Fire Safety Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

The following Members in the Chamber have indicated that they wish to speak: the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and the noble Lords, Lord Stoneham of Droxford and Lord Adonis. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, while the headlines are all focusing on the scandal of who paid for the internal refurbishment work on a flat in No. 10, for me this is a far greater scandal about who is being forced to pay for the external remediation works on more than a million flats caught up in this fire safety cladding debacle. As things stand, innocent leaseholders—the only party with no hint of blame for negligence or mistakes—are the sole group to shoulder the burden. We have heard some passionate speeches about that.

Why am I back here? I just need some reassurances from the Government. They say that this is not a legislative matter and that this is not the legislation, so what are they going to do? Many of us united here usually disagree. My goodness, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I are on the same side. Whatever is the matter? But we are here in good faith. This is not Tory-bashing or a cheap dig at rich developers or landowners—it is a warning to the Government.

This reminds me of the convictions of the 39 post- masters, now cleared, but after the tragedy of what befell them because no one would listen. It also feels to me like a betrayal of all those promises made to the red wall voters that this Government care about the aspirations of ordinary people. It seems to make a mockery of parliamentary priorities, and I genuinely do not understand the point of us being here and debating levelling up when many leaseholders concerned bought their flats or houses as part of affordable housing schemes. They are front-line workers who have been thrown to the wolves.

Similarly, what is the point of legislating on the welfare of veterans and supporting the police when one veteran and serving police officer writes to me explaining that he has worked every day since he was 16 and has never needed to rely on state benefit or accrued debts in any way, yet now faces bankruptcy and could even, as a bankrupt, lose his job. He describes it as a living nightmare. He says: “I am a leaseholder, and that is the biggest mistake of my life.” What a terrible thing to say. He says he is disillusioned, angry and frustrated, and powerfully notes that he feels defeated and that all his attempts to be heard are ignored.

These leaseholders feel ignored. Whatever happens here today, I ask the Government to listen and not to ignore them. At the very least, I ask the Minister to listen to the Bank of England. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, noted, last week the Bank of England said it is seriously assessing whether the building safety scandal could cause a new financial crisis—hardly an encouraging sign for building back better or economic growth.

Even from a pragmatic basis, I do not understand why the Government will not note that if more than a million properties become unmortgageable, if we create a negative equity problem, if leaseholders become bankrupt and cannot pay for remediation costs, if there is a knock-on effect on property values, if there is an effect on labour market mobility because people are unable to sell their homes, are trapped and have to stay where they are, surely this is a matter that the Government, even the Treasury, might look at. We look to the Government here because only they can provide the capital up front to pay for the works now.

The Commons reason for rejecting the amendment is that

“the issue of remediation costs is too complex to be dealt with in the manner proposed.”

I just want to know what manner is actually proposed. The plan from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, seems sensible to me. I would like to hear the Government’s.

I do agree that there are no easy solutions. That is why it is too easy for the Government to boast of generous loan funds and grant schemes when people are ineligible to apply for them and are facing huge bills now. Although it is tempting, it would be too easy to blame developers or whatever, and that is not my intention—I just do not want the blameless to pay.

It is also too easy to use the Grenfell tragedy to imply that those of us supporting the leaseholders or backing these amendments are cavalier in any way about fire safety standards. As a leaseholder, I assure noble Lords that I am not cavalier about my own safety. But I do note that today the Grenfell United campaign has issued a statement saying:

“Using Grenfell Recommendations to justify government’s indifference is deeply upsetting for us”.


As victims of the Grenfell fire, they say that they stand in solidarity with innocent leaseholders.

I know that the Bill is good and full of good intentions, but it creates liabilities for leaseholders without giving them any means of redress and, more broadly, it betrays any commitment to a meritocratic society. I appeal to the Government to listen.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

We have had some very good speeches and some very good points have been made, so I will speak quite briefly. First, I declare my own interests in property and as someone with 15 years’ experience of housing association work. I am speaking tonight largely on behalf of my noble friend Lord Newby, who has been tied up in commission work for most of the afternoon.

Looking back at last week’s debate, at the Minister’s speech and at the debate in the Commons this afternoon, I thought there was far too much emphasis on fear of the Bill not going through rather than on trying to set out and address the concerns not only of both Houses but of leaseholders, who have the uncertainty and the fear of liability. Simple fear is prevailing, and that is what we need to address. It is why the Government are in some difficulty in getting final decisions on the Bill.

Let us not forget that a lot of the leaseholders affected by these problems are first-time buyers. Developers made a lot of money out of government deals. The Government have been very keen on first-time buyer schemes and stamp duty relief. Why is it that they are so reticent to spell out more detail and give more assurance to leaseholders in the problems that they are facing? The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, was absolutely right: the Government are very keen on plans in all sorts of areas, but they really need a plan to deal with this problem.

In just one area, pooled insurance, there is great fear of the costs for leaseholders from their insurance going up because of the problems that they are facing and the extra risk that the insurance companies assess. The Government responded very quickly when there were pictures of people with their homes flooded and residents trying to deal with their problems in specific geographical areas, and they very quickly came up with pooled insurance schemes. Why are they not doing that more in this area? These leaseholders are a very specific group and they need help.

All evidence and experience suggest that the problem will grow. We have evidence in our own ranks of a Peer whose block of flats had a cladding problem: when the cladding was taken down, the block was found to be unsafe structurally. This is a growing problem. What lies behind the cladding, I suspect, is what is scaring the Treasury rigid. However, the problem has to be dealt with.

I am afraid that a lot of these properties were designed and built for first-time buyers. The developers knew they had to keep the price down when prices were escalating, but they also kept the costs down because they wanted to make their profit. They made a lot of money, so there will be all sorts of problems in these buildings.

