Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

Hilary Benn Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

Again, I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. Hopefully, what I have said today goes some way to reassuring those who have raised that issue with us. Since my return to Government, my noble Friend Baroness Blake, who is watching the debate, and I have met End Our Cladding Scandal. We have heard the requests of its members and other leaseholders to expand the leaseholder protections in the Building Safety Act. We have also heard from those who bought their first home, only to find it was a non-qualifying lease. The Government will investigate whether we can extend the protection to any leaseholder who owns a lease on their only or principal home.

We have also heard those who have spoken about the plight of those with small portfolios who were excluded from protection. As the Bill passes through Parliament, I will table amendments to expand the protection from three to six properties. In our manifesto, we committed to reviewing how to better protect leaseholders from costs. These actions show that we are a Government who are committed to keeping our promises.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds South) (Lab)]

I very much welcome what my right hon. Friend just announced about those who have found themselves the owner of a flat that they did not know was non-qualifying, because of a previous owner. It is clearly unfair that they should be penalised. Will that measure be retrospective? I have a constituent who unknowingly bought a non-qualifying flat and was gobsmacked—traumatised, actually—to discover what had happened to him. He faces potentially huge costs. Will someone who is already in that position benefit from the measure?

[Angela Rayner]

We are hoping to make sure that nobody is left out, or left feeling those pressures. My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I outlined before that many of the groups we have met recently are making the case that we need to push harder on doing everything that we can. As the Bill goes through Parliament, the Building Safety Minister is happy to meet Members to see how far we can go, so that we can make sure that we are doing everything that we said we would do in our manifesto. We committed to accelerating the pace of remediation, better protecting leaseholders, and ensuring that those responsible for the crisis pay towards putting it right.

Our record since 2024 shows that we are getting on with the job, but there is still work to do, which is why, through the Bill, we will go further than ever before. Every building that we make safe helps to give those living in these flats and those looking to buy a home confidence that they are safe. This is about restoring trust in our housing market, protecting our communities and bringing an end to the building safety crisis, once and for all.

I pay tribute, once again, to the Grenfell community—the survivors and the families who were affected—and to all of us who have contributed to getting to this stage, with the Bill in front of us. I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn (Leeds South) (Lab)]

I unreservedly welcome the Bill. The story of the cladding crisis arose out of the appalling tragedy at Grenfell on that night over nine years ago, when all those people died in the place they should have felt most safe—their home. They died because of a series of catastrophic failures.

The first and most obvious failure was that cladding was allowed to be put in combinations on the sides of buildings when no one had actually tested what would happen if those combinations caught fire. It is astonishing, when one looks back at it, that architects were able to specify combinations. We now know that when some of those combinations had been put on rigs and set fire to—boom!—they had gone up very quickly.

The second thing—my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) spoke so well—is that we are here, over nine years after the event, and we still have not sorted it out. I am much struck by the example that he quoted from Australia; he is right. Many of my constituents have been affected by the cladding scandal. For most of them, it is fair to say, their homes have now been dealt with, but there are still far too many people whose homes have not been. The reaction of the Government at the time was, “Well, it’s not really our responsibility.” They had to be forced by stages, over the years, to do more and more.

There was also a failure to build the blocks in line with the building regulations at the time. It is one thing to look at the cladding—people said, “Oh, I didn’t know that was a problem”—but as it was pulled off buildings, one after another, what did we find? We found that the fire-stopping measures, the firebreaks, were missing—even though that was a requirement of the building regulations at the time. This is a story of a load of jerry-built buildings that people lived in for many years, as one Member said, with no idea that they were living in a fire trap. I make that point because, on occasion, I have heard Members in this Chamber lambast Britain as an over-regulated society. I mean, give us a break! This story is a monumental failure of regulation. People died as a result, and many other people’s lives have been put on hold, as we have heard.

