Park Home Residents: Legal Protection

John Healey Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend’s second point is a suitable subject for a separate debate. One problem is that the land on which the caravans are situated is in separate ownership from the caravans, so to introduce a right to buy that land might legally be quite complicated. Having said that, it has been suggested that, to get round the site licence provisions, some operators are offering long leases on the small area of land on which each caravan or park home is situated, which leads to the situation where each separate park home on a site has to have a separate site licence. That is the latest way in which the law is being stretched. At my suggestion, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council and the leasehold advisory group are interested in looking into the issue to see whether we will have a situation rather like the one we had with some Traveller sites, where an acre of field was divided up into lots of very small plots.

I am sceptical about my hon. Friend’s earlier point about the fit and proper person test. I will illustrate my scepticism by referring to the controlling director of Royale Parks Ltd. Robert Lee Jack Bull, born in May 1977, was appointed as the director of Royale Parks Ltd on 7 September 2018. Directly or indirectly, he holds between 25% and 50% of the shares and voting rights in that company, which is part of a complex group of companies. The information that I have seen from Companies House suggests that Mr Bull is the director of no fewer than 74 companies, which between them have assets of about £80 million and liabilities of about £110 million. Royale Parks Ltd controls 75% or more of the shares and voting rights in some of those subsidiary companies, such as Royale Parks (Dorset) Ltd. In marketing the properties, however, RoyaleLife describes itself as

“a family-owned business with a heritage dating back to 1945.”

There may be such a heritage, but what is probably not well known is that Mr Robert Lee Jack Bull was convicted at Cheltenham magistrates court on two pieces of information brought by the trading standards department, as described in the register for 10 January 2013. They are in similar terms, so I will refer only to the first one, which says:

“Between 13/08/2009 and 08/11/2009 at Gloucestershire, being a trader, engaged in a commercial practice which, by omission, was misleading under regulation 6 of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 in that its factual contract omitted material Information, namely by making representations to Phillip and Mary Bentall, being average consumers, with respect to a park home, 101 Cotswold Grange Country Park, Meadow Lane, Twyning, which representations caused them to take a transactional decision namely to sell their home at 32 Quay Lane, Hanley Castle and purchase 101 Cotswold Grange Country Park which they would not otherwise have undertaken if they had known that planning permission only existed for holiday homes at Cotswold Grange Country Park and that 101 Cotswold Grange Country Park was a holiday home, not a permanent residential property, contrary to Regulation 10 of said regulations and as a result caused or was likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision he would not have taken otherwise.

Contrary to regulations 10 and 13 of the…Regulations 2008.”

Mr Bull was fined £4,000 on that and the other count, and ordered to pay costs and a victim surcharge.

If we go for a fit and proper person test, will Mr Bull fall foul of that test? I suspect that he would not, which shows the weakness of such a test. That is why I express openly my scepticism about it, but I think that if my constituents, certainly at Tall Trees, knew about Mr Bull’s background they would be very concerned, because many of them were the victims of mis-selling. They bought their park homes at Tall Trees around the same period, between 2009 and 2013, having been told that those park homes carried with them full residential rights over a 12-month period.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

If the hon. Gentleman does not agree with the concept of a fit and proper person test, what does he propose to put in place to try to stop exactly the rogues that he has described in such detail to the Chamber?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am saying that I am not in favour of the fit and proper person test proposed by the Government. The alternative suggestion—I was going to refer to it, but I will now do so directly—is that the British Holiday & Home Parks Association, which is basically a trade body, should be given responsibility for introducing some policing in this area. The right hon. Gentleman will know that, as a result of the Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019, which was introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire, rogue parking operators are no longer able to get access to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency database unless they belong to the British Parking Association, an organisation that ensures high standards in the parking industry.

Similarly, we could have a situation where an organisation such as the BHHPA was able to enforce the fit and proper person requirements through its membership code, so that it would not admit into its membership organisations that fell below those standards. That might be a much more direct way of addressing this issue, rather than going down the route of the fit and proper person test. Which of those 74 companies to which I referred would be regarded as an unfit and improper company because of one director? This is a complex area, but the main point I would make is that the fit and proper person test is not the panacea that some people are suggesting it is.

In my capacity as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on park homes, I am well aware of the laid-back attitude of many local authorities in discharging their responsibilities to park home residents. I have received lots of information from members of the public, including information on operators: the Elmstead Residential Park in Andover, Lakeview Residential Park in Romford and others frequently referred to in Private Eye. There are serious continuing problems. We will hear about some of them during this debate. Successive Governments have engaged in window-dressing gestures rather than taking effective action against the rogue operators.

The fit and proper person test may be just such an additional issue. I hope that the Minister, in his response to the debate, will be able to set out the Government stall in respect of what the Government will do to force local authorities to meet their statutory obligations, and to protect the many thousands of park home residents looking for a strong lead in this area. It is recognised that there are a large number of reputable park home operators, but there are still rogues operating in this industry.

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[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, as it was to serve under that of Mr Hollobone. Could you pass on our thanks to him? I enjoyed your team tagging at the start, just as I enjoyed the team tagging with the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) to get us under way. I pay tribute to him for securing the debate.

This is a significant issue. The hon. Member for Christchurch is the chair of the all-party group, which is industry backed. It is highly significant that we heard from him and others the detail of the way in which park home owners and residents are systematically ripped off by some site owners, as well as his call for legislation and tougher enforcement and sanctions.

I welcome the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) to his place in what may be his first debate as Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, and I congratulate him. There were 10 Tory MPs present at the start of this debate—I had not realised quite how compelling the debate would be compared with the attraction of the Conservative party conference in Manchester. I just hope everyone got refunds on the rooms they booked and had to cancel.

We have heard again today why an estimated 85,000 park home owners require better protection, stronger rights and Government action. Many of the residents are older people on low incomes, and they are without the means of redress that we would expect to be available to residents in any well-functioning market. The speakers in the debate have listed some of the common problems: unlicensed sites; lack of rights and means of redress for park home residents; unfair pitch fees and unjustifiable increases, sometimes annually; mis-selling, with some site owners encouraging those buying a home on their site to use their lawyers in the transactions; indefensible rules that allow site owners a take or commission of up to 10% when people sell their home; rogue park owners resorting sometimes to bullying, thuggery and even criminality; and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) said, a lack of clear, independent advice from Government to park home residents and owners.

I say to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) that, given the vivid and detailed descriptions we have heard of the deep problems in the market, a membership code for the trade body’s members is not sufficient to resolve those problems—it simply will not cut it. A fit and proper person test may not be the single solution, but it must be part of the system to deal with what he described as rogue operators in the industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), from his constituency experience, powerfully made the case why a fit and proper person test must be part of the answer.

I enjoyed the contribution from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). As you well know, Mr Betts, he is probably the most regular contributor to debates in this House on housing generally and to debates on park homes in particular. He encouraged us to look to Northern Ireland and the experience in his area to see that we can work through co-operation, rather than confrontation. I hope that Ards and North Down Borough Council and his three park home site owners have responded to the current Government consultation. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), who spoke about how the Welsh have implemented tougher steps and how we in England can learn from them. I hope that the Minister will heed some of the practical points his hon. Friend made.

The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), who has now left, and the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) both pointed out that the best site owners are dragged down by the worst. The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who has also left, said that for too long there has been too little action by the Government. I regret the fact that the hon. Gentleman is correct: no progress has been made in the past decade. As you will remember, Mr Betts, I was the Housing Minister in the Labour Government in March 2010, when we published the conclusions of a consultation we undertook on park home regulation, including proposals and plans for a new fit and proper person test as part of new licensing requirements for park home owners, and a range of new offences relating to licensing, with tough financial penalties when the rules were not observed. However, as with so much else to do with housing, the Government who came to office in May 2010 were concerned first and foremost with cutting regulation and investment, and from that point on they resisted any case for new regulation and new rules, which have since proved to be necessary.

We have had a lost decade for housing and for park home residents and owners because of the lack of action. The only legislation to be passed in the past 10 years was not Government legislation, but the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Waveney that became the Mobile Homes Act 2013. I pay tribute to him, but the fact is that, four years after that the passage of that Act—a qualified success, as he described it, but flawed—the Government had to undertake a consultation on what to do, and finally, in July, a full year after the consultation had concluded, they published their proposals. Will the Minister tell me today when the promised primary legislation will be introduced in Parliament? Will it be part of the Queen’s Speech in two weeks’ time?

