Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Thursday 13th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I add my thanks to those in the other place for the work that they have done on this Bill, and particularly on Lords amendment 1, which I will explain my thinking on in more detail.

I stand to speak on this issue because of the importance of scrutiny of Government policy by the Select Committees of this House. While this House has an important scrutiny task, and Bill Committees have their job to do, there is a valuable role for Select Committees in scrutiny because of the depth of knowledge of the Committee teams, which are made up of Members, experienced expert staff, and Clerks. That depth of knowledge can be very helpful to Ministers and Governments, who can get useful input as policy is developed, and Select Committees have a particular role in relation to national policy statements.

More widely, I say to Members on the Treasury Benches that although I massively appreciate the work that the Minister has done to ensure that we lean into this issue —which I will touch on in a moment—Governments of whatever party need to be mindful when they are pushing legislation forward. We get elected with an agenda and, quite rightly, we are impatient to push things through, but we need to be mindful of the importance of parliamentary scrutiny. We diminish that at our peril, because we risk a slippery slope. One day, a mad, bad or dangerous Government—do not tempt me on that, given the past 14 years—could misuse the system. We need to stress-test what is being proposed by the Government of the day in the light of that important fact.

We have 13 national policy statements covering types of national infrastructure. I do not need to go into detail on that, but they include energy, transport, waste water and waste. The normal process has been that these statements are laid before the House, and Select Committees are involved. For time reasons, I will not go through the technical detail of how that works, but basically, Select Committees have an important role to play in scrutinising any changes to national policy statements. The Government are concerned that this can take too long, and have decided, as the Minister has explained, to introduce a new reflective amendment procedure. Under that procedure, the Government would not be subject to the existing statutory obligation to respond to a resolution of either House, or to recommendations from a Committee of either House, regarding the proposed changes.

The key question is: what is proposed to replace the existing procedure? As the Minister has said, there will continue to be a public consultation on reflective amendments —the smaller category of amendments that might be introduced. The Minister will need to write to the relevant Select Committee, and Ministers must make themselves available to appear before the relevant Committee to explain why the proposed changes to the NPS mean that the reflective amendment route is appropriate. The Minister and I have been discussing this for months—I have been speaking on behalf of those on the Committee corridor—and I thank him very much for his time.

On Report, the Minister said at the Dispatch Box that Ministers would appear in front of Select Committees

“as far as is practicable”.—[Official Report, 9 June 2025; Vol. 768, c. 757.]

I raised with him the concern that although “practicable” may be a legal term, it does not really work for Select Committees, because there is a question about what it means. The Minister could be on holiday, or could be visiting a constituency somewhere else in the country, and it might not be practicable for them to appear before a Select Committee. I have been a Minister, and it is right that Ministers should be accountable to this House. That should be a priority; it is the job of a Minister to steer legislation through the House, politically and practically. I know that the Minister has been looking closely at whether he can give us a reassurance that Ministers will be expected to appear before a Select Committee if required to do so, not just as far as is practicable.

Under the new approach, an amended national policy statement will be laid before Parliament for 21 sitting days—I am glad that the Minister has been clear that it will be sitting days, not days during a recess period; that is critical—and the Government will respond to any Committee reports during that time. However, they no longer have a statutory obligation to respond. I hope that the Minister can reassure me further, at the Dispatch Box, that they would be expected to do so.

Speaking on behalf of the Committee corridor, we are very clear that we would play our part in ensuring that these matters were turned around within a proper timeframe, and there would not be unnecessary delays. There is a great team of people behind our Select Committees. If you were not in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would say that I am privileged to work with probably the best set of Chairs of Select Committees that we have ever had, but that would cut you out, and you did important work that set the tone for us all. You were a leader in this field when you chaired the Women and Equalities Committee; we follow in big footsteps. There is a very talented team of people on the Committee corridor who want to make sure that this process works. We take very seriously our responsibility to scrutinise Government legislation, and our role in getting it through Parliament, although not necessarily without amendment. We will work very closely with the Government when submitting our views.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Those who are watching this debate might think that we are just debating tedious parliamentary processes, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) made clear, national policy statements have impacts. We are about to consider—in some detail, I hope—the national policy statement on airports, which would result in 15,000 people in my constituency losing their home, and whole communities being wiped off the face of the earth. That is why it is so critical that we get this procedure right; otherwise, we will not carry the community with us.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I think I can reassure my right hon. Friend that, as the Minister has made clear at the Dispatch Box, very large changes would go through the old process. There is no watering down of that, which is absolutely right and proper; the Government are leaning in the right direction on that. Our concern was about turning smaller amendments into reflective amendments. The Minister outlined four categories of amendment; when he sums up, I would be grateful if he could clarify who decides which of the four categories an amendment would be in, and whether there is any prospect that the process could be misused by a future Government. I cannot imagine that the Minister would misuse it, but in a bad world, could this process be abused by the Government of the day?

House Building: London

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Bob Blackman]

No, the other one: the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). That meant that whole sites in London were not developed to provide housing when they should have been.

