Leaseholders and Cladding: Greenwich and Woolwich

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to the hon. Lady; I entirely understand the great difficulty that many of her constituents and others will feel. It is a very worrying situation for them. That is why we have put aside so much money this financial year to help remediate those buildings that have no other way of speedy remediation and that need it most. As I said to her, we will keep the situation under review.

The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich also raised the question of EWS1 and mortgages. It is wrong for leaseholders to find themselves unable to sell their homes due to lending restrictions. I am aware—we debated this earlier today—that EWS1 forms created by the industry to assist valuations of high-rise buildings of more than 18 metres are being asked for in some instances for buildings under 18 metres. The Government do not support that blanket approach to EWS1 forms or buildings. It is probably worth my repeating that, as the House will know, the EWS1 form is not a Government form but produced by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Not all lenders require it; some lenders use other tools. The Secretary of State has been working with the finance sector and my noble Friend Lord Greenhalgh to find more nuanced mechanisms to deliver a satisfactory outcome for residents and leaseholders, but we do not support a blanket approach to the use of EWS1 forms on buildings. Buildings below the height of 18 metres should not have EWS1 forms applied to them. Buildings which do not have external wall systems should not have EWS1 forms applied to them. We must work with all the vigour and determination that we can muster with the financial services sector to persuade them to take a different course.

We want residents to feel safe in their homes and we want them to feel empowered. Residents will be back at the heart of the system and measures in the draft Building Safety Bill will make that a reality. The new regime will give residents a stronger voice in an improved system of fire and structural safety, overseen by a more effective regulatory framework, including stronger powers to inspect high-rise buildings and sanctions to tackle irresponsible behaviour. We remain consistent in our commitment to take forward a comprehensive programme of reform and to end unfair practices in the leasehold market.

Progress has been made since the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich spoke in the Westminster Hall debate back, I think, in February. Homes are being made safer. Some 97% of buildings with ACM have, or are now in the process of, remediation. We are already working to advance eligible applicants for the £1 billion building safety scheme to the next stage, so we can begin the remediation process as quickly as possible. I can assure him that more progress than perhaps he thinks has been made and is being made.

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

Well, tell us then.

[Christopher Pincher]

All in good time. We have appointed a specialist set of consultants to increase the pace of remediation and we have introduced the Fire Safety Bill to strengthen enforcement action. The hard work continues. We have published the draft Building Safety Bill, which is a once-in-a-generation change to the building safety regime. It will be instrumental not only in shaping future policy to allow the new regime to prevent safety defects occurring in the first place, but in ensuring that people are safe and feel safe in their homes.

We will continue to work tirelessly and, I hope, across the Chamber, to bring about the lasting change we need, so that absolutely everyone in our country lives somewhere which is decent, which is secure, which is safe, which is their own and which they can be proud to call, and we can be proud to call, their home.

Question put and agreed to.

Planning for the Future

John Healey Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement, which arrived half an hour ago.

This is indeed a follow up to the Budget and the Treasury’s flawed thinking runs throughout. After nearly 10 years there is still no plan to fix the country’s housing crisis, while the promise of the White Paper is a threat to give big developers a freer hand to do what they want, ignoring quality, affordability and sustainability. Of course planning requires reform, but planning is not the major constraint on the new homes the country needs when 365,000 were given permission last year and only 213,000 were built; when only 6,200 new social homes were built last year when more than 1 million people are on housing waiting lists; and when, of course, big developers can dodge all planning permission to

“abuse permitted development rights to provide accommodation of the lowest quality.”

Those are not my words, but those of the Government’s own Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.

The Secretary of State has a number of questions on the planning front. In 2015, the Government set a deadline of early 2017 for all councils to have a local plan in place. Why is he now waiting another three years until the end of 2023? Will local areas have social housing targets, not just total targets, in this review of the formula for local housing need? Will new standards be set for greener zero-carbon homes? How much extra funding will the Government provide to beef up the capacity of our council planning services, which have been cut by a half over the past decade? The White Paper is a red warning. It could strip local communities of the powers they have to say no to big developers taking the easy option of building on the green belt. It could impose Whitehall’s total housebuilding numbers on local communities without the new affordable housing that local residents need. It could mean more unsuitable business buildings turned into slum housing, with no planning permission needed at all.

We welcome the new money in the Budget for replacing dangerous cladding and I welcome the Secretary of State’s personal commitment to building safety. Since the weeks immediately after Grenfell, we have argued that no resident should have to pay simply to make their home safe. Only the Government can fix this problem. It is a profound failure that thousands are in this position nearly three years on from Grenfell. How many fire risk buildings will this new fund have to cover? Will it fund essential fire safety work to retrofit sprinklers? Will he guarantee that this fund means no leaseholder will now have to pay the costs to make their buildings safe?

The Secretary of State’s Department released new building safety figures just over an hour ago, which he has not mentioned this morning—and no wonder. Nearly three years on from Grenfell, 266 high rise blocks still have the same Grenfell-style ACM cladding. The Secretary of State has still not published the test results or the numbers of those blocks with unsafe non-ACM cladding. The existing fund for private sector ACM cladding has already been in place for 10 months, so it is clear that funding alone will not fix the problems. Will he now also back Labour proposals for simple emergency legislation to force block owners to do and pay for this work?