With respect to the capacity of councils to do the vital enforcement job that all hon. Members have described, I say to the hon. Member for Christchurch that it is not necessarily that they are unwilling; given that the Local Government Association tells us that by next year councils will have lost 60p in every pound of their funding over the past 10 years, it is that at present they are unable. Will the Minister confirm how much will be available to councils to help to fund the new licensing role to accompany the legislation? Given that the problems that park owners face are part of the wider problems facing leaseholders who buy their home and find that they do not own it, will the Government back the plans that I have set out for Labour: ending leasehold on all new homes and giving existing leaseholders the legal right to buy their freehold for 1% of the property value?

This narrow issue, which nevertheless affects the day-to-day lives and prospects of tens of thousands of people, poses at a small scale the bigger choices that the Government face. The housing market is broken, and the Government must decide whose side they are on: whether they will remain, as they have been for the past 10 years, on the side of the commercial developers, the big landowners, the private landlords and the managers of park home sites, or whether they are—as Labour is—on the side of the hard-pressed homeowners, the first-time buyers, the leaseholders and the park home residents. I say to the Minister that it is “make up your mind” time, before the voters make up their mind at the next election.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) on securing this hugely important debate and on his work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group; I know that he has been and will continue to be a constant and powerful voice on these matters.

The park homes sector plays a crucial role in housing, particularly for older people; I say that not only as a Minister in my Department, but as a local MP who represents a number of park home operators and residents. Park homes provide a home for approximately 180,000 people across our country—mostly older people, many of whom are vulnerable, as has been referred to several times in this debate.

Some sites can be a dream move into the countryside, or by the sea in Christchurch, but we have heard too many examples today of that dream quickly becoming a nightmare. Hon. Members have raised numerous cases of exploitation, intimidation and coercion, and we know that some site owners exploit vulnerable residents financially through the use of complex ownership and management arrangements; I am aware of one case in which residents were asked to pay £40,000 per home for their written agreements to be renewed. Such practices are unjustifiable and unacceptable, particularly where the majority of residents are pensioners on low incomes whose park home is their only or main asset. All residents of park homes should be confident that they will be able to stay on their pitch as long as they choose to; they should not be worried about where to live or what unforeseen financial liabilities they may have in future.

We have seen vivid examples of the extreme misuse of variable service charges to extract ever more cash from those who may already be on low or fixed incomes, and I know of a case in which a resident lost their home and life savings as a result. There are examples of threats, intimidation and even violence to coerce residents into selling their homes way below the market price. Even at the less extreme end of the spectrum, there are examples of the market simply not functioning as it should. Some of them have arisen or been able to persist partly because the park homes sector is unique; over the decades, the sector has evolved much faster than the legislation we have passed to govern it, and there has been insufficient understanding of and information about the rights and responsibilities of park owners and residents. That has created a huge number of problems, which we are committed to resolving.

A unique aspect of the sector is the crucial relationship between the site owner and the resident. When it becomes unconstructive, as it has in the past, it leaves some residents exposed to unscrupulous site owners, which is why strong legal protections are necessary and why the Government continue to take the matter seriously. Legal protections are of course in place. The 1983 Act, which we have discussed this morning, gave residents security of tenure, which means the site owner can end the agreement only for certain reasons and with the approval of the courts. Although the legal changes were important, they clearly failed to address a lot of the overarching challenges in the sector. That is why the 2013 Act, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), strengthened the rights and protections of residents and gave local authorities more enforcement powers. There was a new process for selling mobile homes, which required the use of statutory forms to reduce the potential for sale blocking; the new pitch fee review process; and a new process for making sure that, when new site rules were introduced, residents were consulted.

We have also banned certain types of site rules that give site owners an unfair advantage. We have given local authorities more powers to issue compliance notices, which we have heard a lot about this morning, to carry out necessary work to the site, or face prosecution or an unlimited fine. To better tackle instances of harassment, the 2013 Act strengthened the criminal law by removing the requirement that acts of harassment have to be persistent before a prosecution could be brought by a local authority. Such measures have led to tangible improvements in the lives of many residents, although it has been highlighted again today that there is still a huge amount of work to do to improve the lives of park home residents and to really make the sector work.

The Government want to go further. In 2018, we conducted a review of the park homes legislation to understand how far the 2013 Act had gone towards addressing the overarching issues in the sector and to help expose what more can be done. We have been strong in our response. First, we said we would consult on the technical detail of introducing a fit and proper person test. There has been much discussion about that this morning. We are certainly committed to learning the lessons of what happened in Wales and making sure that the test is as thorough and fit as it can be. I certainly take on board the representations made about that by hon. Members in the Chamber this morning. The consultation closed on 17 September and we are now analysing the responses. We will seek to publish the Government response as soon as possible. We will certainly make sure that that is done by the end of the year. In answer to the question asked by the shadow spokesman, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), the statutory instrument will be laid before the House as early as possible next year, subject to parliamentary time.

[John Healey]

Is the Minister saying that the only legislation he has in mind is a statutory instrument and not primary legislation?

[Luke Hall]

Not at all. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will bear with me for a minute or so.

Secondly, we said we would establish a park homes working group, and we have done that. The group has been working since October last year to explore how rights and responsibilities can be communicated more widely and administrative processes improved. Thirdly, we said we would conduct research into the 10% commission charged on the sale of park homes, and I expect that to be under way by the end of this year. Finally, we will introduce primary legislation to address other challenges in the sector, including issues such as the definition of a pitch fee, the use of variable service charges and the use of complex company structures that can limit a resident’s security of tenure.

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[John Healey]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. Will he confirm that, given the working group and the research still to be commissioned, the primary legislation will not be in the Queen’s Speech in two weeks’ time?

[Luke Hall]

At the moment, the assurance I can give the right hon. Gentleman is that a statutory instrument will be laid before Parliament early next year and there will be legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows. I am sure the Minister for Housing will be happy to provide further clarity as soon as it is possible to do so.

I will briefly go into a bit more detail about two points I mentioned that are particularly pertinent. As we have heard, the sector is complex, highlighting the importance of the working group, which brings together local authorities, the British Holiday & Home Parks Association and the National Caravan Council, residents’ associations, LEASE and Age UK. A hugely important workstream for the group is on making sure that the communication of rights and responsibilities is as effective as possible.

We have talked about the age profile of a lot of people living in park homes. One of the important things for us to consider and remember and for the working group to ensure—certainly, it is in its recommendations to us—is the availability of information not only online, through the technological formats that we would use, but directly on sites and in paper copies. The working group has recommended that my Department should produce a single source of information and that all park home owners should be aware of it. The work is fully in train and will be made widely available, including paper copies.

I should like to give more detail about the introduction of the fit and proper person test. There was overwhelming support—not 100%, but overwhelming—for the introduction of such a test, in the review of legislation. We are committed to bringing it forward and putting it into effect, subject to the results of the technical consultation that closed on 17 September. We received 369 responses, 267 of which were from park home residents themselves—a good proportion. We also had representations from the legal sector, representative bodies, local authorities and the site licensing officers’ forum. We are looking at the responses now and will publish them before the end of the year.

During the debate, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) asked whether the Department could make contact with Ards and North Down Borough Council. I am more than happy to make sure that that happens and would like to pass on my thanks to Councillor Edmund for the work that has been done in his area. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney talked about the availability of guidance and advice and about the importance of making sure the working group information is available as quickly as possible. I assure him that the Minister for Housing sees that as a priority.

My hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), who talked about the importance of the fit and proper person test, made a pertinent point about the joining up of local authorities and the conversations that they should be having. I shall make sure that that point is taken away.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch raised some extremely pertinent points and I shall ask the Minister for Housing to investigate them all fully in advance of their forthcoming discussion.

Deaths of Homeless People

John Healey Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

Every single death on our streets is a tragedy. Today’s statistics have provided us all with a stark reminder that there is so much more to be done. Every death on our streets is one too many, and this Government will work tirelessly to ensure that lives are not needlessly cut short. The fact that 726 people—mothers, fathers, siblings, all somebody’s loved one—died while homeless in 2018 will concern not just every Member of this House, but everybody up and down our country.

As you know, Mr Speaker, this Government are committed to putting an end to rough sleeping by 2027 and halving it by 2022; and we have changed the law to help make that happen. In April 2018, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017—one of the most ambitious pieces of legislation in this area for decades—came into force. We now have a year’s worth of evidence, which is showing that more people are being supported earlier, and this is having a clear impact on the prevention of homelessness.

