direction: first, in 2013 through section 20 of the London Building Acts (Amendment) Act 1939, and secondly in 2016—resulting in less coverage, not more.

The Royal Institute of British Architects calls for a requirement for sprinklers systems in all new and converted residential buildings, as is already required in Wales, and in all existing residential buildings above 18 metres. It states that the urgency for change in building regulations is simply not as evident in England as in our neighbouring countries.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that, given the urgency, the retrofitting of sprinklers should be a priority for the Government, and that they should not wait for any outcomes of reviews? There is overwhelming evidence that we need to act now.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, for whom I have some affection, having been an operational firefighter in Battersea for 13 years. I will come back to her point later, because it is central to the issue that I am raising.

The ABI states that in the UK no one has ever died from a fire in a fully sprinklered building. It recommends that sprinkler systems be fitted by qualified engineers, using accredited systems and equipment, to a recognised standard. The ABI has also commented on sprinklers in warehouses, care homes, schools and high-rise buildings.

The National Fire Chiefs Council wants sprinklers to become a requirement in all new high-rise residential structures above 18 metres, and wants student accommodation to be included. It says that where high-rise residential buildings exceed 30 metres, there should be a requirement to retrofit sprinklers when those buildings are scheduled to be refurbished—and should be retrofitted regardless of future refurbishment plans where such buildings are served by a single staircase.

Back in 2014, we debunked the myths about fire sprinklers as depicted in TV adverts, drama productions and movies. The issue of cost has also been successfully challenged; the cost has been shown to be much less than was claimed by opponents. The tragedy of Grenfell is screaming out for Government action. To delay further is an abdication of responsibility at best, and criminally irresponsible at worst.

In 2014, the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler), who is now the Housing Minister, said:

“I am proud to be an ambassador for the Derbyshire fire and rescue service…I am delighted to tell everybody in today’s debate that my local council, South Derbyshire…will be building new council housing because of the changes to housing funding, and because of that, it will be installing sprinklers in all the new council houses and council properties that it builds in future.”—[Official Report, 6 February 2014; Vol. 575, c. 181WH.]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He mentioned the Housing Minister, the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler). The chief fire officer for Derbyshire is the lead officer for the National Fire Chiefs Council, which proposed unanimously that fire sprinklers be fitted urgently, without us awaiting the full completion of the consultation on approved document B. If all our fire officers are saying that, should the Government not go ahead?

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, which I shall come back to in a moment.

Things that the Government can do to check the plateauing of deaths in fires include stopping any further cuts to the fire service, funding it appropriately, restoring the guidance on sprinklers in new schools, accelerating the review of approved document B and publishing it as soon as possible. However, the most urgent focus should be on fire sprinklers in homes, especially in high-rise buildings.

In one of my first meetings as fire Minister in 2005 or 2006, a senior civil servant advised me, “There’s room for a brave decision here, Minister.” I said that I recognised that as a line from “Yes, Minister” and told them to go away and bring back something else. Minister, there is room here not only for a brave decision, for a common-sense, pragmatic decision and for the right decision, but—most importantly—for a decision that saves lives.

The majority of people who die in fires are the old, the young, the poor, the sick or the vulnerable. Sprinklers are needed to improve fire safety in the UK’s buildings. The NFCC, the ABI, the FPA, the London Fire Brigade, the FBU, RIBA, RICS and the public all support them. The Government need a win, and this is an opportunity.

Order. A glance round the Chamber shows that plenty of hon. Members wish to speak. I do not really believe in time limits, but if colleagues could honourably restrict themselves to four or five minutes each, it would be a courtesy.

As always, Mr Gray, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I declare an interest as a former firefighter, a former member of the FBU—I think technically I might still be one—and a former fire Minister when responsibility for fire was first brought into the Home Office.

Not all of what we ask today is in the Minister’s gift. Personally, I think that the fire Minister should have much more control over building regulations. When the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) and I were firemen many years ago, most fire prevention work was done in-house in the fire service; I remember quite junior officers going away for up to two years to become fire prevention officers. Long before the terrible Grenfell disaster, we spent years and years, under numerous Governments, discussing whether we should have sprinklers in the home. As the hon. Gentleman says, the people who die in fires tend to be the most vulnerable. That is a national catastrophe.

Sprinklers have changed enormously over the years, from the drenching sprinklers that swamped everything to get the fire out and destroyed nearly everything apart from people’s lives, to the very fine particulate sprinklers that we have now, which create more of a mist. The need to protect environments as well as lives is much more obvious now, and the new sprinklers do that.

I support all the calls being made. I do not think that we need to wait for this or that report, because it is blatantly obvious, as old-fashioned common sense tells us, that there is a strong correlation between sprinklers and lives saved. As we have heard, where sprinklers have been installed, no lives have been lost. I do not want to say too much about Grenfell, but there is a strong possibility that the fire started inside the building and then spread to the outside and the cladding. A sprinkler system is inside, not outside. Quite simply, if the fire had never got to the cladding in the first place, the situation would almost certainly have been very different.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

May I make a tiny bit of progress first, because of the time constraints that we are quite rightly under? It is fantastic to see so many colleagues here.