Clearly we have a serious problem here. In my constituency, there is a planning application that has been outstanding, after having been reviewed at various times, for nearly 10 years. It would provide housing units that we desperately need, but the housing association refuses to develop it. It is now trying to sell the site again to further developers.

Our other problem in London is where developments have taken place. There have been developments such as Battersea power station, around Wembley stadium and other areas where housing has gone up, but that housing has not been sold to local people; it is been sold to developers or owners abroad, then rented out at exorbitant cost to local London people, who then have to apply for housing benefit and depend on welfare payments rather than having a home of their own. We have to conquer this.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman made a very good point about overseas sales, although I would contest his statement that people are having to receive housing benefit to live in many of those developments because, as he probably knows, they are advertised overseas by yield. We are seeing homes in London as financial investment vehicles for people who have no connection with this country. Many of those landlords have never even visited the property. What would his party’s policy be to tackle this issue?

[Bob Blackman]

I do not speak on behalf of my party; I speak on my own behalf. As the hon. Lady well knows, I have been promoting building 90,000 socially rented homes a year across the country, and for the past 30 years Governments of all persuasions have failed to build the homes that we need at the prices that people can afford.

The sad reality is that we have to look at how we are going to deal with this. We could deal with the Transport for London land. TfL owns huge amounts of unused land that could be developed for housing, and that could be done in co-operation with City Hall, but the sad fact is—[Interruption.] Government Members need to focus on this: not only was Sadiq Khan as mayor given the money that my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup mentioned, but he returned it to the Treasury; he could not spend it because he could not get development under way.

We have to look at what we are going to do across the House to make sure that houses are being built in London. I hope that we are not going to reduce the safety requirements for these buildings. That would be a disaster—we know of the terrible tragedy that happened in Grenfell. We should not even contemplate moving away from what has been done to protect people. Lessening those protections would be a mistake in many ways.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. How are the Government going to ensure that the affordable homes that we need in London are provided when the restrictions have been removed and developers are therefore less likely to build affordable housing that we need? Before agreeing to this decision, what assessment has the Minister made of the impact it will have on those on the affordable housing waiting lists in London? That is a real crisis, and London councils right now are in desperate need of more finance to build more housing. There are possibilities to develop the brownfield sites that TfL and the Government own, but that is being restricted. There is a solution that we could advance. We hope the Government and the Minister, who I have a lot of respect for, can influence the Mayor of London to make that happen.

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[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) on securing this debate on such a vital issue. I echo many of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). Her neighbouring constituency now includes a ward that used to be in my constituency—a ward where house prices are reaching £2.5 million to £3 million in some cases. That is one end of the scale.

At the other end of the scale we have a homelessness situation that is intolerable, with thousands of people on the waiting list. Exactly as my right hon. Friend said, every week I visit people in their homes, which is something that MPs do. We see people where they live, with the problems they have: triple bunk beds with little space for the third child to get into bed; five people in a room; and toddlers with no space to run around. I could give a different example every week, but a real one. This is what we need to resolve, so I welcome the Government’s plan to build more homes.

There are a lot of challenges. The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) mentioned the “brownfield first” approach as a priority. There are plenty of brownfield sites in my constituency. I say “plenty” but, like the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury, my constituency is very small in relative terms but expensive to build on.

House prices in Hackney are 18.5 times average income, so all the young professionals who might want to get on the housing ladder are stuck in shared accommodation, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury said, and families are stuck in social housing, crowded and unable to go anywhere else because they cannot afford private rent, which gives no security anyway. Homeless families are increasingly in hostels for years. Only six years or so ago it would have been about six months before people had a chance of getting some sort of property, and now people are being moved out of the borough, wrecking their lives and opportunities.

We have 3,400 homeless households in temporary accommodation, which is a big issue for us all and costs the taxpayer a lot of money. It does damage to the families and the children’s opportunities. It breaks our communities, and all taxpayers have to fund that, so we need to resolve it. We have a total of 8,500 households on the council’s housing register, and the notional wait for a three-bedroom property is over a decade—it is a nonsense wait, because by that time the children have grown up. Around 44% of Hackney residents live in social housing. We have more private renters than homeowners and that level of social housing residents. Even though house prices are going up for some, the housing situation is worsening for many others.

Hackney council has been great at delivering properly affordable social housing. Affordable homes, which include both social rented and intermediate, make up 57% of council housing-led delivery. In crude terms, if Hackney council wants to build a home because of the land value, which I will touch on, it has to build one for private sale to pay for the one that is for intermediate or social rent. When I say to people, “We are working hard to get you a house,” they look at the houses I am pointing to on the neighbouring bit of land and say, “Will I get one of those?”, and I cannot, hand on heart, say that they will within any reasonable period of time. The devastation this is having is surely feeding into our special educational needs and health crises. It is just not long-term sustainable.