The Government last year published the first rough sleeping strategy, underpinned by £1.2 billion of funding, which laid out how we will work towards ending rough sleeping for good. Indeed, last year we saw a small change—a reduction in rough sleeping. A key element of that was the rough sleeping initiative. A total of £76 million has been invested in over 200 areas. This year, that initiative will fund 750 additional staff and approximately 2,600 new bed spaces. We know that next year, we must go further. Today’s statistics demonstrate that. We will be providing a further £422 million to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. That is a £54 million increase in funding on the previous year—a real-terms increase of 13%.

The cold weather is a particularly difficult time for those sleeping rough, so the Government have launched a second year of the cold weather fund. We are making available £10 million to local authorities to support rough sleepers off the streets. That will build on last year’s fund, which helped relieve more than 7,000 individuals from rough sleeping over the winter.

These statistics have reminded us starkly of the fateful impact of substance and alcohol misuse. We know that the use of new psychoactive substances is rising. These are dangerous drugs with unpredictable effects, and that is why it is so important that people get the support that they need. In 2019, we brought forward new training for frontline staff to help them engage with and support rough sleepers under the influence of such substances. We are working with the Home Office to ensure that rough sleepers are considered in the forthcoming alcohol strategy, which will focus on vulnerable people.

There is so much more to be done. Our work is continuing, our funding is increasing, our determination is unfaltering and we are committed to making rough sleeping a thing of the past.

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[John Healey]

Seven hundred and twenty-six people died homeless last year. Wherever we sit in this House, wherever we live in this country, that shames us all in a nation as decent and well-off as Britain today. Every one—in shop doorway, in bedsit, on park bench—has been known and loved as someone’s son or daughter, friend or colleague. We have heard from the new Minister today, but this demands a response from the Prime Minister himself, tomorrow, in his party conference speech. It demands that he leads a new national mission to end rough sleeping and the rising level of homeless deaths.

The official statistics released today confirm a record high total and a record high increase—up by a fifth over the past year alone. This record high has been 10 years in the making: investment in new social housing has been slashed; housing benefit has been cut 13 times; 9,000 homeless hostel places and beds have been lost as a result of Government funding cuts; and Ministers have refused to step in and protect private renters. There is the widest possible agreement, from homeless charities to the National Audit Office and the cross-party Select Committees of this House, that Government policy has helped cause the rise in homelessness every year since 2010.

Will the Minister therefore acknowledge that high levels of homeless deaths and homelessness are not inevitable? Will he accept that, just as decisions by Ministers have driven the rise in rough sleeping, Government action now could bring it down? Will he back Labour’s plans for £100 million for cold weather shelter and support to get people off the streets in every area, starting this winter? Will he tackle the root causes of this shocking rise in deaths with more funding for homelessness services, more low-cost homes and no further cuts in benefits?

These high and rising homeless deaths shame us all, but they shame Government Ministers most. This can and must change.

[Luke Hall]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his questions. There is no shying away from the statistics, which are heartbreaking. He is absolutely right that every person who has died on our streets is somebody’s brother, mother or sister. He will find no complacency in this Government. We are increasing funding next year by £54 million, which is a 13% real-terms increase. It is important to note that in the areas where we piloted the rough sleeping initiative we saw a direct fall of 19% in rough sleeping in the first year. Next year we are delivering 750 more staff and 2,600 more bed spaces.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise these issues. While visiting homeless hostels and shelters across the country over the past few weeks, I have been struck by the welfare issues that people have raised with me, especially those with complex and difficult needs, and by the complexity of navigating the system in order to get the right support. That is why we have designed a number of safeguards, including individualised support from Department for Work and Pensions frontline staff. It is important to note that we have also allocated £40 million next year for discretionary housing payments. There is a huge amount more to be done on affordable social housing. He is right to highlight the importance of the issue, which has been raised with me by homelessness charities time and again. We have made £9 billion available through the affordable homes programme, to deliver 250,000 new affordable homes.

The right hon. Gentleman is also right to raise the role of health services. We see in today’s statistics the impact of the high prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse. That is why the support that we are putting forward as part of the rough sleeping strategy, including £2 million to test community-based health models to help rough sleepers access services, including mental health and substance abuse support, is vital. I look forward to working with him, and indeed with every Member of the House, as we try to tackle this hugely challenging issue for our country.

Building Safety

John Healey Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement. I have to say that I admire his air of calm. This is a Government of chaos—even the Prime Minister’s brother has walked out of office this morning—so his presence is welcome. I recognise his good intent to make good on the failings of his predecessors over the past few years.

Why, two years and three months after the terrible Grenfell tragedy, are 324 high-rise blocks still cloaked in the same dangerous, Grenfell-style cladding? Why have 72 private block owners not even got a plan in place to fix the problem? Will the Secretary of State do what his predecessors did not and bring in Labour’s five-point plan to force the pace of the recladding? It would mean naming and shaming those private block owners now, not some time in the future; setting a hard deadline for block owners to get the work done; updating the sanctions available to councils under the Housing Act 2004; making Government funding available for cladding remediation on private blocks where they have to do the work; and widening now the Government-sponsored testing regime to test comprehensively all suspect non-ACM cladding.

One year and four months after the final Hackitt report was published, why is there no comprehensive implementation plan? Why is there no legislation? Today, the Secretary of State confirmed his intention to respond by the end of the year. Can he do better? Will he guarantee that legislation to implement the much-needed legal changes is part of the Queen’s Speech that is promised for next month?

Ten months after the Government’s contract for the wider testing was due to be completed, the report has not been completed and published. Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to publish in full and without delay—not sometime in the autumn—those results in full?

We welcome the consultation on extending the requirement for sprinklers in new build flats. That builds on the provisions that the Labour Government introduced for high-rise blocks. However, will the Secretary of State go a step further, do what we planned and pledged, and set up a fund so that we can retrofit all high-rise social housing blocks so that the people who live in them can be assured that they will be safe in future?

I welcome the Secretary of State’s plans for a new inspection system, but why on earth does he say that all high-risk buildings might not be inspected until 2021? That is two years in the future; four years after Grenfell. What is he doing to speed that up?

Grenfell was a national tragedy. People look to the Government in such times for a national response. At every stage, the Government have been too slow to grasp the scale of the problems. Their actions have been too little, too late, and I regret to say that there is too little in today’s statement to give us confidence that the Secretary of State and the Government can rectify their failure to act as they should to make everyone safe after the terrible Grenfell tragedy more than two years ago.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. He and I have worked well together on other issues and I hope that we can do so on this issue, which should be beyond party politics.

We have taken many steps. My predecessors have worked with commitment on the issue. We have given clear advice to building owners, who must take personal responsibility. We have introduced a ban on combustible cladding. We have had the independent review, which has now concluded, by Dame Judith Hackitt, and we have had the consultation, to which we will respond by the end of this year. We now have 150 individuals in my Department working on building safety, many with decades of experience. Again, they are working with great commitment and at pace.

We have put £600 million of public money behind remediation of dangerous ACM cladding in the social sector, of which £200 million is now available in the private sector. We have of course launched a full public inquiry into the Grenfell tragedy and the first phase is expected to report back shortly. Of course, the timing is up to the judge.

We have issued clarified building regulations guidance, and we are increasing support for local authorities. Today, I announced £10 million for the protection board and £4 million directly for local authorities. We have already removed a range of substandard products from the market. Is there more to do? Of course there is, and I hope that hon. Members of all parties will see from my statement the number of steps that I intend to take and the pace at which I want my Department to work in the months to come.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about funding; we have made the funding available, and I share his determination to hold private sector building owners to account. As I said in my statement, I will be naming and shaming the individuals and the companies that own the buildings if they do not take action very quickly this autumn. If we come to the end of the fund in December—the right hon. Gentleman asked for a hard deadline; that is a hard deadline—and there are buildings that have not been remediated, or at least applications to the fund have not been put in and there are not exceptional reasons for that, we will take whatever enforcement steps are required at that point. We will work with local authorities to make sure that they robustly use their powers. There are instances of their doing so, and we are working with them already.

The Hackitt review was an important step forward. This is a complex policy area and we all want to ensure that we get this right, so we need to work through the responses to the consultation carefully, and my Department is doing that. As I said, we will bring forward the legislation at the very earliest opportunity. The right hon. the Gentleman has my assurance that I will be working within the Government to ensure that happens and to impress upon the Prime Minister and others that legislation needs to come forward at the earliest opportunity. I do not think it should be rushed, which is why I have worked with the Home Secretary to bring in the interim measure to establish the protection board. The individual assessments of buildings will begin as soon as possible once the board has been established. That will provide reassurance to residents. I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concern that time is passing; I hope he sees that I intend to work at considerable pace to get this done.