It is obvious common sense to have sprinklers in all new housing. Interestingly enough, they not only save lives but make insurance premiums go down. As with other types of insurance, such as telematics in car insurance, we have driven the industry to say, “If you install this, things could be better and your premiums could be lower.” Sprinklers also matter to developers choosing to buy properties in a certain area. Surely they must be the way forward. I will come on to social housing in a second, but let me first give way to my hon. Friend.

I support the point made by my right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) about the need for sprinklers. My right hon. Friend mentions the spread of fire. Does he recognise that the Grenfell tragedy could have been averted if the spread of fire by combustible cladding outside the building had been prevented? At current rates of progress, it will take five years to remediate all the private sector buildings in the UK. [Interruption.] The Minister shakes his head, but that is the current rate of progress. Where ownership or responsibility is unclear, does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government should step in and provide a fund to allow remediation work to take place more quickly?

I am sure that the Minister will respond to my hon. Friend’s point. Obviously we would like to see people sleeping in homes that are safe, and the faster that happens, the better. I am sure that the Minister feels exactly the same.

If the Government do not take action on sprinklers, they are really saying that property is more important than people’s lives. They may say that the costs are high or that the developers do not want sprinkler systems, but actually we have found that installing them in all new builds and major refurbishments would cost less than 1% of the build cost—not the retail value, the build cost. I cannot understand anyone in the 21st century arguing against installing sprinklers in all new properties. The insurers insist on it in most commercial and retail properties, and surely lives are more important.

As an ex-fireman and ex-Minister, I know the advice that the Minister has been getting, but he needs to turn round and say, “I am afraid that some of that advice is tosh.” The cost implications are there. New build could start tomorrow and refurbishment costs can be met. Now that we are building more social housing than ever—in my constituency we are building like wildfire, because we need more council houses—surely the Local Government Association could bring councils together to say that sprinklers should be installed.

I will not go into carbon monoxide and smoke detectors, but the successes in that area have caused a sudden drop in fatalities. We need to do more work on carbon monoxide, but this debate is about sprinklers. Sprinklers need to be in everybody’s homes as soon as possible.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), the secretary of the all-party fire safety rescue group, on initiating and leading this extremely important debate in the light of the atrocity at Grenfell Tower nearly two years ago. I also thank the group’s chair, the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), for his leadership over the past 20 years. I was delighted to be appointed as a vice-chair last year.

I am here to make a difference. First, I will challenge the resistance shown by the Government and their advisers towards the overwhelming and compelling evidence of the benefits of fire sprinklers to property and life. Their protection extends to the firefighters and other first responders to whom so many of my community owe their lives. Those who risk their lives every day to save ours also need protection.

As one of a package of fire safety measures, sprinklers work where other measures have failed. Where installed in flats, they have controlled or extinguished 100% of fires, according to research carried out by the National Fire Chiefs Council in May 2017, a month before the fire. The Building Research Establishment’s 2012 cost-benefit analysis confirmed that sprinklers are cost-effective in most blocks of purpose-built flats and in larger blocks of converted flats. Why have the Government not implemented that seven-year-old independent report? The public inquiry is reviewing what Ministers have failed to implement since the study in 2012, the coroner’s rule 43 letter in 2013 after the Lakanal House inquest, and the NFCC research. On behalf of a bereaved community, I ask the Minister to encourage the Secretary of State to push ahead with the building regulations review and, please, to act on the findings now.

Hon. Members will be aware that, following the atrocity at Grenfell, a full technical review has been instigated of approved document B, with a call for evidence. The NFCC has responded and set out its advice. I hope that hon. Members agree that it is well placed and qualified to determine the requirements and that we should support its position. All the chief fire officers in the country are saying with one voice that that regulation needs to be improved, so I hope that the Government will listen to them, rather than waiting for the result of the review, and that hon. Members will support this interim measure to speed up the process and take action to protect lives against fire.

A change to guidance alone will not address this matter, as demonstrated by the approach to schools, which has guidance in the form of Building Bulletin 100. That document defines the expectation for automatic fire sprinklers in schools as a property protection, and saw the inclusion of sprinklers in 70% of new schools over three years, between 2007 and 2010, but that has since fallen to an alarmingly low level. The London Fire Brigade commissioner has said that it relates to very few schools now—only four of the 84 schools it has attended have had sprinklers.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on securing the debate. He has been a magnificent voice leading on fire safety issues in Parliament. If his voice had been listened to over the years, we would not be in the powerless state that we are at the moment.

I congratulate and thank all the members of the all-party parliamentary fire safety and rescue group. It is a wonderful group and we speak with one voice: we want sprinklers to be installed on a mandatory basis in certain buildings. If we had been listened to at the outset, there would not have been the Lakanal disaster and there would not have been the Grenfell disaster. I am in absolute despair: Ministers come and go, and yet the advice remains constant from officials and others. That advice is absolutely wrong. It has cost lives.

The debate is pertinent because changes to building regulations approved document B guidance are currently being considered following the Grenfell Tower disaster. That was nearly two years ago, but I am sure it only seems like yesterday to the hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad).

I endorse everything that the hon. Gentleman says about the work of the APPG. Is the difference between us and the Government not that we have been willing to listen to expert opinion, and to take that into account when deciding the appropriate way forward? Surely, this is the time to listen to expert opinion.