Fire Safety Bill

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christian Wakeford]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Unfortunately, I think there cannot be a guarantee. A lot of the developers may no longer exist and insurance schemes may no longer be applicable. There will be gaps, and we do have to be responsible. Although his amendment is very well intentioned, and I am incredibly sympathetic towards it, there are gaps in it, and that is why, unfortunately, I will not be able to join him in the Lobby today, although I very much applaud the sentiment of it and the work he has put into it.

Leaseholders, building owners and taxpayers deserve a solid legislative base. That is what we are trying to do today by making sure that our properties and our leaseholders are safe. That is why we need to focus on those who are most likely to be affected. I do not want to see the Bill’s implementation frustrated. It has already taken far too long to get to this point, and we need to ensure that we can proceed.

As has been said many times, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) and the Minister, we have a duty: do we get this right, or do we do it quick? From my perspective, we need to get it right. Far too many people have fallen through the gaps, are struggling and are unable to afford this, so it is right that we take a fully reasoned approach, speaking to experts and to all trade bodies to ensure that we get it right. That is what I urge Ministers, the Treasury and everyone else to continue to do. I finish by thanking all Members for bringing forward some of these amendments. They do not quite deal with the Bill at hand. That is why I will not be able to support them and will be backing the Government today.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab) [V]]

I am speaking in utter frustration, having heard many of the comments so far in the debate today, I am speaking in support of the amendments tabled by the Opposition and by the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith), and I am speaking on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of leaseholders, including in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields, who are staring down the barrel of this scandal. And I thank the cladding action campaigners across the country.

I welcome the Bill, but it is too small and too slow. There is frustration across the House of Commons today. We can do this right and do it faster, and we must. Today, we had another statement of support for leaseholders from the Minister, who said that he agrees with the intent to give leaseholders peace of mind and financial certainty, yet the Government did not write that into the Bill and are not supporting the amendments. No leaseholders of buildings of any height should be made to foot a bill of thousands of pounds that they cannot afford.

At the sharp end of the failings of this Bill are millions of leaseholders trapped in unsafe homes who are suffering enormous stress, anxiety and emotional anguish, and who feel totally abandoned. I have met many of them in my constituency. Their lives are on pause and might be for years. This is what some have told me. One said:

“As every day, week or month goes by, our financial liability and stability become ever more disturbing and deeply troubling. When will it end?

Another resident, who bought her flat using money inherited from her mother’s passing, said to me:

“Despite my emotional attachment to my flat, current circumstances make me almost wish that I had never bought it. It is a burden and a hindrance to me moving forward with the next stage of my life, at a prime time when I want to start a family.”

Another resident, a victim of domestic violence, has been trying to sell her property to raise money for legal fees. She has had to receive food parcels due to lost income during the pandemic. Her insurance premiums have now increased by 500%. Under no circumstances should leaseholders, regardless of the height of their building, have to pay for cladding remediation costs that are the fault of developers and a failed regulatory system. Funding should be based on fire risk, not on height. It should include upfront costs—it should not be loans—for all leaseholders and it should include other fire safety issues. Some Putney leaseholders face up to £100,000 in charges.

At the current pace of spend, the building safety fund, which has only approved 12 applications, will only approve all the applications—the 532 applications—by 2031. The pace of change is far too slow, so I urge colleagues on both sides of the House: please do the right thing today, back the British people and make sure that lease- holders do not pay.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) [V]]

One of the lessons from the Grenfell tragedy was that a number of companies in the construction sector had been recklessly gaming the system, resulting in unsafe materials being used. But crucially, construction and post-occupancy inspections did not pick up those risks.

As someone who worked in oil and gas and then in construction over several years, I can see the very different approach taken by the two sectors. Many of our constituents who live in leasehold flats face significant costs, such as waking watch costs and several other fire risk liabilities not related to cladding. The new £30 million waking watch relief fund, the £1.6 billion remediation funding and the commitment to recruit hundreds of specialist risk assessors and specialist workers show that this Government are committed to resolving the problem and to supporting people stranded in their property through no fault of their own.