On sprinklers, we are currently consulting on the building regulations guidance so that the regulations can come into force for whatever is deemed to be the appropriate threshold. As I said, our preference is 18 metres, but we are open to evidence in other respects. On the retrofitting of sprinklers in existing high-rise buildings, Dame Judith Hackitt and other expert advisers have made it clear that that is not always the right option for a building. It may well be, but other measures could be taken instead that might be more appropriate for an individual building. Dame Judith Hackitt made it clear that it was wise to proceed on an individual basis, so the safety regime that we will be introducing in legislation will ensure that there are individual assessments of buildings. Those assessments may conclude that there is a requirement to retrofit sprinklers, but they might recommend alternative arrangements instead. Obviously, we will ensure that whatever is proposed in those assessments happens in a timely fashion.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) for his private Member’s Bill setting out the steps that are needed to bring the leasehold market into an appropriate space. He will have heard what I said about bringing ground rents down to zero. We have given that commitment, and the right thing is that we move forward with our proposed legislation. I am sure that, with his ingenuity, he will be able to scrutinise it and, no doubt, come up with further proposals to ensure that legislation is effective.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

This session may be the swan song of the Secretary of State and his team. We certainly hope not, and we wish them all well in the Tory turmoil to come.

[Helen Goodman]

But not too well.

[John Healey]

Indeed.

The CMA’s inquiry is certainly welcome, but it is action by Ministers that homebuyers ripped off in the leasehold system need most. The Secretary of State’s predecessor said in 2017 that the Government would stop new leasehold houses, but nearly 3,500 were sold last year. The Secretary of State himself said a year ago that he would end the use of Help to Buy for new leasehold houses, but he had to admit to me afterwards that that will not happen until 2021.

As the Secretary of State reflects on his time in this job, will he concede that any Government action has been too slow and too weak and has totally overlooked the needs of current leaseholders locked into unfair contracts?

[James Brokenshire]

No, I do not accept that. I direct the right hon. Gentleman to the action that has been taken and the fall that has been seen: the proportion of new build leasehold houses has fallen from 11% in quarter 4 of 2017 to 2% in quarter 4 of 2018, which was the lowest quarter so far for leasehold houses in the Help to Buy equity loan scheme.

The right hon. Gentleman issues a challenge on the existing Help to Buy scheme; he will note that I have asked Homes England to look into how we can renegotiate some of those contracts, because I was clear that there should be no new Government funding for schemes that promote leasehold, and that remains a firm commitment. Equally, we are taking action on the scheme now to confront some of the abuses that there are.

[John Healey]

Well, lots of warm words and fresh reviews, but no action. There have been 19 Government announcements on leaseholds in the 15 months that the right hon. Gentleman has been Secretary of State, but there is still no sign of change for current leaseholders, or of the legislation to make it happen. Is not the hard truth that Conservatives cannot help leaseholders because they will not stand up to the vested interests in the property market? Do not homeowners who are looking for justice and radical, common-sense changes have to look to Labour to set a simple formula for people to buy their own freehold; to crack down on unfair fees and give homeowners the right to challenge high costs or poor performance from management companies; and to put an end, finally, to the broken leasehold system?

[James Brokenshire]

Clearly, the right hon. Gentleman has not been looking at the practical steps we have taken and, indeed, the performance that we have seen. Perhaps that is because of the turmoil in his own party—there has been plenty on the Opposition Benches. I direct the House to the steps that have been taken, the commitments that have been made and the effect that all that is now having. We are championing the cause of leaseholders and confronting some of the really unfair practices. We are seeing the effect that that is having as a result of the steps we have taken, rather than the hyperbole from the Opposition and the continuing turmoil that we see among them.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

About £9 billion is being spent on the affordable homes programme, and half of that is going to London. I hope that the hon. Lady will join me in encouraging the Mayor of London to focus on the delivery of housing of all types for all people, and to ensure that there is that bright prospect in London as well as the rest of the country.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

After nine years of Conservative government, why are nearly 900,000 fewer people under 45 able to own their own home?

[James Brokenshire]

It is interesting that the right hon. Gentleman should make that point. He may recall saying in the past that falling home ownership was not “such a bad thing”. I should have thought that he would support the increase in delivery that I have mentioned, and, indeed, the fact that the number of first-time buyers is at an 11-year high.

[John Healey]

Is not the truth that the Government have been failing young people on housing for nine years? One in five of those on the Help to Buy scheme are not even first-time buyers, the average age of those on the right to buy scheme is over 50, and not a single one of the new starter homes that were pledged in 2014 has yet been built. Where is the new hope, and where are the new housing plans, from the wannabe Tory leaders?

Is it not clear, after nine years of Conservative government, eight Housing Ministers and four Secretaries of State, that the Conservatives still have no plan to fix the housing crisis, and is it not clear that the only hope for young people with regular incomes is a Labour Government with radical plans for discounted First Buy homes, first dibs for local people on new homes, and a programme for the building of a million new affordable homes both to rent and to buy?

[James Brokenshire]

I wondered, given the right hon. Gentleman’s peroration, whether he was building up to Christmas, but I can say to him that a Labour Government are absolutely not that gift, because if we look at Labour’s record in office we see house building fall to levels not seen since the 1920s. I would underline to him the work this Government have done: last year there were 222,000 new dwellings; only in one year in the last 31 have we seen a higher number. So it is a bit rich of the right hon. Gentleman to make those points when, for example, Labour has opposed and voted against our stamp duty cut for first time buyers, which is absolutely about making the difference for young buyers. The Labour party opposed that measure, which underlines that it is the Conservative party that has the ideas, the innovation and the energy, whereas the Labour party, frankly, offers none of that at all.

Grenfell: Government Response

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement. At the start of this, the week of the second anniversary of that truly terrible Grenfell Tower fire, above all else we remember the 72 men, women and children who lost their lives, and we rededicate ourselves to doing everything needed to ensure that such a fire can never happen again.

The Grenfell survivors and families who are with us today will draw little comfort or confidence from the Secretary of State’s update statement. He made no new announcement and offered no new action. Earlier, he and I both spoke at the two-year Grenfell memorial event, with you, Mr Speaker, in Speaker’s House. Those survivors from Grenfell United who are still campaigning for change told us today:

“We shouldn’t be here; we should be at home, rebuilding our lives”.

They said that in two years:

“Little has changed and justice still seems so far off”.

There has been over these two long years some progress, which we welcome and for which individual Members and Ministers, including the Secretary of State, deserve some credit, but a national disaster on the scale of Grenfell Tower requires a national response on the same scale from the Government. That has not happened.

Ministers have been frozen like rabbits in the headlights. Their action has been too slow and too weak on every front. There has been the failure to rehouse survivors, despite the promise that every victim of the fire would have a new permanent home within one year. There has been a failure to give justice to the Grenfell community: despite the first phase of the public inquiry first having been due to report at Easter last year, it has still not been published. There has been a failure to re-clad other dangerous high-rise blocks: despite 176 private blocks having been confirmed to have the same Grenfell-style ACM cladding, nine out of 10 have still not had it removed and replaced, and more than 70 of the block owners do not even have a plan to do the work. There also has been a failure to identify unsafe non-ACM cladding, despite the Government’s testing contract having set a completion deadline of November 2018. There has been a failure to overhaul building safety legislation, despite the final report of the Hackitt review having been published in May 2018.

Yesterday, there was the fire at Barking, where early reports point to serious problems: as at Grenfell, the De Pass Gardens residents raised safety concerns and were ignored; wood cladding was untreated for fire safety because the developer was not required to treat it; and the local council did not have the necessary powers to act to deal with this private development.

Will the Secretary of State now take up the five-point plan that Labour has published today to force the pace? If he does, he will have our full backing for such action. Will he name and shame the owners of blocks with dangerous cladding? Will he set a December deadline for the block owners to get work done? Will he update the sanctions available to councils under the Housing Act 2004 to include fines, followed by the takeover of blocks that still have dangerous cladding? Will he widen the Government’s testing regime to run full tests on all suspect non-ACM cladding? Will he bring in the long overdue overhaul of building safety legislation?

Finally, will the Secretary of State accept that only such tough action—only such far-reaching changes—will provide the proper legacy for those who perished at Grenfell Tower and that only such action and such changes will allow us all finally to say, with confidence, this can never happen again in our country?

[James Brokenshire]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution and for the important points he has made to the House this afternoon. Indeed, Mr Speaker, may I also thank you for allowing your State Rooms to be used this lunchtime to enable survivors, the bereaved and others to come together to share their very powerful and important experiences and to underline to us very clearly why this matters so much and why we must be resolute in the actions that we take?