I join others in paying tribute to the End Our Cladding Scandal group, Leeds Cladding Scandal, and the many constituents who have raised cases with me and who have worked so hard to try to change the circumstances in which they find themselves. Time and again, people have said to me, as they have to all other hon. Members, “I thought I’d bought the home of my dreams, and I find I’m living in a nightmare that I don’t seem able to get out of.” Many Members have referred to people’s lives being put on hold. That is absolutely true: they cannot get on with things, whether having a family or moving to another part of the country where they have been offered a good job, because they cannot sell their flat. There appears to be no escape. The bills go up, the waking watches are costly, insurance is expensive and service charges go up. I remember the first constituent who told me, “I’ve had to move out of my flat.” I said, “You’ve moved out of your flat?” He said, “Yes, I couldn’t afford the bills, so I moved out of my flat; I’m now renting it, so I can pay the bills that I can’t afford in the flat that I thought was the home of my dreams.”

Each block, particularly the ones that have not yet been remediated, is a very complex story—changing ownership, developers disappearing or going bust, the legal pass the parcel, which was mentioned in a previous speech, and mortgage lenders refusing to lend. The hard truth is that no legislation is going to require a mortgage lender to lend on a property it does not want to lend on. The mortgage lenders therefore have to have confidence.

[Gideon Amos]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a typically cogent, sensible speech. Is not the logical conclusion of what he is driving at that buildings should be remediated to a standard such that they can be insured at reasonable levels and will get mortgages, and that that is the building regulation standard we require for new buildings?

[Hilary Benn]

I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but is he arguing that a mortgage lender should be required by law—

[Gideon Amos]

indicated dissent.

[Hilary Benn]

No, the hon. Gentleman is not; I did not think that he was. That is a fundamental problem. It is about confidence in the system and in the property. Too many of my constituents still worry that they could be landed with bills they simply cannot afford. Someone said to me, “Thirty thousand quid? It might as well be 30 million quid, because I can’t afford thirty thousand.”

I want to raise three specific issues. First, I very much welcome what the Secretary of State said in her opening speech about those who have bought non-qualifying flats. As I was reflecting on the question I put to her about making the measure retrospective, I realised that that probably is not an issue here. The sole owner of a flat that was deemed to be non-qualifying will be relieved of the requirement to meet the costs themselves and will be eligible for the support that other leaseholders have.

The second issue relates to blocks below 11 metres. I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer). There is a development in Leeds called the Chandlers; some of the blocks are over 11 metres and some are below 11 metres. Applications have been made to the new fund that was opened—from memory, the closing day was 17 August. There will be lots of applications, and we do not know who will be successful and who will not. I seek clarity from the Minister. As I understand it, under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, a “responsible person” is required to carry out fire risk assessments on all buildings and put in place measures to address fire risks they identify. A House of Commons Library briefing note states:

“Since 2022, this risk assessment duty has included assessing the structure and external walls of the building, including cladding”.

Although the Government generally argue that most buildings under 11 metres do not present a risk, what is the situation in cases where there is a risk in those buildings? For example, a PAS 9980 assessment was done for the Chandlers. The residents were first told that the blocks under 11 metres were a high risk; they were then told that those blocks were a medium risk. But hey—a medium risk is still a risk. Would you want to live in a block that has a medium risk of catching fire, putting your life at risk? I have read the Bill and the explanatory memorandum on this point quite hurriedly, and it appears that these particular powers apply to buildings of over 11 metres. However, since the Government have said, “We are prepared to provide funding for buildings under 11 metres,” can the Minister tell me whether any of the powers in the legislation as it is currently drafted apply to blocks of under 11 metres and the people responsible for them? If not, if such a block has got a PAS 9980 assessment that says, “This is a risk”, then why, logically, would we not extend these powers to ensure the remediation of blocks under 11 metres?

Finally, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) in making a plea about people who really, really, really need to move. Could the Government think creatively about developers buying back flats or, as was said a moment ago, the local authority purchasing them? We want more social housing, and each one would be one more unit. I wonder whether we could see what might be done to help people who really needed to move—for example, if their mother were extremely ill and they needed to move in order to look after her.

Having said that, our constituents who still live in unsafe flats have waited far too long to have them made safe, and I look forward to the Bill making very speedy passage through both Houses.