Since 2022, the current council period since the last council elections and between now and next April, 956 council homes for social rent have been in design, planning or acquisition or under construction. It is cheaper to buy back a leasehold property on a council estate than it is to build new, because it costs £450,000 in Hackney to build a new social rented home. It is no wonder we are having challenges delivering and no wonder that the Government and the Mayor of London are trying to work out a way to get more homes built. If they are all for private rent, we are going to exacerbate the problem, so we need to work that out. Construction costs are now around £5,000 per square metre compared with £1,000 to £1,500 a decade ago. That is being led by a number of issues globally, including Brexit, but this is the reality we are dealing with. When I looked at this in my previous role on the Public Accounts Committee, the Government’s own figures showed—I am sure the Minister is aware—that bricks and mortar subsidies offered the best value for money for the taxpayer to try to resolve the problem.

We need things not just on brownfield but on grey belt. I do think that the green belt has some grey belt —we need to be realistic about this. Bits of old car park that no one is using could be turned into homes. We need to be creative when looking at this.

[Wendy Morton]

The hon. Member makes a really important point about grey belt. I completely understand her example of a car park, but grey belt needs much clearer definition, because we are seeing cases of development that inspectors are now saying is grey belt when it is actually greenfield, and that is really damaging to our communities.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

That is a fair challenge, and I am sure that the Minister will pick that up. It is important that we all know where the goal posts are.

I would like to ask the Minister about the release of public land. This is something that I have looked at over the years. Whether it is the Ministry of Defence, Transport for London or the Department of Health and Social Care, the Treasury has, over many Governments, insisted that that money goes back to the Department. On one level, that is completely logical, but looking at hospitals or schools, if that land could be used for housing, it would help teachers, nurses or doctors to live locally.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I have long campaigned on that issue. I have a disused police station in my constituency, in Teddington, and we want to turn it into a GP surgery and social housing. I tabled an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to ensure that public sector sites are redeveloped for public good. Unfortunately, I have had no response from the Minister. Does the hon. Lady agree that that would be a good amendment to make?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I hear what the hon. Lady says, but I also recognise that there are financial challenges with the Treasury signing a fairly blank cheque to say that all public land could become housing. We need to be creative about this, and that is where we need a mixture of local knowledge and some flexibility from the Treasury. For example, the change of use of school sites was quite gummed up in the Department for Education under the previous Government. We need to make sure that any change of use can be dealt with relatively quickly. It will be better for health and education outcomes if we use that land for other things.

We need a national mission on housing, and I applaud the Minister for leading on that. Does he have any plans to limit further overseas purchasers buying these properties? It is great for developers, because they get that cash in, but we need to prioritise local people, and tax does not seem to be doing it. Does he have any thoughts about restricting Airbnb? I know well the blocks that my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury was talking about, because during covid, people paid rent to go to those places to isolate, but they were not proper homes. That is having a devastating effect on school numbers across London. Could the Minister look at the costs of building? The long-term costs of not doing it will be enormous, and we need to support those families who desperately need social rented housing.

[David Mundell (in the Chair)]

I ask our last three speakers to stick to their five minutes.

Property Service Charges

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is nice to have his name on the record.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) for bringing the topic to the House’s attention. In my constituency, this is rapidly becoming one of the most frequently raised issues. The biggest problem is that people who have worked hard, saved responsibly and bought a home in good faith find themselves trapped in a system that is opaque, unaccountable, and, in the worst cases, exploitative.

Like other Members, since being elected I have been inundated with complaints about one company in particular. We all know its name: FirstPort. It is, by some distance, the most problematic housing management company operating in my constituency. My office is dealing with almost 40 open cases relating to developments that it manages. The stories are depressingly consistent: residents describe unexplained charges, unclear billing and long delays in resolving the simplest issues—we have heard many such examples today. They send long chains of unanswered emails. They attend my surgeries exhausted and frustrated. When my team contacts FirstPort on residents’ behalf, we often wait an unacceptable length of time for a reply, and progress—if it comes at all—is slow.

Earlier this year, I and other Members of this House met FirstPort’s managing director. I hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you see me as a chilled-out kind of guy, but I left that meeting with my blood boiling, and other Members had a similar experience. We asked straight- forward questions but received vague answers, rehearsed corporate language and no clear commitment to improving customer service. A group of MPs will meet FirstPort again soon, and I hope that the company has set to work in earnest. On reflection, what angered me most was that many of the people caught up in these issues are elderly. They feel intimidated by the complexity of the system. They are passed from pillar to post, ignored when they raise legitimate concerns, and made to feel like an inconvenience simply for asking what their money is being spent on.

However, when FirstPort wants payment—this is something that it is very good at—its communication becomes clear and very persistent. When residents in several developments tried to move away from FirstPort, essential financial documents, including sinking fund balances and reconciliation statements, were withheld. In some cases, large sums of residents’ money were retained for months, preventing new management companies from planning maintenance or accounting properly. In my constituency, local resident directors Karen Wheeler and David Buller—fierce campaigners—have documented delayed fund transfers, missing paperwork and opaque accounting.