Finally, with one or two minor exceptions, yesterday’s Budget was a golden, but wasted opportunity on housing. When the Government’s borrowing costs are at rock bottom and the Chancellor promises a capital spending spree, the Secretary of State must be deeply disappointed by how little funding he has for new affordable homes. Over five years, there will be just £12.2 billion, and a quarter of that is not even new money. This means an average of £2.4 billion a year. In real terms, that is only half the level of affordable housing investment made in the last year of the last Labour Government. Over five years, it will be less than housing organisations—from the National Housing Federation to Shelter—say is needed every year. Will he concede that on housing, it will be business as it was before the Budget—a continuation of 10 years of Conservative failure on housing, with no plan to fix the housing crisis—and will he admit that despite the Chancellor’s constant Budget boast on housing, this is a Government that do not “get it done”?

[Robert Jenrick]

We built more homes in this country last year—240,000 homes—than were built in any of the last 30 years. The right hon. Gentleman left house building in this country at the lowest level since the 1920s when he was the Housing Secretary. Today, it is at the highest level for 32 years. We have built more affordable homes in this country on average since 2010 under a Conservative Government than under the last Labour Government. We built more council houses in this country in one year last year than in the 13 years of the last Labour Government combined. In Wales, which Labour has control of, how many council houses were built last year? Fifty seven. How many the year before? Eighty. How many in the three years before that? Zero, so I will take no lectures from him on our record.

This was a great Budget for housing. We saw the largest investment for 10 years in affordable housing—over £12 billion. We saw further investment in infrastructure to unlock homes in all parts of the country and the commitment to bring forward a new larger single housing infrastructure fund later this year. As he rightly pointed out, we saw a further £1 billion investment in building safety, which is an incredibly important step forward to give safety, security and confidence to leaseholders who are feeling concerned in their homes. Together, this package will help us to lay the foundations for the housing reforms that we intend to introduce during this Parliament and which the White Paper that I will publish later this year will take forward at pace.

The right hon. Gentleman asked me a few questions, including about the affordable homes programme. This has been welcomed by everybody in the sector, including Kate Henderson, who leads for housing federations—she warmly welcomed this. The housing and homelessness charities welcomed the announcements that we made as a very significant step forward in investing in this area.

We have also announced more money for brownfield land, so this is not about the ruination of the countryside or needless urban sprawl. It is about getting more homes in the places where they are most needed and backing ambitious councils and Mayors such as Andy Street in the west midlands, who want to get going and unlock the parcels of brownfield land.

The building safety fund will be open as soon as possible. We want to work with leaseholders who are in properties over 18 metres and ensure that they can access the funding.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the publication of the Building Research Establishment’s research. That will happen in the coming weeks, but the research is already available; it is simply that we have not consolidated and published the final findings. We do not expect those findings to be any different from the ones that are already in the public domain.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked about legislation, as he did the other day, and he did not listen to the answer then. We will bring forward our fire safety legislation in the coming months, and I hope, from what he said today, that he intends to support it. That will give the powers to fire and rescue services across the country to do exactly what he wishes.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend on that. Work by building owners in the private sector to ensure the safety of residents living in tower blocks has been unacceptably slow, and I have been consistently clear with them that there is no excuse for their lack of progress. Today I am publishing a list of building owners who do not yet have a clear plan in place to remediate all their buildings. I will not hesitate in future to name others if they fail to demonstrate progress. Today I am asking the relevant local authorities to commence enforcement action against the entities I have named, and I will be supporting those local authorities to do this at pace.

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

It is good to see the Secretary of State still in his place after the Cabinet reshuffle. He is serious about the job, and he certainly has a serious job to do, given that hundreds of thousands of people are living with the mental and financial burden of having unsafe cladding on their home, nearly three years after the terrible Grenfell Tower fire. Never mind his exhortations, he promised that all social sector blocks with Grenfell-style cladding would have that removed and replaced by the end of last year. Why has that vital promise been broken?

[Robert Jenrick]

We have taken decisive action to address the challenge of ACM cladding; we banned combustible cladding on buildings, and we have also brought forward the £600 million scheme, for both the social sector and the private sector. I am frustrated that some, particularly in the private sector but also in the social sector, have taken so long to do this. That is why I am taking the action I am today, as promised, to name and shame the private sector entities that have failed to take the actions that all of us in this House would expect them to take, particularly given that public money is being put at their disposal now in order to remove this dangerous cladding. I will take all the steps necessary to do this and I will do so as quickly as possible.

[John Healey]

We have heard this before, and frustration and exhortation simply are not sufficient. Social sector blocks are just the tip of the iceberg, and the Secretary of State still has not got a grip on those. Four months ago, he promised action against private block owners who are not removing unsafe Grenfell-style ACM cladding, but his own departmental figures show that 43 block owners—one in four—do not even have a plan in place. He has to do more to act, and that is before we even get into dealing with 1,000 extra non-ACM unsafe blocks. Enough is enough: will he now accept and back the Labour plan for legislation to make those private block owners do and pay for the remedial action, and put a stop to the scandal whereby vulnerable flat owners are having to pay simply to make their homes safe?