I wish to raise issues brought to me by a constituent. At present, buildings over 18 metres will have all cladding remedial work paid for by the Government. Those in buildings between 11 metres and 18 metres will be offered a loan, with residents in buildings lower than 11 metres receiving no financial support at all, the latter being the situation my constituent’s daughter finds herself in. Although it is right to target remediation first at highest-risk buildings, there is a question of fairness as to who pays if a person happens to have purchased a building that is not as tall.

In addition to the removal of cladding, inspections have highlighted further building faults, such as missing firebreaks, wooden balconies and combustible insulation. The repair costs alone could be in excess of £25,000 per flat. There is no provision for support with these repairs, which will be required before a fire safety certificate can be issued, allowing the resident to eventually sell their home. They would not have been privy to these liabilities as the conveyancing process would not have highlighted the possibility of these risks existing at point of purchase. Risk awareness at the conveyancing stage is something that I raised in my ten-minute rule Bill.

Fire safety officers should not only be competent by the certifications that they hold; they should be present and responsible for sign-off on site at all key stages. While the amendments before us were tabled with good intentions, we cannot delay the Bill any longer. I hope that Ministers will consider a post-construction and occupancy model for fire safety, much as gas and electrical checks are carried out, to pick up on changes to the fabric of a building that could be made over time.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 19th October 2020 Commons Chamber

The Home Office has said that late application cases will be considered on their individual merits, that it will take a pragmatic approach and that guidance for case- workers will be published to ensure that cases are considered consistently. The situation might be in the forefront of our minds now, and those of Home Office caseworkers, but might not be in 10 years’ time, so I urge the Home Office to ensure that the guidance actually details that, in the case of looked-after children and care leavers, if the necessary EU settlement scheme paperwork has not been lodged at the appropriate time by a social worker or local authority, those are reasonable grounds and, as such, the late application will be accepted.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am honoured to speak in this important debate in support of the Lords amendments, particularly Lords amendments 4 and 5, which are reasonable amendments that were supported by great majorities in the Lords. Amendment 5 provides an option of providing physical proof of immigration status under the EU settlement scheme to prevent disenfranchisement of EU citizens.

In Wandsworth, there are 41,000 EU nationals, which is 13% of my constituents, so this is a big issue for my constituents in Putney. Two of those constituents, who have lived in the UK for 30 years, are French citizens and classical musicians with settled status in this country. They have written to me and said: “We are very concerned by the fact that we have no physical way of proving our status when we come back from holidays or trips abroad, and we are afraid that at any moment a similar situation to the Windrush population might happen to Europeans who’ve settled in this country.”

Moreover, Citizens Advice Wandsworth workers who support EU citizens are concerned about that aspect of the Bill. Access to proof of settled status requires digital skills, access to the internet and a suitable device. Time and again, they have seen that vulnerable people find it difficult or impossible to view or prove their status. That means that they are unable to prove their rights in the UK when they are seeking job opportunities, finding a place to live or even getting treatment in hospital. They find that they are discriminated against in those circumstances because they cannot have the physical documentation that they need to prove their status. That cannot be right.

Lords amendment 4 allows unaccompanied children and vulnerable adults to claim asylum in the care and context of their family, which will prevent dangerous journeys from being taken to join them. I have been to the camps in Calais—they were not really camps; they were a lot of bushes in an area near Calais—and I have seen the traffickers circling the area. I know that if any of my children were in that camp and their siblings were just across the channel waiting and able to protect them, I would do everything I could to reunite my family members. To narrow it down to just parents is not fair when many have lost their parents—that is why they fled their country and why we can rescue those children and show compassion.

On 20 December last year, the Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and stated that the Government were “absolutely committed” to continuing family reunion. A Home Office statement on 15 January used exactly the same language, saying it was

“absolutely committed to the family reunion of refugee families”.

There has been commitment after commitment to family reunion, yet it is not in a good enough state in the Bill. That will leave children such as Lili, who fled Eritrea and was found by Safe Passage on the streets of Rome, in a highly vulnerable situation, instead of being reunited with her brother as she was. She wants to be a computer engineer. That is compassion—to allow those children to be here.