Karen eventually gave up trying to reconcile the final balance because the spreadsheets were, in her words, “unfathomable”. For Karen’s development, the cost was about £500—quite a significant sum for many elderly residents—but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate rightly said, the real issue here is the power imbalance. Residents have no transparency, no clarity and no meaningful route to resolution, despite FirstPort’s own code of conduct, which promises transparency, value for money and excellent customer service. I think we can all agree that that does not stack up.

This is neither an isolated concern nor a partisan one. Former Ministers have highlighted FirstPort and other companies being consistently associated with high charges and poor service. The BBC has reported homeowners being billed for things such as “terrorism insurance”, without any context, while basic grounds maintenance is not completed. More than 30 MPs have written jointly to FirstPort demanding action.

We all know that the problem is structural. Far too many homeowners are locked into contracts they never chose, are forced to pay service charges for poorly maintained communal areas, and have no ability to change providers when the services fail. As we have heard, many homeowners on private estates—the so-called “fleecehold” estates—are effectively paying twice: once through council tax, and once through service charges. Leaseholders trying to sell their homes frequently face long delays and eye-watering administration fees, and what should be a proud milestone—owning or selling a home—becomes a source of stress and financial burden.

We have heard that legal protections exist, but they are not enough. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 will bring mandatory transparency—

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Reed]

I have one minute left and I will make my final points. The Act aimed to bring mandatory transparency, through standardised billing, greater rights to challenge charges, and easier routes to taking over management, but those reforms are not yet implemented. Why is that? I hope that the Minister, in his closing remarks, will set out a course for when those measures will be implemented, and will say what new legislation will be brought in to ensure that people are protected. I finish on a point on which I think we all agree: residents who are on these schemes do not need more consultations; they need action, and this Parliament must deliver.

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[Dame Meg Hillier]

Many Members have raised the issue of the adoption of roads. Obviously, physical roads are easier to define, but there are parts of private estates that are only for that estate. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a challenge, given the current financial situation, because it usually costs councils money to adopt a road, and under the current law, it could be a big hit for those leaseholders to pay the fee up front for the council to adopt the road?

[Sam Carling]

My hon. Friend makes a very useful point. I should have clarified that the figure I gave does not include the private roads that were not supposed to be adopted; it was purely the ones that are having this issue.

As my hon. Friend says, councils are in a difficult financial situation. The precarious state of local government finances after 14 years of cuts and freezes certainly has not helped. We also have a lot of councils blaming developers and developers blaming councils, and there is an increasing divergence between what council planning departments are requiring to grant permission for development and what the highways departments of said councils are willing to adopt. That is particularly vexing when there is a two-tier system, with planning at one level and highways at another. I hope local government reorganisation will help with that, but it is happening in unitary authorities too, and we need to explore ways to deal with that.

Ultimately, these are symptoms of a wider issue in how the system treats freeholders and leaseholders alike. The leasehold and commonhold reform Bill will be a vital step forward. I am pleased the Government are committed to ending leasehold for new developments. From my experience, that change cannot come soon enough. A key advantage of commonhold becoming the default tenure is that managing agents will be appointed by and responsible to leaseholders, rather than absentee corporate freeholders. Of course, the situation with managing agents still needs to be improved, and I am very supportive of mandatory regulation as a core step towards that, which I hope the Minister will comment on.

This debate comes in a week of real progress: the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 has become law, finally giving tenants the fair treatment they deserve. Let’s keep up that progress, because nobody should have to pay through the nose for poor service, broken promises and a system that puts profit before residents.

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[Lewis Cocking]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes an excellent point in standing up for his constituents. This is an important point. All MPs across the House have probably attended such meetings, and these companies are unable to answer the most basic questions. They are paid considerable amounts of money, and they cannot answer simple questions from constituents about how much money they will have to pay, where the liability sits, and what work they are going to do.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I do not know the case the hon. Gentleman is talking about, but I agree that good communication is important. However, it was his Government, under Margaret Thatcher, who introduced the right to buy. That means we have leaseholders mixed with council tenants, so where a council has to improve a property, it needs to go to the leaseholders for their share of the costs. There was always going to be a tension there, and he must acknowledge that that will be a reality where we have pepper-potted estates—notwithstanding that he obviously needs to fight for proper information for his constituents.

[Lewis Cocking]

I fully support the right to buy, which was a good policy—[Interruption.] I am just stating that it was a good policy and I supported that. The hon. Lady makes an interesting point about communication, which must be there. As I have mentioned, Enfield council does not collect a sinking fund, which can go some way towards mitigating some of the issues, as she and I have raised, with leaseholders being asked to stump up for large bills. We need more transparency and better regulation, and we must ensure—here I agree with hon. Members across the Chamber—that councils adopt outside amenity spaces.

We need real improvements in the way that leaseholders are treated. Abolishing ground rent is a good first step and the Government need to get on with delivering that. I also agree that commonhold must be more widespread, but is by no means a silver bullet or right for everyone. I urge the Government to get on with it, improve the lives of hundreds of my constituents, and urgently implement more of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. We must get on with those improvements and help hundreds of our constituents.