[Robert Jenrick]

The right hon. Gentleman is behind the curve on this one; he is behind the action we are taking as a Government. We have already said that we are going to bring forward the fire safety Bill, which was in the Queen’s Speech and which will give fire and rescue services the powers that he wishes—I hope that means he will be supporting that Bill when it comes forward in the coming months. We have said that we will follow that quickly with the building safety Bill, which will be the biggest change to fire safety and building standards in this country in my lifetime.

[Robert Jenrick]

We will be doing that, as we have already said, before the summer recess.

[John Healey]

In draft.

[Robert Jenrick]

In draft, because this is an important and complex piece of legislation. As regards those buildings that still have ACM cladding, all bar a very small number of owners now have a clear plan to remediate that cladding. About a third have taken it off, about a third are in the process of doing so, and the remainder have a clear plan, except for the small number of egregious building owners I have named today.

Homelessness

John Healey Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House notes with concern that the number of people sleeping rough on the streets of England has more than doubled since 2010 and that the number of homeless children in temporary accommodation has risen to 127,000; further notes that the number of people dying homeless in England and Wales has risen to 726 people a year; recognises that by contrast there was an unprecedented fall in homelessness under a Labour Government by 2010; and calls on the Government to take action to end rough sleeping and tackle the root causes of rising homelessness starting by making 8,000 homes available for those with a history of rough sleeping, restoring funding for local housing allowance, and re-investing in local homelessness services, including £100m a year for emergency accommodation to save lives this winter.

This is our first Opposition day of the new Parliament, and it is fitting that we are debating the country’s homelessness crisis. It is fitting, too, that so many Members from all parties and all parts of the country want to speak. The measure of any country is the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens. We are proud of Britain, but it shames us all that tonight people will be sleeping rough on the streets in almost every town and city. Any patriot knows that the social contract at the heart of our country means that we can never accept people wanting for something as basic as a permanent roof over their head.

Last year, 726 people died homeless in a country as decent and well-off as ours; in Britain in the 21st century. That does indeed shame us all, but most of all it shames Conservative Ministers over the past 10 years. This is a Government who are failing on homelessness. This is a Government in denial about the root causes of homelessness. This is a Government with no proper plan to fix the crisis that they themselves have caused.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for bringing this incredibly important debate to the House and for referring to the number of people who died while homeless. David Fuller died sleeping rough in Chesterfield at Christmas in 2017. Is it not the case that every single death of that sort is not only a tragedy but a travesty, and an avoidable travesty if only the Government would take the actions they need to take in building the number of houses we need and having a welfare policy that does not punish the most vulnerable people in our country?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is right. I believe that Members on both sides of the House will tell this afternoon of some of the local and individual tragedies behind the national statistics. He is quite right that every one is a tragedy and every one is a travesty. Many are preventable. It cannot be acceptable for any of us in this House, in this day and age, that over 700 people died homeless in our country.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Conservatives have every wish to see the end of homelessness, just as his party does, and Ministers are now making more money available. What advice would he give Ministers on how best to spend that money to achieve our shared objective?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Healey]

Wishes are not enough. The right hon. Gentleman has been around long enough to know that it is important to will the means. He has also been around long enough to remember that in 1997, when I was elected, Labour took on a country where homelessness was high and rising, mass rough sleeping was widespread, and tent cities were common in parts of central London, directly as a result of deep cuts to social security and council programmes over the preceding 18 Conservative years.

I say to those on the Treasury Bench: do what we did before—do what was done under Labour, because we turned it round. We turned it round with groundbreaking legislation, new funding, greater prevention and a taskforce led from the top by the Prime Minister. That is what led to homelessness charities describing what they said was an unprecedented fall in homelessness by 2010, with rough sleeping down by around three quarters.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

One way we could stop the rise in homelessness is by addressing the concerns about universal credit. Just this week, Hull City Council published a report which says that rent arrears are at a wholly unsustainable level. Three quarters of tenants on universal credit are behind with their rent, and they are at increased risk of eviction. One way that the Government could deal with the homelessness problem is to address the failings of universal credit.

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I said, this is a Government in denial about the root causes of high and rising homelessness, and she puts her finger on a very important root cause. It used to be the case that government in Britain was based on evidence—we had evidence-based policy making—but all the evidence about universal credit is that it leads to higher levels of debt and higher levels of rent arrears, and of course higher levels of rent arrears lead to higher levels of homelessness.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way; he is being very generous and making a compelling speech. As he rightly says, this issue was dealt with by the last Labour Government successfully, and the reason for the return of high levels of rough sleeping and homelessness is a return to the ideology that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) favours. Office for National Statistics data show that the average age of the estimated 641 homeless males who died in 2018 was 44. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is 38 years of age. I wonder how we as a country can stomach that sort of statistic.