The right hon. Gentleman also highlighted the work of so many who have campaigned on this matter. We note today the role of Grenfell United, and I appreciate and recognise the huge contribution that it has made. He is right to say that, no, its representatives should not be here. I commend them for the challenge and the very effective way in which they have underlined the needs of their community. I will certainly continue to work with them and bring about the change that I think is needed.

The right hon. Gentleman raised a number of important points. On rehousing, we remain deeply concerned about the three individuals—the three households—who are still in emergency accommodation. I can underline the fact that each household has a property reserved for it. Sensitivity is needed in undertaking this work, but we will continue to support and to challenge until all residents have a long-term home in place, because that is what matters to all of us, which is why the taskforce continues to challenge and to support us to ensure that that happens.

The right hon. Gentleman highlighted the issue of the remediation of ACM cladding as well. He will know well the frustration that I have had with the private sector, which has not done the job that it should have done. Some responsibility can be placed very firmly there, which is why we have provided an additional £200 million for the very purpose of speeding up the process so that blocks are remediated and made safe. Progress is certainly being made. If we look at the remediation in the social sector, we can see that good progress has been made there. At the end of April, remediation had started or been completed on 87% of the 158 social sector buildings, with plans in place for the remainder. We are obviously seeing some progress in relation to the private sector.

The right hon. Gentleman highlighted the issue of local authorities and their need to see that enforcement is in place. I agree with him. That is why we are backing local authorities to take enforcement action where building owners are refusing to remediate high-rise buildings with unsafe cladding. This will include financial support, where that is necessary, for the local authority to carry out emergency remedial works. Where emergency financial support is made available, the relevant local authority will recover the costs from the building owner. Of course, we want to see this work completed as rapidly as possible, and I understand his desire to see some form of hard stop—some sort of certainty in relation to this. I say to him that some of the required work is extensive and complicated, and, indeed, that other issues, or other areas of work, may be highlighted in respect of individual buildings, but it is right that we continue to press on and take action.

Let me underline the actions that we have taken. We launched a consultation last week on proposals to implement meaningful reform to our building safety and fire regulatory systems following the independent review led by Dame Judith Hackitt, with the intent to bring forward legislation later this year, in the next Session. We want to get this reform on to the statute book and make it happen. We have taken steps with the ban on combustible cladding. We have taken steps to see that action is advanced and that buildings are made safe, and, indeed, we have taken steps with the remediation programme that is in place. Yes, there is absolutely more work to be done, and I do not shrink from that. I do not shrink from the challenge presented by the right hon. Gentleman or others across the House. I assure him and the community of our resolute determination to make that change so that people can feel—and are—safe, and to provide that lasting legacy to all those who died in the fire.

Grenfell Tower Fire

John Healey Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

Today in this debate and over the next week, above all else we remember the 72 men, women and children who lost their lives that night in the terrible Grenfell Tower fire. We recognise the continued suffering of the survivors and bereaved families. We rededicate ourselves to seeing the survivors get the homes and other help they need; to bringing all those culpable to justice; and to putting in place every measure needed to make sure we can with confidence say that Grenfell can never happen again.

May I therefore congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) not only on securing today’s important Back-Bench debate but on the extraordinary way in which she has fought for her community over the past two years? She has done so again today, setting out the way in which the trauma and problems of that night continue for the survivors and for the community of north Kensington. Let us also pay tribute to that community—to the churches, faith groups, advice centres and residents associations—for their compassion and commitment to each other, not just in the immediate aftermath of the fire but in the two years since. We especially pay tribute to the Grenfell survivors and families, who, like Grenfell United, have turned their grief into their fight for justice and for wider change.

It is precisely the wider policy, procurement and political decisions of those in power that the residents and the communities affected by this tragedy want us to tackle. This was not a natural disaster; it was man-made. The hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) said:

“Grenfell should not have happened and it is a stain on this place that it did”.

May I add to that by saying that all of us in this House have a deep responsibility to make sure that it never happens again? Members on both sides in this debate caught the human side of the tragedy and of the aftermath. My hon. Friends the Members for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), both of whom have constituents who were caught and lived in the tower did so, as did the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), although I have to say that he lost Opposition Members when he started lauding the merits of universal credit as a humanised welfare system.

A series of powerful points made by Members on both sides of the House require action and answers from the Government, and we look to the Minister to provide them. The Chair of the extremely important Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), rightly said that the real problem concerns private block owners, where he said almost no progress has been made. He asked a series of important questions about the new £200 million fund for block owners and freeholders, which of course is not yet open for business. The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), whom I was interested to hear spoke as an ex-fire officer, said that sprinklers should become a “natural” thing in all our high-risk buildings. I say to him that it is not a lack of clarity that has led to the fact that they are not, but a lack of will and commitment from the Government to make sure that that happened. My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who also has experience as a serving fire officer, made the same strong argument about the value of fire sprinkler systems.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) asked why hotels have been excluded from the Government’s new ban on inflammable cladding and why action has been so slow on testing non-ACM cladding. That was echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, who rightly described the failure to do this systematically as negligent. He also called for an open-book approach to get to the root of what the problems really are in rehousing the Grenfell survivors.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) talked about the need for residents to have the right to complain about problems in their building and, in particular, about safety concerns—the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) picked up on that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), speaking with the backing of the Fire Brigades Union, rightly reminded the House of the vital role and bravery of firefighters. He made the important point about the impact of the past nine years of austerity, the cut in the number of frontline firefighters and the loss of one in four fire safety officers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) also cited FBU research, which concludes that at present our fire services are now unprepared for and potentially unable to tackle a fire on a similar scale—that really should worry the Minister.

We do not underestimate the Government’s challenge in responding to Grenfell. Some progress has certainly been made over these long two years, which we welcome and for which Ministers, including the current Secretary of State, deserve credit. There has been some Government procurement of new housing for survivors, and there is now a ban on combustible materials for new high-rise homes and funding for the cladding remediation on existing blocks. However, a national disaster on the scale of Grenfell Tower requires a national response from the Government—that has not happened. Ministers have been like rabbits in the headlights. For two years, the action they have taken has been too slow and too weak on every front. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North rightly set out for the House the background to this fire: the collapse in social house building, and rapidly rising homelessness. This wider context of the night, after seven years of a Conservative Government, is important, because it helps to explain why action from Ministers has fallen so far short.

Since 2010, Ministers have abolished the tenants’ regulator for social housing and National Tenant Voice; they funded just 1,000 new social homes in the year of the fire, when they also became the first Government since the second world war to stop all national funding to help build new social housing; and they have pursued a regulation policy of “one in, two out”, with the then housing Minister saying after the coroner’s report on the Lakanal House fire that on fire safety measures such as sprinklers it was

“not…for the Government to make a case for private industry around what they should be doing.”

When the far-reaching changes that are demanded in this country by the Grenfell tragedy must mean tougher safety regulations, stronger enforcement powers for councils, clearer legal duties for private block owners, and greater rights for tenants and for leaseholders, it is clear that the fundamental problem lies not in slow administrative decision making or in the lack of compassion from individual Ministers; it lies in the basic beliefs of the Conservative party in government about hands-off government, light-touch regulation and private sector market solutions.

So let me set out for the Minister where the Government are still failing and must do more, and I hope that he will be able to respond to these points.

First, there has been a failure to rehouse the survivors. Two years on, one in 12 of the families from the tower are still living in emergency or temporary accommodation, even though Ministers promised that every victim of the fire would be rehoused in a new home within one year. Will the Minister now give the House and those families his cast-iron assurance that every survivor will be in a permanent home by the two-year anniversary at the end of next week?

Secondly, there has been a failure to give the Grenfell community justice. Two years on, the public inquiry is moving too slow and its remit is too narrow. The first phase was due to report at Easter 2018, but it has still not been published. Will the Minister now confirm when it will report, when the crucial second phase of the inquiry will start, and when the inquiry will finish?

Thirdly, there has been a failure to re-clad blocks that have been confirmed to have the same dangerous Grenfell-style ACM cladding. Two years on, eight in 10—that is 272—of those high-rise blocks that are known to be clad in the same dangerous material have not had it removed and replaced. Seventy private block owners do not even have in place a plan to do the work. Will the Minister set a deadline by which all blocks that are known to have this dangerous cladding will be made safe?

Fourthly, there has been a failure to identify unsafe non-ACM cladding. Two years on, tests on hundreds of blocks with other types of potentially dangerous cladding are still not done, despite the Government’s testing contract having set a deadline for the work to have been completed by November 2018. Will the Minister now confirm, for thousands of high-rise residents, when he will publish the results, and that the tests will be comprehensive pass/fail tests and will cover all, not just some, types of non-ACM cladding?

