Fire Safety Bill

After Clause 2

Legislative proposals relating to prohibition on passing remediation costs on to leaseholders and tenants

I beg to move,

That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 4L.

As I have said on a number of occasions at this Dispatch Box, I want to express my sincere thanks once again to all right hon. and hon. Members for engaging in this important debate. I would like to repeat the message given by my noble Friend the building safety Minister in paying tribute to the fire and rescue services across our country, because in recent days we have seen large fires in Greater Manchester and Shropshire, and they have been dealt with in an exemplary and professional manner. This is a reminder of why we want to get this Bill on to the statute book—to help fire and rescue services do their job to ensure that buildings are properly and thoroughly assessed.

All of us in this House and in the other place agree in the strongest terms that residents have the right to be and to feel safe in their homes. This Government remain steadfast in our commitment to delivering the Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 1 report’s recommendations. The Fire Safety Bill is an important first step in our legislative programme delivering these recommendations. I cannot stress enough, as I have reiterated on a number of occasions throughout the passage of this Bill, the vital importance of this legislation and the ramifications if it fails as a result of outstanding remediation amendments, and that is why I move that this House disagrees with Lords amendment 4L.

Without the Fire Safety Bill, legal ambiguity around the fire safety order will continue. Moreover, the updating of fire risk assessments to cover structure, external walls and flat entrance doors will be ignored by a number of negligent building owners, and fire and rescue services will lack the legal certainty to support enforcement decisions. That is a matter that I know will be in the minds of Members today, as it should also be in the minds of Members of the other place.

A number of Members across the House have said to me, “Well, why not simply redraft the Bill?” That might be easier to do with other legislation that already has careful cross-referencing to other Acts and already has detailed secondary legislation to revise regulations, but not so with this small but none the less important Bill. Redrafting it, even if the amendments were not defective, so that it carefully navigates the intricate web of contract law and does not fall foul of such Acts beloved of Members of this House, including many Opposition Members, such as the Human Rights Act 1998, will take considerable time, and we do not have that time.

Following our announcement in February, I am pleased to say that hundreds of thousands of leaseholders will be protected from the cost of replacing unsafe cladding on their homes as part of our five-point plan to end the cladding scandal once and for all, improve the saleability of properties and restore confidence in the housing market. The measures that we announced in February—including our work with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to reduce the need for EWS1 forms; our work with developers to put more of their own money on the table, additional to our tax and levy plans; and our work with lenders to buy into our package of measures to ensure sensible and proportionate value is re-ascribed to homes valued at zero—will allow hundreds of thousands of homes to be sold, bought or remortgaged once again. That will provide certainty to residents and lenders, boost the housing market and reinstate the value of properties. All the amendments we have received, debated and already disposed of would simply reignite uncertainty in the market and risk lenders once again turning to leaseholders saying, “Computer says no: we can’t value your property”.

I find it somewhat ironic that Members are flagging these issues in the context of trying to impede the progress of the Bill, as having an up-to-date fire and risk assessment that considers the external wall system of a building should enable an insurer to take an informed and proportionate approach to risk that considers not only the material and construction of the building but the way in which it is managed.

I agree that leaseholders need stronger avenues for redress. The draft Building Safety Bill, which has already gone through prelegislative scrutiny, will bring forward measures to do this, including making directors, as well as companies, liable for prosecution.

I agree that the industry must also play its part. As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), who is in his place, our high-rise levy and developer tax will make sure that the developers with the broadest shoulders pay their way. I reiterate what I said to him yesterday about forfeiture, which is a draconian measure that should be used only as a last resort. We believe this matter should be considered as part of our wider programme of leasehold reform, which we have already indicated we will bring forward.

I also welcome my right hon. Friend’s suggestion, in yesterday’s speech, about the case study from Portishead in his constituency. As I agreed yesterday, I think we can make good use of this opportunity to assess in-depth lessons learned from the systems on the ground. Again, I am grateful to him for his proposals.

The safety of leaseholders and residents will be compromised if we do not ensure that this Bill is placed on the statute book by the end of this Session. We will not help leaseholders, nor will we make homes any safer, by impeding its passage.

Lords amendment 4L lacks clarity, just like the others. Just like the others, it prohibits all kinds of remediation costs from being passed on to leaseholders, which means that were there to be even minor costs as a result of wear and tear, or even where leaseholders themselves are responsible for the damage, they would not be expected to pay. I do not believe, and I do not believe this House believes, that that is a proportionate response.

Will the Minister give way?

I will, of course, give way to the Father of the House, as I was unable to do so yesterday due to time constraints.

I am grateful to the Minister, and he knows I am trying to play the ball and not the person. The question is not the small amounts but the large amounts. It is estimated that the cost of remediation may go up to £15 billion. The Government are providing £5 billion, which leaves £10 billion that may fall on the shoulders of leaseholders. We are moving from a situation that might be ironic for some, to one that is irenic for more. The point of the amendment is that it needs to be met by Government, and it needs to be met in good time, or else many people will not be able to meet the demand to pay for the cost of remediation, and forfeiture will follow. That will happen in a shorter timescale than the one talked about by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox).