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is right. This shames us all—in government, in opposition and across the country. We need a new national mission to tackle homelessness, not just a new determination from Government. It cannot be done without Government. The free market solutions that we have too often seen over the last 10 years have failed—indeed, we have seen failure on every front on homelessness over the last 10 years.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

There is a real danger with political point scoring on this, particularly in venerating the previous Labour Government. In May 1997, the average home in England was worth £62,000. Ten years later, it was £188,000—a threefold increase. This is an affordability problem at root. No one is in denial about that. Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that there has been a huge and unsustainable rise in the cost of accommodation under successive Governments?

[John Healey]

Quite honestly, I do not know where to start. For the thousands of people who will sleep out tonight, the level of the housing market is a long way from their concern. If the hon. Gentleman does not like the points that I am making and regards them as political point scoring, let me give him some straight facts. Directly as a result of Ministers’ decisions over the last 10 years, 86,000 households are now homeless and in temporary accommodation—up 71%; 127,000 children have no home—up 75%—and many are placed in temporary accommodation miles from their school, their friends and their community; and 4,600 people are sleeping rough on the streets—up 165%. Of course, every charity working in the homeless field and every expert knows that this is a huge undercount of the true scale of street homelessness. Just today, in a new report from St Mungo’s, we learn that 12,000 people who were homeless last year also went without the drugs or alcohol addiction help they needed.

At a time when perhaps some of the old certainties in politics appear to be in flux, one thing is certain and one thing remains true: the legacy of every Conservative Government is high homelessness, and the job of every Labour Government is to fix the problem.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend also believe that the rise in homelessness is connected with the continuing fall in the number of social housing properties, which actually fell by a further 17,000 in the last year alone?

[John Healey]

I do indeed. The Government published statistics yesterday that, in a sense, show the very scale of the point my hon. Friend rightly makes. When I stood on the other side of the Chamber as Labour’s last Housing Minister in 2009, 120,000 more social rented homes were let in that year than last year. That is an indicator of how short social housing is and how chronic the crisis that we face is.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Healey]

I am going to make some progress now because so many hon. Members on both sides want to speak.

Our homelessness crisis now, as it was in the 1990s, is the direct result of decisions taken by Conservative Ministers over the previous decade. There have been 13 separate cuts to housing benefit, including the hated bedroom tax, and the breaking of the link between the level of housing benefit and rents for private renters. Some £1 billion a year has been cut from local homelessness services. There are almost 9,000 fewer homeless hostel beds now, at a time when they have never been needed more. We see £2,200 extra a year for average private rents, with no action from the Government to protect private renters either from eviction or from huge rent hikes.

Only 6,287 new social rented homes were built in this country last year. That is the second lowest year since the second world war, with the lowest being two years before that. If anyone doubts the significance of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), in Labour’s last year in government, we built nearly 40,000 new social rented homes. If the Conservatives had only kept building those homes at the same rate as Labour did, we would now have in this country an extra 200,000 social rented homes, which is more than enough for every household homeless and in temporary accommodation; more than enough for every person sleeping rough on the streets; and more than enough for every individual in every homeless hostel across the country.

After 10 years, the hard truth is that homelessness is high and rising, and what the Government are doing is not working. Based on the Government’s own statistics, at the current rate of progress, Ministers will not end rough sleeping in this country before 2082. On current progress, they will not even bring the level of rough sleeping back to the level it was in 2010 for nearly 40 years. Meanwhile, the number of households that are homeless and the number of children who are homeless continue to rise.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

At my surgeries, homelessness and housing dominate among the issues people come to see me about. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that, as well as building social homes, the Government also need to increase the local housing allowance?

[John Healey]

I have bad news for my hon. Friend. I hope she was not listening to Ministers recently when they said that they are ending the benefits freeze and that housing benefit will rise again. In April, housing benefit will rise at the level of the consumer prices index, which is 1.7%. In my hon. Friend’s constituency, many people, both in work and out, who rely on housing benefit in the private sector—the local housing allowance—will have seen over the past two years the Government putting in rises of 3% through their targeted affordability fund. However, instead of a 3% rise next year, people will get a 1.7% rise; instead of an end to the benefits freeze, they will get rises at a lower rate. What the Government will not say is that that fund goes with the end of the benefits freeze, and in areas such as that of my hon. Friend, where rental pressures are highest, people in private rented accommodation will feel the tightest pinch. At best that is underhand; at worst it is simply dishonest.

The bad news for all new Government Back Benchers is that their Ministers and Government have no proper plan to fix the homelessness crisis. The good news, however, is that there is a plan that would end rough sleeping within a Parliament and start to fix the causes of the homelessness crisis: our Labour plan. It is radical, credible, fully fledged, and fully formed—you could even say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that it is oven ready. It is based on what works because we know what works; we have done it before.

I hope the Secretary of State will take our Labour plan and make it a national plan to tackle homelessness. First, we must establish a new taskforce, led by the Prime Minister, to end rough sleeping for good. Secondly, we must make available an extra 8,000 homes from housing associations for those with a history of rough sleeping. Thirdly, we must place a levy on second homes that are used as holiday homes, and use that to fund a new duty for emergency support in every area during the winter when it is cold. Fourthly, we must relink the housing allowance to rents, so that people do not end up on the streets because they cannot cover the growing shortfall. Finally, we must make good the £1 billion a year cuts to local homelessness services over the past decade. Those are radical, common-sense steps to solve our homelessness crisis.