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[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I declare an interest as a leaseholder myself.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling), I will not name any managing agent or developments, because many of my residents are concerned that if their block is named, it will cause them very big issues. I was delighted to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) that there are some good management companies, because the picture is certainly mixed in my patch. The company that has been named often in this debate manages some estates in my area, and some are better run than others. A lot seems to depend on the individual property manager and how they run their development, and the size and age of a development definitely has an impact.

In the short time that I have, I will raise a couple of important issues. One is about insurance. We know that costs went up post Grenfell because insurance moved from insuring just the floor that a flat is on to the entire block, but other increases have arisen that are difficult to explain, and there is a danger that we will struggle to get insurance. One block in my patch was able to get one insurer quote for 12 months only, and it was quoted an extortionately high excess rate at the beginning—somewhere in the region of £15,000. That was the excess that the housing association freeholder would have to pay before anything happened. It managed to get that down, but it could only get one 12-month period of insurance.

I think we need to be careful in our discussions about the relationship between insurance companies and managing agents. I know from my role as Chair of the Treasury Committee that there are very strict rules on ringfencing operations, so insurance companies and managing agents should not have a cosy relationship. In law, they are not entitled to do so.

[Sam Carling]

I thank my hon. Friend for her work on this issue on the Treasury Committee. In my speech, I raised an insurance issue that my constituents have gone to the Financial Ombudsman Service about, but they are having problems about whether it is a FOS issue or a property ombudsman issue, and it is just not very clear. Would she join me in calling for more clarity?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that we need clarity on this issue. We are talking a lot about service charges, but the insurance industry has a responsibility because it accounts for a large chunk of them. Regulators have a clear role to play, and it is important that that is considered in all the changes we are discussing.

I am pleased that the Government have been consulting on these issues. The consultation on service charges ended in February, so I hope the Minister can give us an update about it. It is important to touch on a couple of other issues. We know that poor maintenance leads to high costs, so standards and expectations should be set on maintenance, which costs leaseholders, but costs them less in the long run if things are maintained. That is a repeated theme across my constituency, as some very modern blocks have not been maintained properly, which means leaseholders end up paying more in the end than they should have done.

There is also an issue with greening blocks. I have constituents working very effectively to try to get electric vehicle charging points and better insulation in a block that is an old warehouse; the famous loft apartments were very popular in my constituency at one point. However, improving such things creates betterment, which increases the ground rent, because the owner of the building can say it is an improvement and can charge more. Such tenants are making their property greener, cleaner and more efficient—costing them less in a lot of ways—but they are ending up with their costs being put up somewhere else, which seems to be a complete imbalance that we have not discussed.

On the right to manage and commonhold—I am a Labour and Co-op MP, and I am very proud to be pushing for commonhold—there can be issues where there is a right to manage. I am working with a development where there is a right-to-manage company, but the directors have hidden themselves away and are not acting responsibly in answering and providing information to their neighbours in the development. I think governance needs an overhaul in this area. It is not going to solve everything if residents take over the management but then do not do a good job, so there needs to be transparency all round.

As we know, this is on top of increased mortgage charges, and let us not forget what the 2022 Budget did to mortgage charges. Shared owners are paying mortgages, rents and service charges, and this is all adding to the cost of living and causing huge upset, on top of the spending on building safety requirements that are hitting so many of my constituents. That is causing real problems, but we need to be clear, so rather than go through the list myself, I will endorse all the asks that my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) listed about transparency, openness and getting clearer rights for residents to challenge service charges and to make sure they absolutely understand why they are being charged such fees. That is the basic minimum, but we should be making sure it happens.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

I won’t. I am more than happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman about this issue, as I do on a regular basis, and pick up these exchanges, but I want to make a bit of progress.

Lastly, the fragmentation of management on many of these estates compounds the problems we experience. Even on relatively new developments, homeowners often have to deal with multiple management companies, each levying fees in ways that reduce transparency and increase the risk of exploitation. In those situations, home- owners understandably often feel misled and trapped.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Will the Minister give way?

[Matthew Pennycook]

No, I will not give way any further. There is another debate to follow and I will not test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is worth saying that the Competition and Markets Authority published a study of the house building industry last year. It recommended stronger protections for homeowners and called for the mandatory adoption of certain amenities on new estates and, crucially, common adoptable standards for those amenities. The Government’s response to that report accepted many of its recommendations in principle, but acknowledged that further work is required.

I reiterate the Government’s firm commitment to end the injustice of fleecehold entirely. As I set out in my written ministerial statement of November 2024, we will consult this year on legislative and policy options to reduce the prevalence of private estate management arrangements, which are the root cause of the problems experienced by many residential freeholders.