Finally, there has been a failure to overhaul the building safety system, as many Members mentioned. The Hackitt review published its final report in May 2018, yet two years on the legislation is still not in place. Following the publication today of the post-Hackitt consultation paper, will the Minister now tell us when he will publish the legislation itself and when the Government will take the steps needed to keep buildings safe? Most importantly, when will the Government retrofit sprinklers in all social housing blocks, as Labour, the fire chiefs and the chairman of the all-party group on fire safety, the hon. Member for Southend West, have all long argued?

The Government have been too slow to grasp the depth and breadth of the problems that they need to fix, and then too slow to act. A few weeks after that terrible fire in June 2017, a leading housing chief executive said to me, “Grenfell changes everything.” It should have done, but it has not. I desperately want this to be the last anniversary of that terrible fire when the basic duties of Government are unfulfilled and when the necessary fundamental changes to our system are incomplete. Until then, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington said, we will return to this issue again. We will continue to press, with the Grenfell community, for justice and for the far-reaching changes that can guarantee that a tragedy like Grenfell can never happen again in our country.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

I commend the hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) for securing this important debate at a time when, as the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) pointed out, we are all reflecting on the terrible tragedy of Grenfell Tower and remembering the 72 people who tragically died at that time. Since I took up this role last year, doing right by the victims and survivors of the Grenfell Tower has been central to my work as Housing Minister. It has also been part of a personal mission, not least because the tower stands in what was my London Assembly constituency, with which I obviously have a personal connection. I recognise the strength of feeling on this issue from Members from all parties, and I am grateful for all their contributions. A number of complex questions have been raised, and I will attempt to address most of them in my remarks, but we will respond in writing to each Member whose questions are not covered.

I am quite happy to be held to account for our work on this issue. As the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne said, Grenfell does change everything, and I have made commitments, in private and in public, on the need for fundamental change as a fitting legacy to those who died. I am held to account in meetings with Grenfell United and with individual residents, and by the Select Committee, and I have been held to account by the House on a number of occasions. It is quite right that I am, because we need fundamental and swift change.

Questions from Members have fallen broadly into four areas, which I shall address specifically. First, several Members expressed concerns about the speed of the rehousing and resettlement of the bereaved survivors. The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne wishes to hold me to a guarantee on rehousing; I hope he appreciates that such are the complexities of the circumstances of some of the individuals concerned and of rehousing, that our ability to move swiftly for them is reliant on their own circumstances, wishes and desires. I have taken specific interest in individual cases, particularly those in emergency accommodation in hotels and serviced apartments, and reviewed them regularly with the council to satisfy myself that not only are those people being catered for but that we are being sensitive to their particular state and their own desires and requirements.

The fact remains that for the 201 households that needed rehousing, the council acquired more than 300 homes in and around the borough. Of those 201 households, I am pleased that they have all accepted offers of permanent or temporary homes, with 184 households now living in their new permanent accommodation and 14 households in good-quality temporary homes. We have had cases in which those in temporary accommodation have sought to have that accommodation converted into their permanent homes. I do, though, share Members’ concerns about the three households that remain in emergency accommodation, including the one household that remains in a hotel. As I said, it is essential that people move on only when the time is right for them. To make sure that an independent eye is kept on those particular circumstances, I requested that the independent Grenfell recovery taskforce continues to keep us apprised of the evolving situation and looks specifically at those three cases to satisfy itself that the council’s actions are proportionate and that those individuals are catered for appropriately.

It is fair to point out that it would be a mistake to think that people who are in emergency accommodation in a hotel or serviced apartment have been there throughout the whole two years. Such have been the circumstances of individuals and the trauma and difficulties that they have been coping with that some individuals have moved in and out of temporary accommodation. As I said, I hope that Members appreciate the complexity of the situation with which we are dealing. We are working in partnership with the community, the council and local health partners, and we remain determined to ensure that all the families who are recovering from this tragedy have the long-term support that they need to move on with their lives.

The hon. Member for Kensington raised the issue of the residents on the walkways. I remind her that all those residents were awarded an extra 900 points to push their priority upwards. Nevertheless, I recognise the situation they are in.

The second area of questions raised by several Members was on the environmental and health impacts. Public Health England has been monitoring air quality in the area since 2017. We have not taken the community’s concerns lightly and have carried out extensive testing to assess whether there is any ongoing risk to health. We will take all appropriate action to ensure that no risk is posed to residents. Of course, Professor Stec now serves on the Government’s scientific advisory group, to make sure that we all work together to find some kind of resolution or, indeed, to reassure the community that they have nothing to fear.

The NHS has stepped up health services and checks for the local community, committing more than £50 million over the next five years, including for increased trauma screening, fast-track referrals and long-term follow-up, if required. I thank the NHS for all its incredible work to support the long-term physical and mental health needs of the Grenfell community.

The third area that has been raised is, quite rightly, the speed of remediation. I can understand the anxiety, fear and insecurity that many people feel on this issue, not least because I have met, on a number of occasions, people who live in these buildings and representatives of the UK Cladding Action Group. In the time since the fire, this Government have acted with the utmost urgency to address the most serious fire and public safety risks that the tragedy so ruthlessly exposed. With the support of local authorities and fire and rescue services, we identified a total of 433 high-rise residential buildings, hotels, hospitals and schools with unsafe ACM cladding. These buildings were assessed by fire and rescue services, and interim safety measures were put in place.

We have amended the law explicitly to ban combustible materials from use in the exterior walls of all high-rise residential buildings, but I recognise that residents across the country will truly have peace of mind only when unsafe cladding has been removed and replaced with safe materials. We have made £400 million available to pay for the remediation of ACM cladding for those buildings owned by local authorities and housing associations, and that work is almost complete, with 87% of buildings done. We have allocated £259 million of that £400 million to 140 buildings. We do not anticipate that there will be any further claims, but if there are, they will be honoured. We gave owners of buildings in the private sector enough time to step up and meet their responsibilities, and many did, but I regret that some did not. Last month, the Government acted decisively, providing a fund to unblock progress and ensure that remediation takes place on all buildings that need it. That fund stands at £200 million. We estimate that 153 blocks will be eligible. I was quite rightly pressed about detailed criteria, and we will be issuing the application process and what those criteria will be as soon as possible. There was a question from a Member whom I cannot recall about whether buildings that have already been remediated in the sector could seek to recover costs.

[John Healey]

It was my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Kit Malthouse]

Yes, indeed, and that is the case.

Although I understand the concerns about the speed of the remediation, I hope that Members will be aware that this work requires significant amounts of engineering and construction work, which will necessarily take time. On numbers, at the end of April, of the 175 residential buildings, 15%, or 27, have finished or started their remediation, and a further 116, or 66%, have plans in place. I have asked the Department to report to me as soon as possible on what a timetable might look like to ensure that we can reach completion of that programme within a reasonable length of time. I hope that Members will appreciate that, while there is a requirement or a desire to press me for an end point, it is more complicated than just fixing a date and time, because there are obviously capacity issues. There are planning and engineering issues that need to be taken into account, but I would like to get to that place in pretty short order. The money has only just been provided, and what I would like to get to in pretty short order is a sense of what the industry is capable of achieving and some benchmarks for performance that we can hold it to.

A number of Members also asked about the testing regime for other materials and that work is now under way. We hope that that will be completed before the summer, and that we can publish the results shortly thereafter. As I have said in previous debates in this House, we have a commitment and a strong imperative to investigate the materials that are being used in these circumstances in a systematic and methodical way. Although there is a range of cladding products, they are used in a range of circumstances and in combination with a range of other materials. That matrix of possibilities creates many dozens of combinations that will need to be assessed over time. We have to start with the cladding itself, and, as I have said, that testing is under way at the Building Research Establishment, and we should be able to publish results soon.

The fourth area of work is obviously the building safety programme itself. After the tragedy at Grenfell, it became obvious that things had to change around building safety and change very significantly. The Government responded quickly with the Hackitt review, and it has given us an important root and branch look at building safety. We have been vociferous in calling for a culture change across the industry and backed it with serious action. We have consulted on a clarified version of Approved Document B and issued a call for evidence as the first step towards a technical review. As part of that review—a number of Members raised the issue of sprinklers—we obviously can review the requirement for sprinklers in buildings.

We have also established an industry early adopters group made up of key players in the construction and housing sector who have just this morning launched a new building safety charter calling for all of industry to commit to putting safety first.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Dent Coad]

I thank the Minister and all hon. Members for their insightful and detailed comments. I particularly pay tribute to the work that has come out of the all-party parliamentary groups and Select Committees, including the all-party parliamentary fire safety rescue group, of which I am vice-chair. But when will all these recommendations and all this good work be implemented? I just see more delay.