The Secretary of State will soon say, no doubt, that the Prime Minister has pledged that the Government will end rough sleeping within five years. We have heard that before from the Prime Minister. Some of my hon. Friends, particularly those from the capital, will remember that when he was elected as London Mayor, he said:

“It’s scandalous that, in 21st century London, people have to resort to sleeping on the streets, which is why I have pledged to end rough sleeping in the capital by 2012.”

He did not, of course—in fact, rough sleeping in London more than doubled during his time as Mayor. He has a long history of making promises and letting people down. If the Prime Minister means what he says, if he does what he says, and if he wants to lead a one nation Government, he must deal with the national shame of homelessness. I say to him this: make Labour’s plan the country’s plan, and personally lead a new national mission to end homelessness for good.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 1 Report

John Healey Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

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

This is a grave and important debate. I welcome the Government time for it, but I regret that the Prime Minister is not here to lead it. The public inquiry into Grenfell reports to him; it is the Prime Minister’s responsibility. A national disaster on the scale of the dreadful Grenfell tower fire demands a national response, on a similar scale. That has not happened, and that too is the Prime Minister’s responsibility.

More than two and a half years since that dreadful fire, the widespread grief and disbelief in the immediate aftermath that something so dreadful could happen in 21st-century Britain has become an increasingly widespread frustration. There is, as the Secretary of State said, still a huge amount to do. I never thought I would be standing here, two and a half years after that Grenfell tower fire, facing a Secretary of State who is still unable to say all the steps have been taken so that we can, as a House of Commons, as a Government, say to the country, “A fire like Grenfell can never happen again.” The fact that he cannot say that—the fact that there is still so much to do before we can all say that—shows the extent of the Government’s failure on all fronts since that fateful fire on 14 June 2017.

There have, regrettably, been other major residential fires since then—mercifully, without casualties—in Manchester, in Crewe, in Barking, in Bolton. It was clear to me, speaking to the students who were in that fire in Bolton, days after it happened, that had it not been for their quick thinking that early Friday evening, there would have been casualties in that fire, too.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick and his inquiry staff have done a huge amount of work on the first phase of the inquiry; on behalf of the Labour party, I pay tribute to that. Despite our reservations about the inquiry, we recognise that the inquiry is on an almost unprecedented scale. The phase 1 report—the subject of this afternoon’s debate—was 1,000 pages long. It was based on 123 days of hearings, evidence from more than 140 witnesses, half a million documents and nearly 600 core participants. However, Sir Martin Moore-Bick and his team simply could not have produced such a thorough and thoughtful report without the testimony of the Grenfell families and survivors. So, most of all today I pay tribute to the Grenfell survivors, to the families of the victims, to the community of North Kensington, who have conducted themselves with such dignity during this very painful inquiry. I say to them: you have suffered almost unimaginable trauma and loss, but we thank you for having the courage to share this, and the resolve to turn your grief into a fight for justice and for change. It is they who should be at the forefront of our thoughts and of our debate this afternoon.

I also pay tribute, as Sir Martin Moore-Bick does, to the courage of individual firefighters and emergency services on the night. They really did put their lives at risk in many ways—often breaking the operating procedures they were meant to follow—in order to help get people out and save lives that night. I, like the Secretary of State, am glad that the London fire and rescue service has not just accepted all the recommendations in full, but already begun to implement them.

I want to take the House back to the immediate aftermath of the fire, more than two and a half years ago, and to three big promises made by the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), on behalf of the Conservative Government. First, on rehousing and support for the survivors, she said, as Prime Minister, the week after the fire:

“All those who have lost their homes…will be offered rehousing within three weeks.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 167.]

Ministers had to pull back from that initial promise, and they then said everybody would be rehoused within a year.

Thirty-one months on from the fire, as the Secretary of State has confirmed this afternoon, and notwithstanding individual circumstances, survivors of the fire have still not all been found adequate, permanent housing. Some of those families spent Christmas in temporary accommodation or in hotels. It is no good the Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service—a former housing Minister—or the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government shaking their head. I acknowledge the individual circumstances, we all do, but they have had four reports from the Grenfell recovery taskforce, each and every one taking the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to task for not doing enough at enough speed to rehouse and help those families.

Secondly, on justice, the present Prime Minister said in the debate at the end of October that

“we owe it to the people of Grenfell Tower to explain, once and for all and beyond doubt, exactly why the tragedy unfolded as it did”.—[Official Report, 30 October 2019; Vol. 667, c. 378.]

The Grenfell survivors do, indeed, want answers, but they also want justice. They want change and they want those responsible to be held to account and, where justified, prosecuted. They are right to expect that, and they have been promised it, but it still seems so far off.

Ahead of the setting up of the public inquiry, the then Prime Minister promised

“to provide justice for the victims and their families who suffered so terribly.”

And she rightly said on behalf of the Government:

“I am clear that we cannot wait for ages to learn the immediate lessons”.—[Official Report, 22 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 168.]