On that point, I say to the hon. Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed)—I congratulate him on the birth of his child—that I must gently push back on his assertion that we do not need to consult. Through the consultation responses that we are receiving on issues such as service charge protections, we are gathering a huge amount of information that will allow us to implement these changes effectively, to the lasting benefit of leaseholders.

It is also vital that homebuyers understand what will happen to the estate that they are moving into. The Government are currently consulting on guidance to support estate agents with their legal responsibility to provide potential buyers with relevant material information during property transactions, as well as consulting on what should be considered material information for buyers. The Government also want to empower home- owners who are already living on estates under these arrangements. In September this year, the Law Commission published its 14th programme of law reform, which included a project on the management of housing estates. It will consider how residents could be given greater control over the management of their housing estates. My Department is proud to be the sponsoring Department for the project.

In the short term, it is imperative that we protect residential freeholders on privately managed estates from unfair charges. As hon. Members will be aware, the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 contains provision for a new regulatory framework, broadly mirroring the rights already enjoyed by leaseholders and designed to give residential freeholders new consumer protections. We intend to consult again this year on how to implement those new protections to ensure that the framework is effective, but I want to assure hon. Members that I am determined to bring them into force as quickly as possible.

Many hon. Members mentioned service charges in a wider sense, and it is right that they champion the cause of leaseholders in their constituencies. As I have made clear on many occasions in this House, this Government recognise the considerable financial strain that rising service charges place on leaseholders and tenants. I reiterate the Government’s firm view that overcharging through service charges is completely unacceptable. In July this year we consulted on the measures in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 that are designed to drive up the transparency of service charges. We also consulted on proposals to introduce a fairer litigation costs regime, helping leaseholders to challenge service charges and protecting them from disproportionate legal expenses. The consultation included proposals on mandating reserve funds and reforming the major works process. As I have said, we have received a huge amount of useful feedback from the consultation, which closed on 26 September. I assure hon. Members that the stories I have heard today will inform my thinking on how the Government respond in due course.

On that point, let me say briefly that I would welcome correspondence from my hon. Friends the Members for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell), for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) and for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) with some further details about why judgments of the tribunal are not being enforced in the cases that they raised.

Before I conclude my remarks, I must address the legitimate concerns that have been raised in respect of the performance of managing agents, both on freehold estates and in leasehold blocks. We know that there are good managing agents who work hard to ensure that the residents they are responsible for are safe and secure, and that homes are properly looked after, but we also know that far too many leaseholders suffer from poor practice at the hands of unscrupulous managing agents.

I heard so many references to FirstPort during the debate that while I was sitting on the Front Bench I asked my private office to send a request to its managing director asking that he come and meet me so that I can convey some of the concerns that have been raised. Managing agents play a key role in the maintenance of multi-occupancy buildings and freehold estates, and their importance will only increase as we transition toward commonhold, so it is essential that we strengthen their regulation to drive up the standard of their service.

As hon. Members will know, the previous Government committed to regulate the property agent sector in 2018. They asked a working group, chaired by Lord Best, to advise them on how to do it. Yet they failed to respond to the group’s final report, published in July 2019. This Government have engaged seriously and constructively with the findings set out in that report, and we have already taken forward a number of its recommendations. In the recent consultation on strengthening leaseholder protections from charges and services, which I referenced earlier, we consulted on powers to appoint a manager or replace a managing agent, as well as on mandatory professional qualifications for managing agents in England, but that is not the final step in this process, and we will set out our full position on regulation of estate, letting and managing agents in due course.

To conclude, I am grateful to the hon. Member for Reigate for giving the House an opportunity to debate these important matters, I thank all Members who have participated in the debate today for sharing their concerns and insights, and—I say this genuinely—I very much look forward to further engagement with right hon. and hon. Members as the Government continue to implement the reforms to the leasehold system that are already in statute, and to progress the wider set of reforms necessary to end the feudal leasehold system for good in this Parliament, and not least the ambitious draft commonhold and leasehold reform Bill, which we will publish before the end of the year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will refer the hon. Lady’s comments about the warm homes plan to the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. If she wishes to write to me with details of any particular cowboy builders, I would be more than happy to read what she has to say.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is great that we are transforming leasehold properties, but many leaseholders are now stuck in a gap with their freeholders when it comes to betterment. If they want to green their homes through new roofs, new insulation and electric vehicle charging, they have to pay a huge extra cost. Will the Minister and, if necessary, Ministers from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero meet me and my constituents to discuss this issue? There is a real gap when it comes to achieving green improvements.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clause 59, in my name, which considers the impact of our planning system on our creative and cultural industries and infrastructure. These spaces are the foundation of our world-beating creative industries and are also very important for our local communities. They are the engine of an industry which is growing at twice the rate of the rest of the economy. They are the R&D labs of a sector that is bigger than our automotive, aerospace and life sciences industries combined. Yet the creatives industries are under threat, including from our disruptive planning system and onerous licensing regime.