To conclude, unless we act tonight, 2021 will be the year in which child refugees in Europe lose the only safe legal route to sanctuary in the UK. Voting against this amendment would be quite wrong. I urge Members on both sides of the House—we have heard good arguments from Members on both sides for this—to think of children such as Lili, do the right thing and vote for Lords amendment 4. It is time to show our British values of compassion and justice, and to deliver for refugee children.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

I have been pleased to support this Bill throughout its passage, particularly for its two primary aims of ending free movement of labour and introducing a points-based system. I wish to focus mostly on Lords amendment 1 and social care. As has been discussed, the amendment would require the Government to publish a report on the impact of ending free movement of labour on the social care sector. I spoke on Second Reading and served on the Bill Committee, and at every stage of my involvement in this Bill I have heard Opposition Member after Opposition Member try to claim that in some way the only way to fix labour shortages in the UK is by immigration. I simply do not agree with that analysis. In the Committee stage, we heard from Brian Bell, the MAC’s interim chair, that only 5% of social care workers come from EU migration. In constituencies such as mine, unemployment is standing at 10.5%. Are the Opposition genuinely trying to say that these jobs in the social care sector are not ones that more than 6,000 people in my constituency can have and that they are out of reach for my constituents? I do not agree.

Immigration plays a very important role in managing labour markets, but it does not solve all the problems all the time. The Government are tackling this issue of social care head on; we have seen the investment of £1.5 billion in adult and children’s social care, along with a national recruitment campaign for the sector. I absolutely support those two things. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), made a fair point about the MAC suggestion about pay. Every Conservative Member stood on a manifesto that pledged to look at social care and, importantly, at a way of redesigning it so that it is fairer for those who are cared for, their families and carers too. That is very important, and it is incumbent on all of us that we come to some kind of consensus across this House on that system. In the same way as we see a consensus on the NHS, we need to come to one on social care.

On the NHS, there will be times, including now, when there are gaps in the labour market, which is why I am pleased that the Bill contains provision for the health and care visa, which will be available for people to use to come to this country to work in the NHS. That is very important.

I conclude by saying that I am happy to support this Bill and will be voting to reject the Lords amendments, because I will be fulfilling my promise to my constituents to end free movement of labour, to introduce a points-based system and to deliver on a firm but fairer immigration system for this country.

Channel Crossings in Small Boats

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

In the last 18 months, about 185 people have been physically returned. There are getting on for a further 1,000 people whose cases we are currently progressing where there is evidence of a previous asylum claim, and therefore, under the Dublin regulations, they are liable to be returned. That work is continuing at pace. A number of flights have been booked in the coming days and weeks to do exactly what my hon. Friend quite rightly calls for.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

There are still 6,000 children in makeshift camps in the EU. In the time it took for the Home Office to process the 480 spaces—only 480—that it committed to under the Dubs scheme, hundreds of those young people have gone missing. In another life, they could be my children. With the Dubs scheme now formally closed, what steps is the Minister taking to protect vulnerable children such as the ones in those camps who seek refuge from war, torture and persecution?

[Chris Philp]

I have already pointed out that last year we received 3,500 asylum applications from unaccompanied children—the highest number of any European country. That is our contribution to the European effort to look after children—more than any other country. I call upon the other European countries operating the camps that the hon. Lady describes to show the same compassion and attention that we do when we look after UASCs in this country.

Fire Safety Bill

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 29th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab) [V]]

I fully support the broad purposes of this Bill. Any Bill that takes us a step closer to righting the wrongs of Grenfell tower gets my full support, and my thoughts are also with those who died in Grenfell and with those injured and all the families, friends, survivors and firefighters.

Greater powers and meaningful sanctions to ensure that residents are safe in their homes are welcome. However, this Bill is a huge missed opportunity to address a big issue in my constituency and around the country: that of leaseholders being made to pay for the cost of the unsafe cladding still on their buildings. It is too long to wait for the building safety Bill, and the deadline for the removal of all unsafe cladding in private blocks by June 2020, set by the Government, will clearly not be met. In the meantime, thousands of people are left in limbo because of the cladding crisis.