That public inquiry, initially expected to report at Easter 2018, did not in fact report until 18 months later, in autumn 2019. It has been phased into two reports, which means we have only a partial, incomplete judgment, and we still have not got to the bottom of what went dreadfully wrong and why.

I have to say to the Secretary of State and the Government that these problems have been compounded by recent thoughtless decision making by the Prime Minister. Just before Christmas he picked a new panellist for the inquiry who in her previous post, we are told, accepted funding after the fire from the charitable arm of the company responsible for manufacturing the insulation on the outside of Grenfell Tower.

Yesterday, the Secretary of State said:

“I know the Prime Minister is aware of the issues”.—[Official Report, 20 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 33.]

He must do better than that. The Grenfell inquiry must command the confidence of those most affected by the fire. The vice-chair of Grenfell United has said in the last week:

“How can she sit next to Sir Martin Moore-Bick when Arconic will be on the stand and is one of the organisations we need answers from in terms of what caused the deaths of our loved ones?”

The Prime Minister should apologise and reverse the decision to appoint Benita Mehra.

Thirdly, on cladding and the safety of other tower blocks, the then Prime Minister, again on behalf of the Government, promised directly after the fire:

“Landlords have a legal obligation to provide safe buildings… We cannot and will not ask people to live in unsafe homes.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 169.]

Yet thousands of people continue to live in unsafe homes, condemned to do so by this Government’s failure on all fronts since Grenfell. Why? Why, two and a half years later, are 315 high-rise blocks still cloaked in the same Grenfell-style cladding? Why do 76 of these block owners still not have a plan in place to remove and replace that cladding? Why have 91 social block owners still not replaced their ACM cladding when the Secretary of State said it would be done by the end of last year? Why have the Government not completed and published full fire safety tests on other unsafe but non-ACM types of cladding? And why has no legislation to overhaul the building safety rules been published, let alone implemented, more than 20 months after the Government’s own Hackitt review was completed and accepted in full by Ministers?

After pressure from this side, the Secretary of State did set deadlines for all Grenfell-style ACM cladding to be removed and replaced: he set the deadline of the end of December 2019 for social sector blocks and of June 2020 for all private sector blocks. He has missed the deadline for social sector blocks and, if the current rate does not change, it will take a further three years for them all to be done. He is also set to miss the June 2020 deadline and, if the current rate does not improve, it could take 10 years to complete the work on those blocks. He said a moment ago that Grenfell families want “answers”, “accountability” and “action”, but at every stage since Grenfell Ministers have failed to grasp the scale of the problems and the scale of the Government action required. At every stage, the action taken has been too slow and too weak.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about action and about the guidance. Surely he must welcome the Government’s action in banning combustible materials in external surfaces, which his Government had the opportunity to do during their tenure but did not do?

[John Healey]

I do indeed welcome the ban, which we argued for for some time. It was something the Hackitt report did not recommend, but Ministers wisely decided that they would not follow that recommendation. It is a no-brainer that we should not be putting combustible cladding on the sides of buildings in that way.

I welcome some of the action that has been taken. I know that the Secretary of State is approaching this with a serious intent. He did indeed announce what he calls “more measures” yesterday and he said he is

“minded to lower the height threshold for sprinkler requirements in new buildings”—[Official Report, 20 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 23.]

But this is for new build only. He is considering, with the Treasury, whether leaseholders will get any funding help, and he is having yet another consultation exactly on that issue of flammable material. I say to him that we have had 14 consultations already since the Grenfell fire. We had 21 announcements on building safety in this Chamber before yesterday’s announcement. I say to the Secretary of State that he and his Government still have some way to go to give people confidence and to convince those people affected by unsafe cladding that there will be change.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend referred to the position that leaseholders find themselves in, and we discussed this yesterday following the Secretary of State’s statement. Those who now discover that they are living, to their surprise and horror, in unsafe buildings do not just face the problem of having to pay out for a waking watch, which is very expensive; even with the new guidance to mortgage lenders, who is going to buy a flat in a block where, in addition to taking on the normal costs, the new owner will have to pay for the waking watch and will have no idea at this stage, until the matter is clarified, who is going to foot the bill for replacing the cladding in those buildings? So we have a continuing problem, in the wake of the terrible Grenfell tragedy, as more and more people discover their lives completely on hold. Does that not make the case for Government help to get them out of this mess urgent and necessary?

[John Healey]

My right hon. Friend anticipates the argument I was going to move on to. For such leaseholders, the situation he outlines assumes that they can sell in the first place and that the wannabe buyer can get a mortgage. Many are finding now that they are trapped in these blocks. Some of the steps the Secretary of State is now taking may help with this, but, fundamentally, there is a serious flaw in our leasehold legislation. In the particular circumstances we face here, we have the failure to match the legal responsibility that landlords or block owners have for the safety of those blocks with the financial responsibility for ensuring that they, not the leaseholders, pay for that. I have a proposal for the Secretary of State that requires Government action to deal with that problem and shall explain it in a moment.