[John Healey]

In due course.

[Emma Dent Coad]

Yes, in due course.

As we have seen recently in the press, Kensington and Chelsea Council behaved like a property developer instead of looking after the residential buildings it already owned. With no governmental oversight, it used our money for its own purposes, building a property portfolio to squeeze out social tenants in Kensington and Chelsea—that was actually openly admitted in council. I am sad to say that, despite protestations, the council continues with much of this agenda under a guise of improvement. For example, part of its new council house building programme includes fully private luxury flats. I really hope that the taskforce, which I have been working with quite closely, will report on that in its first report, and I hope we get a really robust response because the council is still failing people. It seems that the council is also determined to end the Grenfell recovery scrutiny committee when it is doing very good work and there is still a great deal of recovery left to be done.

There are various other issues that I hope the taskforce will look at. Our beloved Wornington College is still under threat. The council bought it without any reference to council taxpayers, let alone local councillors. Some £28 million of taxpayers’ money was thrown at a business venture intended for private housing. Where do we expect our young people to get education and training to get them into work, off the streets and out of trouble—something that this damaged community needs now more than ever?

I have said many times, and I will say it again, that if and when the Government regulate, and the council steps up and treats our people with compassion and justice as they would their own family, I will gladly shout it from the rooftops. It is not too late to bring in commissioners to take over the council. We all know very well that if it had been a Labour council that had failed so catastrophically, that would have happened a long time ago, and I would have applauded the Government for that. Until we see that progress, I will continue to berate the council for the duplicity and at times blatant lies—provable—of those who should be held accountable, for the perpetrators of ongoing failure and for those who deny the failure of the system after two years. I will berate those who are complicit through inaction for the incompetence, cover-ups and refusal to make the clear decisions we need to keep people safe in their beds.

We in this House need to view this issue as a far higher priority and with more urgency. I would not wish the horror of Grenfell to happen to anybody else. I plead with the Minister not to wait for another anniversary to announce any kind of progress. We need action, not further consultations.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the response to the Grenfell Tower fire.

Buildings with ACM Cladding

John Healey Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. His announcement is welcome and needed; most important, it should start to relieve the worry of the thousands of people who live day and night in a high-rise block that they know is unsafe. But why on earth have they had to wait for nearly two years? For two years they have had their lives on hold. How long will the thousands more who live in tower blocks with suspect non-ACM cladding have to wait for Government action?

Like the Secretary of State, I pay tribute to those who, with Labour, have campaigned hard for the Government to act: Grenfell United, the UK Cladding Action Group, the Manchester Cladiators, Inside Housing and hon. Members on both sides of the House. But after the solemn pledges made by the Prime Minister and other Ministers in the aftermath of the terrible Grenfell Tower fire, who would have thought that nearly two years later there would still be Grenfell residents in hotels and temporary accommodation, not permanent homes; that Grenfell-type cladding would still not have been replaced in almost eight in 10 blocks; that in over half of them, no work would have started at all; and that no comprehensive testing programme would have been done on the estimated 1,700 high-rise or high-risk buildings with dangerous non-ACM cladding? The Secretary of State says that the Government acted urgently. The sorry truth is that in the face of these post-Grenfell problems, the Government have been frozen like a rabbit in the headlights—too weak and too slow to act at every stage and on every front.

On the detail of the Secretary of State’s announcement, is the £200 million new money from the Treasury to his Department, or will it be taken from other housing programmes? Is the fund simply a bail-out for block owners and developers who will not do their duty to replace dangerous cladding? How will he ensure that they pursue liability claims and repay the public purse? Will he consider emergency legislation to make block owners actually do this work and pay for it?

Is the fund enough? Per block, it seems to be only half the funding announced last year for the social sector. The Secretary of State says that the fund will cover the costs for 170 privately owned blocks that have Grenfell-style ACM cladding. Will he fund the costs for other blocks that are found to have similarly dangerous non-ACM cladding?

I have to tell the Secretary of State that warm words and fresh funding will mean very little to worried residents unless they know that the dangerous cladding on all blocks will be removed and replaced, and that as leaseholders they will not pick up the bill. Will he now set a hard deadline for that work, so that every block and every resident can be made safe?

Housing

John Healey Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I am constantly asked what targets might be for particular types of housing.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

12,500.

[Kit Malthouse]

Well, 12,500 is the minimum amount that is due to come out of the affordable homes programme. We hope and believe that the aspiration may be more, not least because we have taken the cap off the housing revenue account. It is therefore up to the ambition of councils whether they do this. As the Chairman of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), knows, I would love to sit in my office in Whitehall and plan the country—the Malthouse period of planning. I could plan in his constituency, as I could in mine, and decree what all these targets might be. However, as he knows, there are numerous housing markets in the UK —there are probably 30 or 40 in the capital alone—and they all operate in a different way, with lots of variable sites that all have their own issues and problems that need to be dealt with, so we are setting a standard target across the country as an aspiration. However, by setting councils free to build a new generation of social homes and investing enormous amounts of money in the affordable homes programme, which can also be for social homes, we hope and believe that that tenure will advance and increase to play its part in the 300,000 homes that are, we hope, coming in the years ahead.

I am mindful that, with such a dramatic increase in supply, the more we build, the more important it is that we get it right. That is why we are focused on building better. A key part of that is communities having a bigger role in shaping the future of the places they call home. We are making changes to our planning system, and in particular the planning rule book, so that they can do this. We are providing greater clarity and certainty for developers and communities alike, by giving local areas more options and the freedom and flexibility to make effective use of the land they have. That is crucial if we are to reassure communities that promises made on the provision of affordable housing and infrastructure will be promises kept. Keeping promises is the only way to ensure that communities will continue to have faith in new developments.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I am glad that so many Members are keen to speak in the debate, which has been delayed for too long and is unfortunately too short. It has been almost a year since we had a housing debate in Government time. The Secretary of State told us in December:

“Housing remains the Government’s top priority”.—[Official Report, 10 December 2018; Vol. 651, c. 18.]

It is a pity that he has not made it the top priority in his diary today.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Healey]

No.

It is good to see the Housing Minister speaking for the Government today. He not only told the House that housing was the Government’s chief domestic priority, but told an industry conference in February that

“once we get beyond Brexit, housing will be the Government’s priority.”

Given the mess that the Government have made of Brexit for more than two years, and given that the Prime Minister is in Europe today begging for an extension just so that we can move on to the next stage of the negotiations, that bodes badly for the Government’s future focus on housing. I have to say to the Minister that Brexit is a very feeble alibi for a totally non-Brexit Department with six Ministers and 2,000 civil servants.

I enjoyed the Minister’s speech, but the story that he tries to tell is so at odds with the experience of millions of people up and down the country that he and his colleagues risk sounding complacent. They risk sounding as if they just do not get it. They do not get the public’s anger and frustrated hopes of a housing market that they feel is rigged against them. They do not get the despair at being one in a million on council housing waiting lists when the number of new homes for social rent built last year was just 6,453. They do not get the lives blighted by bad housing—children growing up in temporary accommodation hostels, renters too scared to ask landlords to do repairs, young couples stripped of the hope of home ownership and prevented from starting a family or putting down roots—and they do not get the fact that a systematically broken housing market demands wholesale change and cannot be fixed without big action from Government.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Is the current situation not ridiculous? In Hartlepool, for instance, we have in-house poverty. There are people who have lived behind boarded-up windows for more than a year, just because they are scared of raising the issue with the local authority or their landlords.

[John Healey]

Unfortunately, although there are good landlords and many tenants are satisfied with the homes that they rent, my hon. Friend has described the experience that too many of the country’s now 11 million renters face from day to day. After nine years in office, the Government just cannot carry on talking about what they are going to do. What they are doing at the moment simply is not working.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned nine years, and what we are going to do. Does he not accept that the number of housing starts is roughly 100% higher than it was at the lowest point under a Labour Government in 2009? If he is not sure about that, he need only speak to any brickie, chippy or sparky. They will tell him that they are a lot busier than they were back then.

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman has a very short memory. In 2009 we were in the direct aftermath of a global financial crisis and recession. It was the action that the Government took then that kept house building going and helped to pull the country out of the crisis. More than a decade on, under this Government, the level of house building has still not reached the pre-crisis peak. We have seen a pitiful performance over the past nine years. The public have lost patience with a Government who, nine years on, try to blame their Labour predecessors.