My Culture, Media and Sport Committee has heard that live music venues will be back to shutting at the rate of two a week by the end of the year. That is in addition to electronic music venues and clubs, which have been shutting at the rate of three a week. My amendment seeks to help prevent those closures by putting a duty on planning decision makers to apply the agent of change principles, which have existed since the national planning policy framework in 2018. They require developers to ensure that their developments do not disrupt existing businesses in future, as well as places of worship, schools, transport infrastructure and so on.

First, the new clause would be good for venues. Of the 86 grassroots music venues that closed in 2024, one in four shut for operational reasons, including noise abatement orders, neighbour disputes and interventions by the local councils. In the previous Parliament, the Committee I chair held a roundtable in Manchester at the Night and Day Café, an iconic venue. We were there to meet representatives of live music venues from across the north, yet the operators could not attend their own roundtable because they were instead attending a court hearing with Manchester city council to settle a three-year noise abatement dispute—a costly and pointless legal dispute at that, as it started due to a single complaint by a tenant who had moved out long before the issue was resolved.

Secondly, the new clause would be good for developers and new neighbours. Consistent application of the agent of change principle will de-risk and speed up planning and development. It will ensure that the needs of an existing cultural venue are considered from the start and save developers from late-stage objections and lengthy, expensive legal disputes down the line. It will require developers and decision makers to think about the presence of existing venues and will benefit future tenants and homeowners, who should be less impacted overall.

Finally, the new clause would help local authorities. It is councils that have the duties to detect statutory nuisance and investigate noise complaints; it is councils that serve noise abatement orders; and it is councils that get dragged into expensive and often pointless bun fights with local venues, as the Night and Day Café example illustrates. Encouraging councils to consider at the planning stage how developers and venues can find a nice equilibrium in their interests can only help to save them time and money, which is surely more efficient than settling matters in court.

The new clause has widespread support. It takes forward the recommendation of the CMS Committee in the previous Parliament and is supported by the whole live music sector, from the operators of our smallest clubs, pubs and venues to the biggest arenas and stadiums. It will benefit the breadth of our cultural infrastructure, from our historic theatres to our pulsating nightclubs. It is built on evidence given by LIVE, UK Music Creative UK, the Music Venue Trust, the Night Time Industries Association and the National Arenas Association.

The new clause is not about venues versus developers; instead, it is about ensuring we have the balance right between building enough good homes and making sure the places we are building keep the things that make life worth living. Everyone in Westminster and our constituencies agrees that our high streets have been in decline, so it is vital that we protect the places that are special to us, our constituents and our communities—the places that provide a platform for our creators and our world-beating creative industries, where we can make memories, celebrate and have fun.

I hope the Government will support my new clause and, if not today, commit to making this law as soon as possible. Live music is in crisis. The Government need to listen.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to speak to amendment 87, in my name and the names of most Select Committee Chairs—certainly most of those who cover Departments—including the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), and the Chair of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury).

The amendment relates to the Government’s new approach to the consultation around national policy statements, and in particular to the parliamentary scrutiny of those statements. There is currently a process by which Select Committees join forces to examine national policy statements and provide recommendations to the Government, but the Government are proposing to introduce what they call a new “reflective amendment” procedure where an amendment to planning policy reflects new legislation, changes to Government policy or a relevant court decision since the policy guidance was put in place. We all know that the Government’s aim is to speed up the planning process, but we need to be clear that reducing parliamentary scrutiny can have long-term consequences. I am therefore seeking reassurances from the Minister as to how this will be managed.

This proposal will remove the requirement to respond to either a resolution of either House of Parliament or recommendations from a Committee of either House of Parliament on the proposed changes; instead, the Government would write to the appropriate Select Committee at the start of the public consultation period, which is typically six to 12 weeks, and the Committee would then have the option of inviting Ministers to discuss the proposed changes during that time. My fellow Chairs and I are concerned about this change reducing the Committees’ influence and enshrining in law that the Government do not need to respond to the scrutiny or recommendations of Select Committees.

[Gideon Amos]

rose—

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has tabled a similar amendment.

[Gideon Amos]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady and the other Select Committee Chairs for taking up an issue that we took up in Committee, and about which there has been concern across the House. The Government may wish to change NPSs in the light of legal judgments, but does she agree that changes to them for policy reasons, particularly when they affect massive projects like Hinkley Point C and Sizewell, should continue to come before the House?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

If I move on to what will happen, I think the hon. Gentleman will be reassured. There is a bigger point here, which I do not have time to elaborate on in this debate. This change is part of a trend of Government not appreciating the role of thoughtful, thorough scrutiny from outside the Whitehall bubble—this is a disease affecting Governments of all parties—and of scrutiny from MPs with detailed knowledge of the subject matter. The hon. Gentleman, of course, has a strong track record on this issue outside this place, from before he became a Member of this House.