First, though, a more general point. Since the fire, Grenfell survivors have seen three Secretaries of State and four Housing Ministers, all serious and sincere as individuals about the lessons to learn from Grenfell, but all fettered by the same flawed Conservative ideology and Government policy. They are too reluctant to take on vested interests in the property market; too unwilling to have the state act when private interests will not act in the public interest; and too resistant to legislation or regulation to require higher safety standards. Only the Government can fix the broken system of building safety. Only the Government can make good the cuts to fire services. Only the Government can renew social housing. Only the Government can make landlords meet their legal and financial obligations.

Here is a five-point plan for action for the Secretary of State. First, widen the Government-sponsored programme to cover comprehensive tests on all non-ACM cladding and publish the full results. Secondly, give councils the power to fine and take over blocks whose owners refuse to make them safe, in order to get the work done. Thirdly, pass legislation to end the injustice of flat owners paying for the costs of works simply to make their home safe, and bring in financial help for hard-pressed leaseholders billed by landlords for essential interim safety measures such as waking watches. Fourthly, set up a £1 billion fire safety fund, including to retrofit sprinklers in social housing blocks. Fifthly, establish a new national fire safety taskforce, reporting directly to the Prime Minister, responsible for auditing every high-rise and high-risk building and enforcing the replacement of all types of deadly cladding. If the Secretary of State will do that, he will have our backing.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The right hon. Gentleman has talked about some pretty decisive action against building owners he says will not take action to remove cladding. That is possible with a social landlord, because they have a direct connection to and responsibility for the maintenance of the building, but who is he talking about in the case of a block of leasehold apartments? The only person with a connection—the only landlord he might speak to—might be the owner of the ground rents on that property. They are technically the freeholder, but the freeholder has no maintenance responsibility whatsoever, so there is no legal action he could take to force the freeholder to take remedial action on the block.

[John Healey]

That is precisely why new legislation is required to enable action where it is needed. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman grimaces, but I take the argument and the principle from a recommendation of the Select Committee of which he was a member, which said in a unanimous report that for privately owned residential homes, if a landlord ultimately will not keep the properties up to scratch, a local authority should have the power to take over those properties and make them good. If the principle can apply for individual properties, it can apply for tower blocks when something this serious and urgent is required.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

rose—

[John Healey]

I will not give way anymore; I am going to end my speech because a lot of people wish to speak in the debate.

Post election, the Government and the Prime Minister have a majority, but with that mandate comes responsibility. We in the Labour party will continue to hold the Government hard to account for their continued failings following Grenfell. More widely, I say in particular to the Grenfell survivors and the families of the victims, just as I said in the days immediately after the fire: we in the Labour party will not rest until all those who need it get a new home and long-term help; all those culpable are brought to justice; and all measures necessary are in place, so that we can, with confidence, say to people that a fire like Grenfell can never happen again in our country.

Building Safety

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of his statement this afternoon.

The Secretary of State will remember, as we all do, the shocking disbelief and grief in the immediate aftermath of the dreadful Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, and he will remember, as I do, the solemn undertakings from all parts of this House to make sure that such a fire could never happen again. I never thought that, two and a half years later, I would be standing here facing a Secretary of State—the third Secretary of State—who still cannot say that all the necessary action has been taken and that a fire like Grenfell cannot happen again in Britain.

Directly after the fire, the then Prime Minister made this promise on behalf of the Conservative Government:

“Landlords have a legal obligation to provide safe buildings…We cannot and will not ask people to live in unsafe homes.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 169.]

Yet thousands of people continue to live in unsafe homes, condemned to do so by this Government’s failure on all fronts after Grenfell. Why, two and a half years later, are 315 high-rise blocks still cloaked in the same Grenfell-style cladding? Why do 76 of these blocks’ owners not even have a plan in place to replace the deadly cladding? Why have 91 social tower block landlords still not replaced their ACM cladding, when this Secretary of State promised that it would be done by the end of last year? And why have the Government not completed and published full fire safety tests on other unsafe, but not ACM, types of cladding? Why has the Secretary of State had nothing to say this afternoon in his statement on these points?

The Secretary of State has made pledges of his own on Grenfell action. He promised

“to take action of a scale and a pace that is commensurate with the tragedy that prompted it.”—[Official Report, 30 October 2019; Vol. 667, c. 419.]

Seventy-two lives were lost in that Grenfell Tower fire, yet there have been no prosecutions, no fire safety fund to retrofit sprinklers, no legislation to make private block owners, not leaseholders, pay the safety work costs, and still no legislation in place to overhaul building safety legislation more than 20 months after the Government’s own Hackitt review was published and accepted in full by Ministers.

I know that the Secretary of State has approached this task with a very serious intent since he was appointed in the summer, and we welcome the setting up of a national regulator to do the job that Ministers and the Department have been unable to do so far. I also welcome the decision to name and shame block owners who will not do the work, and the recognition that the system of building safety checks and controls does not just affect buildings of over six storeys.

There have been 21 announcements on building safety in this House since Grenfell, but there are still not enough answers and there is still not enough action, so let me ask the Secretary of State: given that the new building safety regulator will need legislation to underpin it, when will the new draft building safety Bill be published, and when on earth is it actually going to reach the statute book?