The Government’s record is now very clear. The rate of home ownership is lower, with almost 900,000 fewer under-45s owning a home now than in 2010. The level of homelessness is higher: the number of people sleeping rough on our streets has more than doubled since 2010. Private rents are higher, with the average tenant paying £1,900 more than in 2010. The rate of social house building is lower, and in the last two years it has been the lowest since the second world war. Let me say this to the Minister. If the Government had only continued to build homes for social rent at the same rate as Labour did in 2009, there would be 180,000 more of those homes—more than enough to house every family in temporary accommodation, every person sleeping rough on our streets, and every resident in every hostel for the homeless.

The Minister said, in response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), “We are very close to completing the rehousing of everybody who was involved in the Grenfell Tower fire”. I have to say that, nearly two years on from that shocking national tragedy, the Government’s action is still on go-slow. He would not give the House the figures, but one in 10 of the residents from the tower and one in three of the residents from the wider estate who were involved in the fire still do not have a permanent new home. Eight in 10 residents of other high-rise blocks across the country that are covered in Grenfell-style cladding have still not had it removed and replaced. Those are residents in 354 high-rise blocks across the country, nearly two years on from the fire.

[Kit Malthouse]

I want to correct the right hon. Gentleman on the rehousing numbers for Grenfell, not least because I hope he would never seek to use it as a political football. We are putting enormous efforts into rehousing residents. Of the 202 households from Grenfell Tower and Grenfell Walk that required rehousing, every one has accepted an offer of either high-quality temporary accommodation or permanent accommodation, 196 have moved in, 181 have moved into their permanent home, and 15 remain in temporary accommodation. Six house- holds remain in emergency accommodation—two in hotels, three in serviced apartments, and one living with family or friends. There is a constant and ongoing conversation with those people about their needs and requirements. We are taking this very slowly and sensitively. We cannot compel anyone to do anything. We are working closely with them to try to ensure that they get the homes they need. It is unfair of the right hon. Gentleman to try to make out that we are being dilatory in that effort.

[John Healey]

The Minister does himself, the Government and the Grenfell survivors a disservice when the story he tries to tell with those figures is so at odds with the experience of the people affected by the fire.

[Catherine West]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a fundamental imbalance when the Persimmons of this world are gaining all the benefits of being involved in the housing market, while tenants in places such as Grenfell are getting a really rough deal?

[John Healey]

It is the most obvious sign of a broken market, when house builders are making bumper profits and bumper bonuses building homes that ordinary workers cannot afford to buy. These are the fundamental facts. These are the hard truths about the Conservatives’ record on housing, which Ministers cannot deny or disguise, and which, come the next election, the Conservative party will not be able to dodge.

Given that record over nine years, it is little wonder that, when asked, three in four people say that they believe the country has a housing crisis. They are right, of course. Everybody knows someone who cannot get the home they need or desire. They say that the crisis is getting worse, not better, and they are right. Even many Conservatives have lost faith in the free market fundamentalism about housing, because it is failing on all fronts. That is why the Conservatives have been losing the argument and have been forced to cede ground to Labour, from legislating to outlaw letting fees, to banning combustible cladding on high-rise blocks and lifting the cap on council borrowing to build new homes.

However, those are baby steps. The biggest roadblock to the radical changes needed to fix the housing crisis for millions of people is the Conservative party itself. It is largely the same ideologically inflexible Conservative culprits who are making the Prime Minister’s life so difficult over Brexit who will not countenance the Government action that is needed to deal with the other big challenges our country faces: social care, falling real wages, deep regional divides and, of course, housing. So after nine years, we must conclude that the Conservatives in government cannot fix the housing crisis, and that it will fall to a Labour Government to do that.

Here is the plan. We will build 1 million genuinely affordable homes over 10 years, the majority of which will be for social rent, with the biggest council house building programme in this country for nearly 40 years. We will reset grants for affordable housing to at least £4 billion a year. We will scrap the Conservatives’ so-called affordable rent and establish a new Labour definition linked to local incomes and not to the market. We will stop the huge haemorrhage of social rented homes by halting the right to buy and ending the Government’s forced conversions to affordable rent.

We will end rough sleeping within five years, with 8,000 new homes available to those with a history of rough sleeping and a £100 million programme for emergency winter accommodation to help to prevent people from dying on our streets. We will legislate so that renters have new rights: to indefinite tenancies; to new minimum standards; to controls on rents; and to tougher enforcement. We will give young people on ordinary incomes the home ownership hope that they deserve, with first-buy homes, with mortgage costs linked to a third of local incomes and with first dibs on new homes in their area.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am sure this is already on my right hon. Friend’s radar, but disability groups in Bristol are worried about the shortage of accessible homes in the UK. They say that something like 1.8 million households require some sort of adaptation or the addition of access features to their homes, but very few of them get that at the moment. Is it part of the future Labour Government’s plan to build more accessible homes?

[John Healey]

It is indeed, and if my hon. Friend looks at the big Green Paper plan that Labour has published, “Housing for the Many”, she will see that we talk not only about building more but about building better. We talk about doing what the public sector has often done in the past—namely, building to better standards. We want these to be the highest standards of design, accessibility, energy efficiency and high tech, so that in future, Labour’s affordable homes will become people’s best choice, not their last resort. Finally, we will create a fully fledged new Department for Housing, both to reflect the scale of the crisis and to drive our national new deal on housing. This will be Labour’s long-term plan for housing that will help to fix our country’s housing crisis. Where this Government have failed, a Labour Government will bring in the radical change that so many millions of people now want and need.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[John Healey]

We were speaking about that three years ago.

[Mrs Wheeler]

That is why it is important that it is coming through. The important thing here is that the guidance is coming through now, and there has been great respect for that, which I am very pleased about.

I am appalled at the way in which issues are turned into political footballs. There is no stronger Department in trying to deal with such issues one by one, in a logical way, so that nobody ends up sleeping rough or dying on our streets. The important thing is that the Government totally get this. We are spending an awful lot of money to change things around, because that is what is important. People out there realise that changes are being made in the private rented sector, changes are being made for tenants, and changes are being made to professionalise the professional services—the letting agents and managing agents. Leasehold changes are on the way. There are all sorts of things in our country that are wrong; they need to change, and it is this Government who are going to change them.

I am delighted that our ministerial team is on the case, looking at how many houses we need to build in the year; looking at giving councils the freedoms to build more council houses; encouraging social housing to grow; encouraging first-time buyers; encouraging veterans to get on the housing ladder once they leave the armed forces; making sure that veterans are not sleeping rough and that they get the help they need; and looking after people in Scotland, where there are innovative ideas—I looked at rough sleeping issues and Housing First in Glasgow. All these ideas are very important to the Government; no one should be left under any illusion about the fact that only the Government are making the changes that will get these things right.

People’s lives are at risk. People’s happiness is at risk. We want to make sure that fairness is sorted out for the future. I pay huge tribute to the teams of civil servants that are going round the country making sure that people get the help they need. In Medway and Cornwall, there has been a 40% reduction in rough sleepers. These are huge changes, and I am very proud of what the Government are doing.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about viability assessments, which we addressed through the national planning policy framework—effectively the high-level planning guidebook —to provide greater certainty for councils and developers. Such assessments can slow the delivery of housing, which is why we took steps within the NPPF.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

Two years ago, the Prime Minister at long last admitted that

“we simply have not given enough attention to social housing”.—[Official Report, 22 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 169.]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that, since the Prime Minister’s admission, his Government have recorded the two worst years for social house building in the 74 years since the second world war?

[James Brokenshire]

What I can confirm is that we have delivered more affordable homes over the past eight years of this Government when compared with the last eight years of the previous Labour Government. Indeed, 407,000 affordable homes have been delivered since 2010, which is 40,000 more than the comparable period under the previous Labour Government.

[John Healey]

What the Secretary of State is doing is not working, which is why we have a housing crisis. One thing that he did not confirm is the hard fact that social house building has hit a record low under this Government’s watch. He told me recently that he has committed to funding only 12,500 new social rented homes over the six years to 2022, which will not even replace the homes lost through sales in the last year alone. This Government are failing on all fronts; we have a crisis with Brexit and a crisis with housing. When will the Government get serious about building the social rented homes that this country needs?

[James Brokenshire]

I can say categorically that this Government are serious about building the homes our country needs. Indeed, that is we why we have committed funding to housing associations and given councils the flexibility to borrow to build. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman when he seeks to compare this Government’s ambition with that of the previous Labour Government. This Government have lifted the cap on council borrowing, and the number of local authority dwellings built under eight years of a Conservative-led Government is over four times the number built under the 13 years of the Labour Government.