The Swish building and Riverside Quarter in Putney are two examples. They have 66 and 200 flats respectively, and their cladding is a mixture of the Grenfell-type ACM and HPL. Leaseholders have been told by their freeholder that the cladding and other fire safety measures in their building do not meet the standard now regarded by the Government as adequate to obtain a fire safety certificate. For a fire safety certificate to be issued, the building will need to be re-clad. Without the certificate, leaseholders cannot sell, and they have to pay for an expensive nightly waking watch, which costs about £100,000 a year. They are being told they need to foot the bill for the re-cladding, which they are told could be between £50,000 and £80,000 per flat.

It is simply unfair to make leaseholders foot the bill. They are not multimillionaire landlords, but normal people—many of them retired—trying to live their lives, which have been made even more difficult by the current crisis. They do not have a spare £50,000 lying around or the means to get it. The emotional toll is enormous, which is why the matter needs to be addressed urgently, so it is disappointing not to see that in this Bill. The situation has left leaseholders in complete limbo, as has been mentioned by other Members, and facing an uncertain future. Mortgage lenders will not issue mortgages for homes without a fire safety certificate, so people are stuck. One resident, who has been unemployed for over a year, told me:

“The net result for me is that I will lose my home”.

Another said:

“We now face financial ruin as a direct result of the Government’s retrospective change to fire safety regulation.”

Another resident said that their flat is

“unsaleable and therefore effectively worthless… We cannot afford to pay a sum of this size.”

The Bill offers nothing for leaseholders at the Riverside, Swish or in other similar tower blocks. While I appreciate that the building safety Bill is coming, this Bill could provide the measures that the cladding crisis victims need. In particular, I would like a commitment to adequate Government funding for cladding remediation work or to ensure that freeholders foot the Bill, as they, not the leaseholders, will be the ones who benefit from building improvements. The additional funding announced in the Budget is welcome, but it is also too hard to claim. Only two buildings have made claims from the existing £200 million private property fund. Ministers must take more responsibility.

I would also like local government reimbursement. To ensure that the legislation is successful in protecting lives, national Government must make sure that local government and other fire authorities are reimbursed for any additional costs arising out of the operational changes mandated by this Bill. Our already underfunded local authorities must be given extra capacity to make homes safe.

We also need greater clarity on the non-ACM cladding that is deemed unsafe. There is huge confusion about which cladding is safe or unsafe. Are people living in really dangerous buildings or not? Confusion reigns, and the Bill needs to address that.

In conclusion, we are approaching the third anniversary of the Grenfell tower disaster, and so many questions remain unanswered. This Bill fails to address them and will disappoint thousands. I welcome the Government’s work on cladding so far, but so much more needs to be done.

Asylum Decisions (Support for Refugees)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) on securing this important debate. I am delighted to be able to contribute and stand up for the women, children and families whom I have supported recently. Up to December, I was running a refugee support project called Love to Learn in the borough of Wandsworth. I pay tribute to everyone working in the team and also to other local organisations: CARAS, the South London Refugee Association and Wandsworth Welcomes Refugees. I want to talk about community services and widen the debate to consider other ways in which we can support those who have been granted refugee status, but need more support to be able to live here.

First, let us consider housing support for young people leaving care. Asylum seekers might have come here unaccompanied. When they leave care, they often fall into what has been described to me, by someone who came recently from Eritrea, as a dark hole. As was mentioned earlier, a cash grant is needed for the essentials in the accommodation that they might be provided with, from the most basic things such as sheets and a duvet to a cooker. I have had to drive to pick up and take basic goods over to help young people. Not having a bank account is one reason why they could not buy goods. Getting a bank account is really hard. There is also the issue of internet access. I have sat in local cafés with young people because I have a smartphone and am able to access the services that they need. After leaving care, no support at all is given.

The second area of concern is mental health support. According to the Refugee Council, 61% of asylum seekers experience serious mental distress, which does not change when they receive their status. Refugees are five times more likely to have mental health needs than those in the UK population. That is just an acknowledgement of the situation that many people have faced, and the reason why they have had to come here to ask for refuge. Mental health support especially fails young people who leave care and need support. I have heard that the threshold for needing support is not one suicide attempt, but more than one, which is absolutely shocking. People need to know how to access services and support.

Community services provide an important bridge between need and the people who can provide for those needs. For a start, we need to be joined up so that people do not need community support to access services. Also, we should support community projects that enable refugees to claim the things that they are entitled to.