The Secretary of State has said this afternoon that ACM cladding with an unmodified polyethylene core should not be used on buildings of any height. How many additional buildings does he estimate fall into this category? Also, why wait a month to name and shame block owners who will not do the work? Why not do it now? In fact, why did he not do it in June, when I previously called for him to do so? And why has he not restated to the House that June 2020—fully three years on from Grenfell—is the Government’s hard deadline for the full removal and replacement of ACM cladding from all tower blocks in this country? I am afraid that this is too little, at least two years too late.

At every stage since Grenfell, Ministers have failed to grasp the scale of the problems or the scale of the Government action required, and I fear that we will reach the third anniversary—and, Lord forbid, the fourth anniversary—and still not be able to say to people with confidence that a fire like Grenfell can never happen again in Britain.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his questions and the tone with which he approaches this task. I think we can find a lot of common cause on this issue.

The right hon. Gentleman says that we have not done enough. This is an extremely challenging task, but the Government have already taken a wide range of steps of which he is aware. We announced the independent inquiry, the first phase of which has now reported, and the second phase of which will begin on 27 January. We commissioned Dame Judith’s independent review into our building safety regime, which was widely praised. It has reported back, and has led to the measures that we are taking today. Dame Judith remains closely involved in the process and will now be leading the establishment of the new regulator. I have taken the decision that that work needs to begin immediately, and have chosen the Health and Safety Executive to be the home of the regulator because it has the capacity to do so at pace.

We launched the social sector ACM cladding remediation fund in 2018, and that has led to a very large number of properties having remediation work on ACM cladding. We later extended that to the private sector. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is frustrating that the pace of work has not been faster. I am frustrated by it. I said to the House in September that I would name and shame building owners who had not already commenced work or who were not taking the issue sufficiently seriously. I think that threat contributed to an increase in action from building owners, and now every private sector building with ACM cladding—bar 10—has a plan and is working with my Department to commence or complete remediation works. The 10 buildings that have not done so already are in exceptional circumstances; they are mostly buildings that have only recently been discovered to be clad in ACM, so they are late to join the process. We are none the less working to expedite those cases to ensure that they get moving at pace. I have said that we will publish that list next month, so it will happen within a matter of weeks. I hope that that will be a further spur on those building owners to do the right thing and get moving.

We have set out today a very significant set of measures that will have a profound effect on the industry, particularly on new buildings built in the years ahead. I have said that I am minded, subject to the final review of the consultation, to lower the height threshold for sprinklers. We have to be guided by evidence. Dame Judith and our expert panel suggest that it is too crude to say that all high-rise buildings should be remediated and have retro-fitted sprinklers—that we need to take an individual-building approach, because it might be the right thing for some buildings but not for all. I will certainly, as long as I am in this job, be guided by the evidence.

We have set up the protection board that I announced last year, which is working with the Home Office, with my Department and with fire and rescue services on a priority basis to assess those buildings where assessments have not yet been made and ensure that the building owners take action.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about legislation. We announced in the Queen’s Speech last year that the building safety Bill would come forward. Following the outcome of the first phase of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, I took the view that that was too long to wait, and so we have now divided the work into two Bills, one of which will come forward very swiftly—a fire safety Bill. That will place into legislation the recommendations of the judge that require legislation; some require regulatory change rather than primary legislation. Later this year, we will follow that with the larger, more complex building safety Bill, which we intend to publish before the summer recess. That will be the biggest change to our building safety regime for 40 years. I do not underestimate the complexity of that, and it is obviously right that we get the details correct so that we can move forwards.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

We will be giving that further thought. The Government are committed to bringing forward a new White Paper on planning reform. I will work closely with the Chancellor to draw up those proposals, and I would be very happy to speak with my hon. Friend and take his views as we do so.

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

May I welcome the Secretary of State back? Given the turnover of Housing Ministers, I trust that his first oral questions in the post will not also be his last. The Conservatives’ failure on planning is at the heart of their failure on housing. Their permitted development loophole lets developers sidestep the planning rules and build modern-day slum housing. It has been in place for four years now, so can he say whether the number of new affordable homes being built has gone up or down directly as a result of this planning change?

[Robert Jenrick]

May I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks? Permitted development rights are subject to a review, and we have consulted stakeholders. He is right to say that there are some examples of poor practice, and I will carefully consider the information we have received before coming forward with proposals. Those rights have led to a large number of net additions that would not otherwise have been brought forward. That is important, and it is a contributing factor to the fact that, last year, we delivered more homes than any other for 30 years. Therefore, the planning reforms taken forward by my predecessors, which I will take forward with my new White Paper, have contributed to getting the homes built in this country that we desperately need.

[John Healey]

For the record, the number of new social rented homes is at a near record low. Rather than the net additions that the Secretary of State talks about, the Conservative-led Local Government Association says that this policy has led directly to 13,500 fewer new affordable homes. It hits at the heart of the Tory failure on housing: the rules are loosened so that big builders profit while renters and buyers on ordinary incomes lose out. Every Conservative MP should know that they have lost the argument on housing. With Ipsos MORI showing a 17 point lead for Labour over the Conservatives on housing, people know the country has a housing crisis and they know the Conservatives are failing to fix it. The Secretary of State had nothing to say on housing at the election, so what will the Government now do differently to win public confidence on housing?