The leaseholders will have seen the situation last week of the sub-postmasters and will be thinking that, as time goes on, they will be left behind and hung out to dry by the bureaucracy and the government machine failing to address their problems. They need protection from eviction, and they need to know exactly how they are going to be able to access grants.

They need to see the Government putting pressure on the developers. In some respects, the Government are a bit too close to some of those developers, but they need to be seen to be taking on the developers, the companies and the contractors involved in these buildings to make sure that it never happens again.

The industry is in fact dysfunctional. It is going to demand government intervention to address skills, regulation and the whole quality of development in this country. The Government need a plan and a timescale. They need to address the uncertainty and fear among very vulnerable people, and they need to start now as the problem will grow. That is why we support these amendments.

Fire Safety Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords, the following Members in the Chamber have indicated that they wish to speak: the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, and the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Cormack. I will call them in that order. First, I call the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is with some reluctance, especially at this late stage of the Bill, that I have decided to speak in support of these amendments. I do not want unnecessarily to delay legislation that aims to make homes safer and I am very sensitive about the dangers of undemocratic overreach and defying an elected Chamber. However, I speak because there is an urgent risk that rather than this well-intentioned, important Bill being remembered as a law that will save lives by tackling the fire safety defects at the heart of the Grenfell tragedy, instead, if passed unamended, it will become known as the Bill that ruins lives and makes tens of thousands bankrupt and homeless, their homes transformed from places of safety to sites of anxiety, stress and penury.

I have not spoken on the Bill previously but have followed the debates carefully. I have heard eloquent, passionate, evidence-based and constructive interventions from noble Lords on all sides of the House patiently explaining to the Government how the Bill, unintentionally no doubt, has weaponised fire safety measures and targeted not developers, freeholders, cladding manufacturers or builders but the most blameless constituents in all this—leaseholding home owners. They will pay horrendous, mind-boggling amounts of money to foot remediation costs to cover defects in order to make their homes safe when they have purchased those flats in good faith.

I assumed that the Government were listening and that they understood, after all this—Ministers here and elsewhere have given lots of public assurances—that leaseholders would not become the fall guys. I believed them. I was pleased to welcome the £5 billion long-term loan scheme and the £50-a-month cap on repayments. That reassured me. But I am speaking today in desperation because I am utterly shocked to discover that this government scheme is not yet operational and that no date is available for when it will be. Yet, at the very moment that the Bill comes into force, if unamended, leaseholders will be landed with even more astronomical bills and demands to pay within days or weeks. That is on top of the immiseration already occurring, caused by ensuing costs.

Inclusive Society

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I too welcome the challenge from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. How do we build a fairer, more inclusive post-pandemic world? One prerequisite in my opinion will be how urgently we rebalance the relationship between the state and the individual. Whether you think lockdown legislation was disproportionate or totally necessary, I think we can all agree that individual freedoms and rights have been suspended. Focusing on tackling poverty should not blind us to the devastating impact of impoverishing citizens by any continuation of an assault on individual agency or on people’s moral autonomy to make choices. The new normal should not mean less freedom or fewer rights.

Yet despite lockdown restrictions slowly being rolled back, there are some worrying signs that government, both national and local, seems keen to cling on to its new powers and retain control over people’s lives. Look at the debate over domestic Covid passports and certificates that the noble Lord, Lord Beith, referenced. These proposals would mean citizens requiring permission papers to participate in society before being able to go to the cinema, concerts, football matches, gyms, nightclubs or even to get jobs. People potentially would have to obtain official clearance. This would equate to the Government declaring every person a risk to others, unless they prove that they are Covid-secure. Let alone considering the ethics of pressurising people to undergo medical procedures to participate in civic life, it could create the potential of a second-class citizenry with two sets of rules and two sets of rights.

I am delighted today to see that many in hospitality have signed a new charter named Open For All. I hope the Government will take note and think carefully before embracing this biomedical, digital-permit society as it can only be exclusionary, discriminatory and less free, and I do not want it as the new normal. I have also watched with dismay at how authorities have taken advantage of lockdown to impose contentious policy changes without the inconvenience of democratic scrutiny.

Take the example of road closures and the controversial low-traffic neighbourhoods—LTNs. While citizens were confined in their homes under lockdown, up sprang bollards, giant flowerpots and barriers to block off residential roads. These and schemes such as bike lanes and wider pavements were boasted about by politicians as examples of building back better, but better for whom? LTNs are sold as introducing green travel habits but I think opportunistically citing unprecedented levels of walking and cycling during the pandemic to push for a new normal of less car use is pretty despicable. The Department for Transport talks of LTNs as helping to

“embed altered behaviours and demonstrate the positive effects of active travel.”

This is a top-down new normal, with the state deciding what is good for people, whether they know it or like it or not and it can be tone deaf, unfair and create new victims. For example, LTNs have not eradicated pollution or congestion, just moved them to less well-off areas. The impact of these schemes on those who use the vehicles for their livelihood has been devasting. Care workers dashing from home to home, delivery van drivers, plumbers and electricians now have 20-minute drives turned into hours in endless traffic gridlocks. Even in those quieter, traffic-free streets, many elderly and disabled residents complain that they feel stranded.

Myriad rank-and-file protest groups have sprung up. Have the local politicians listened to their complaints? No—instead, I am afraid, they have demonised them as selfish car rats on rat runs and as macho gas-guzzlers, even though most of them are women and many of them use their car to help their neighbours. As one activist notes, politicians

“underestimate … cars as a community resource.”

My main point for the Minister is this: can we ensure that when politicians promise to build back better this will not be an imposed vision of what people want but they will be asked and then listened to?