The third area is education support. Many children from a refugee background, including the children of refugees, need additional support to be able to thrive in the education system. Many refugees have faced discrimination, housing issues, language problems, and trauma from the situation that they have faced, which also impedes their children’s ability to thrive. Education, health and care plans are only in English, which could be easily rectified. If they were provided across the country in different languages, such an easy change would make a big difference. There is no translation for children in need. There is a confusing system and refugees do not know how the English system works. They find that they need to fight for their rights, which other parents already understand. Community services such as Love to Learn can provide a bridge, but it would be even better if we did not need it.

The fourth area is English for speakers of other languages, especially ESOL services with a creche, which enables women to attend. Since 2009, Government funding for ESOL courses has been cut by 60%, and the wider adult skills budget, which people go on to—they have their ESOL and need to go on to the next thing—has been cut by 35%. In the Government’s integrated communities action plan, published in February 2019—I have a copy of it here—boosting English language skills is recognised as absolutely key to community integration. The plan states:

“Speaking and understanding English means you are less vulnerable to isolation, improves your work prospects, increases your chance of friendships with people from different backgrounds and allows you to feel more confident when accessing local services.”

So we have an action plan that, from my experience in Wandsworth, is not being funded or delivered. Will the Minister return to the plan and see whether it is being implemented, because it is absolutely fundamental for refugees?

I agree with the Members who spoke earlier about extending the move-on period to 56 days and giving refugees the right to work. I would add that support to community services such as those in my borough of Wandsworth, which already support refugees but could do much more with relatively little funding, is essential. We are fortunate in this country to be able to welcome new neighbours, colleagues and friends to our communities. It says a lot about us as a country that we can do that—we can take pride in it—and provide refuge to people who desperately need it. We must keep doing better, not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is important and fundamental to building integrated, happy communities together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

I will raise the issue with MHCLG colleagues and seek assurances that this funding line, which has happened in the past, will continue.

[Fleur Anderson]

I want to mention courses in English for speakers of other languages coming with a crèche. That is increasingly crucial the more those courses are provided by colleges and similar providers, instead of community-based providers. We are seeing that provision being cut across the country. Women with children are specifically disadvantaged by the cuts and they are not fair for all.

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. As a father of young children, I understand that childcare is important, whether for parents in work or further education, so her point is well made.

The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) made a related point about language. Notwithstanding my remarks a moment ago that teaching people to speak English is preferable to perpetually translating—for society and the individual concerned—I would like to make it clear that the welcome guide for refugees to England is available in multiple languages: Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, Kurdish, Farsi, Pashtu, Punjabi, Tigrinya and Urdu. Hopefully, that will be of use to speakers of those languages.

Regarding the 28-day period, we are working with the voluntary sector. Several hon. Members have referred to its excellent work. We are also working with other Departments, as was raised by several hon. Members. We are working with local authority asylum liaison officers in some of the main areas where asylum seekers are being accommodated. That is funded by MHCLG. The role of these liaison officers is to assist newly recognised refugees with move-on arrangements, particularly housing, to ensure that the transition from supported accommodation to wider society happens as smoothly as it can.

Our asylum accommodation providers, the people who provide the supported housing while the claim is being processed, are under a contractual duty, under their contracts with the Home Office, to notify the local authority and their liaison officers of the potential need to provide housing where a person in their accommodation is granted status. We are doing everything we can to try to make that work, between the Home Office-supported accommodation and the local authority’s housing services, supported by the liaison officer, as joined up as possible.

The central question is 28 days versus 56 days. I have read the Red Cross report, to which the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) referred. I have it here. There is clearly a financial cost to keeping people in supported accommodation for longer than they are currently kept there. The Red Cross report makes the case that the extra cost in the Home Office estate would be outweighed by savings in local authorities, due to less homelessness support. I will study the report. It has some costings of that equation. I will look at the numbers carefully and make my own assessment as to where that balance lies.

In addition to the purely financial consideration, there are practical capacity considerations. As we know, housing is quite difficult to come by. If we extended from 28 days to 56 days, we would increase the number of people in supported housing by a few thousand. We would then have to find those extra spaces. Even if one could make a compelling financial case—the Red Cross says that case can be made—one must think practically about where those places would come from. That must be borne in mind.