I certainly accept my hon. Friend’s assurance that he is playing the issue, as he always does, and not the man. As he rightly says, we propose to spend £5.1 billion of public money on remediating the tallest buildings, as directed by the Hackitt report and its recommendations.

We have also said that as a result of our tax on the development industry, which the Chancellor will consult on imminently, we will raise a further £2 billion. We have also said that we will introduce a tall buildings levy. Developers themselves are placing more money on the table. Taylor Wimpey has now placed a further £125 million on the table for remediation, and Persimmon £75 million. The amounts are building up. We have also suggested a very advantageous financing scheme for those buildings below 18 metres that may require some remediation.

I think all Members would agree that the taxpayer should not be paying for every cost associated with the provisions of the Fire Safety Bill, but that is the risk, because the scope of the amendments that have been tabled is far too broad to provide a sensible solution. Lords amendment 4L is also unclear on who should take responsibility for remediation works until a statutory scheme is in place to pay the costs. That would result in all types of remediation being delayed—a really unsatisfactory outcome for leaseholders. Leaseholders also will not thank us for voting through an amendment that will generate lots of litigation that they may need to pay for.

The amendment would prevent the passing on of remediation costs, but it does not define what those costs are. That is a recipe for litigation and a recipe for delay. There is a lack of clarity on the definition of remedial work and what may be attributable to the provisions in this Bill, in other Acts or in none. How would Members suggest that we disaggregate the legislation under which works are carried out and the definition to differentiate between remediation, maintenance or improvement? It is a recipe for litigation and a recipe for delay.

In effect, it may not be possible to relieve leaseholders and tenants from all costs for remedial works attributable to the Bill without breaching subsidy control rules—a form of state aid. Further detailed consideration would be needed about that, too. Practically speaking, drafting legislation is, as many Members will know, a complex matter that cannot be dealt with in the timeframe proposed by the amendment, and to provide an arbitrary deadline is neither helpful nor practical.

There is a common theme uniting these points. The amendments will not work. They will not help leaseholders. They are not detailed enough for a complex and intricate problem of this nature. We have seen the key elements of this amendment time and again, and this House has voted them down time and again. Yet time and again, peers and the Opposition—unintentionally, I trust—seem set on reinjecting uncertainty into the market, which cannot help leaseholders. I respectfully ask the House to reject this amendment, so that we return a further clear and consistent message to the other place.

The Minister has made a lengthy speech on this occasion, perhaps trying to ensure that others have less time to speak. I am glad that he took an intervention from the Father of the House on this occasion—he did not do so yesterday—but unfortunately he did not answer the main point, and therefore we must conclude that the Government are content for the £10 billion of additional cost to be shouldered by leaseholders.

We find ourselves in an extraordinary position. We voted on this only yesterday, and in that debate every single speaker—the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem contributors—pleaded with the Government to support leaseholders. No one spoke in the Government’s favour, and the Government’s majority was halved in the vote. At what point does the Minister question the sense of his approach? At what point does he turn around and think, “Well, all these people who have spoken are sensible and well meaning; perhaps they have a point”? At what point does he consider that he might actually agree with us?

I suspect that the Minister has had those thoughts, and I suspect that he even agrees with us. He knows that the Bank of England is worried about a crash caused directly by the crisis. He knows that hundreds of thousands of people are suffering. But he also knows that his Chancellor and his Prime Minister do not care enough to act. They have other priorities—to their property and development donors. Fourteen separate companies and individuals with links to construction companies using potentially lethal aluminium composite material cladding on buildings have donated nearly £4 million to the Conservatives since 2006. The Prime Minister must have his new curtains, so they turn away from the screams for help from the people hit with extraordinary bills of £40,000, £50,000, £60,000, and the Minister has to bunker down, hold his nose and hold the line. I almost feel sorry for him.

Let me touch briefly on the arguments put forward by the Minister yesterday and today for not accepting these amendments. The argument that they would further delay the implementation of the Grenfell recommendations does not wash and is frankly insulting to the Grenfell survivors. Yesterday, the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) read out Grenfell United’s condemnation of the use and abuse of the tragedy to put the blame on leaseholders. It said that the Government’s excuse that amendments to protect leaseholders would delay Grenfell recommendations is “deeply upsetting”, “wrong”,

We have a very short time for this debate, so I am afraid that we have to have a limit of three minutes on Back-Bench speeches.

First, I have agreed with pretty much everything that the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) has said in these debates over the last few weeks, but I disagree fundamentally with her bringing into it this political trope that the reason the Government will not act is that they are all in the pocket of the developers. That does not help this debate, it does not help us move it forward, and it does not help the leaseholders to keep putting in their minds that there is some sort of conspiracy. I agree with the hon. Lady on almost everything, but certainly not on that.

In yesterday’s debate, the Minister said—this was repeated just a few moments ago from the Dispatch Box—that

“all of us in this House agree that residents deserve to be safe, and to feel safe, in their homes.”—[Official Report, 27 April 2021; Vol. 693, c. 264.]

He is correct. We all agree on that. I think we all agree —at least, the Government, from the Prime Minister down have repeatedly said they agree—that leaseholders should not have to pay for historical fire defects.