Those who scrutinise through Select Committees often understand the system, and how a change in policy or law can have a different effect within policy guidance because of the interactions it will have. The worst-case scenario here would be that a Committee did not have time to examine a proposal, or, if it did have time, that the Government ignored the recommendations. I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for the time they have spent engaging with me and the Clerk of the Liaison Committee, on behalf of the Select Committees, to try to mitigate those worst-case risks. In theory, these changes could sound quite reasonable, but in practice, there is a risk that the Government could lose a useful voice that also reflects the views of other bodies. Select Committees also get the chance to question Ministers in public, which is important for transparency and accountability. Select Committees can also give force to the views and expertise—shared in public, very often orally—of bodies with knowledge of the technical changes that could be introduced and wrapped into new or revised policy guidance.

We have all been there when, at the Dispatch Box, a Minister promises that another Minister will attend a Committee and be questioned, but we are talking about having as little as six weeks to work with. We have all been in a situation in which a Minister’s diary is so busy that it is difficult for them to attend, and that would not be good enough in this case. I hope the Minister will give some reassurance that he will, through the normal channels in Whitehall, ensure that every Department is aware of the requirement for a relevant Minister to attend within a period that allows the Committee to produce a report or respond to the Government, which does not mean at the end of a six or 12-week consultation period.

I hope the Minister can give me those reassurances. I would like him to be very clear on the record. I acknowledge the efforts made in Committee to talk about this, and some of the pledges made then, but it is important that these changes and the Minister’s views and pledges are made clear in this Chamber. In Committee, the Minister said that

“Ministers will make themselves available to speak at the Committee during that period, in so far as that is practical.”

He also said that

“not all select Committees will respond in the relevant period, therefore elongating the process”.––[Official Report, Planning and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 29 April 2025; c. 103.]

I can clarify for and reassure the Minister that it is the intention of those on Committee corridor to ensure that these things are dealt with in a proper and timely fashion.

I hope that the Minister will ensure both that Ministers attend in a timely fashion, and that there is a proper approach that ensures that Committees get advance notice of a new planning policy statement or revised statement, so that they have time to plan and get their ducks in a row in order to enhance the work of Government by giving them, if necessary, critical-friend comments. Scrutiny in whatever form is absolutely vital. If, as I hope, the Minister will put that on the record today, I will not push my amendment to a vote. It is vital that parliamentary scrutiny be protected as much as possible.

[Andrew George]

It is clear that we are today debating methodologies, rather than values. Certainly, I do not dispute the Minister’s values at all; we all want to see the growing need met, and the environment protected. The question that we are debating today is the best methodologies for achieving those outcomes. I have submitted a number of amendments covering three areas, which I will rattle through as quickly as I can, all of which support the themes that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) advanced today, and indeed that he has pursued in Committee in previous weeks.

Amendment 148 relates to housing targets. It proposes allowing local authorities to adopt targets that reduce housing need, rather than simply targets to build homes. House building targets are in many areas part of the problem, rather than the solution to housing need. For example, since the 1960s, Cornwall’s housing stock has been among the fastest growing in the United Kingdom. It has almost trebled, yet housing problems for local people have got significantly worse over that time.

Simply setting house building targets results in massive hope value being attached to every single community around Cornwall. Having worked as a chief executive of a charity that tries to build affordable homes, I can say that establishing house building targets makes it more difficult to address the housing needs of local people. Targets that are about reducing need would change the dynamics of the planning system in places that face these problems.

Unfortunately, the approach to house building targets that has been adopted by parties over the previous decade is built on the delusion that private developers will collude with Governments to drive down the price of their finished product. We can no longer carry on in that delusion. We cannot and should not pursue counterproductive methodologies. Amendment 149 and new clause 108 are consequential on the fundamental change proposed in amendment 148.

My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington has spoken about introducing a new class order to address the prevalence of non-permanent occupancy in some areas. The previous Government were looking at bringing in a new class order for holiday lets, but that should be extended to second homes and all homes of non-permanent occupancy. New clause 92, which is consequential on new clause 91, proposes introducing a sunset clause for planning permission to ensure that there is not a perverse incentive for people to apply to change a property’s use in order to enhance the value of their property when they sell it. This is not about the politics of envy but the politics of social justice. I think those who represent areas or constituencies with large numbers of second homes properly understand how these things operate.

Finally, I tabled a number of amendments relating to affordability, including new clause 89 on affordable development and new clause 90. New clause 89 would prohibit cross-subsidy—or at least open-market development—on rural exception sites. Those sites should not be called rural exception sites; they should be called rural norm sites. That should be the methodology for delivering affordable homes in rural areas. It should be driven by wanting to have affordable homes in such locations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

The Minister for Housing and Planning answered this question just a moment ago. Perhaps my Mancunian accent will help: the OBR scored the national planning policy framework changes that we have already made. That is where that figure came from. Our other plans, including the new homes accelerator programme, the money that we have invested since then, and the changes in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, mean that the number will increase, and we will meet our 1.5 million homes target. I do not think that I can put it much clearer than that.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

There is a real housing crisis in Hackney, where we spend £54 million a year on temporary accommodation. I visit families, most of them working families, in tragically overcrowded accommodation. We need this social housing as quickly as possible, and I know my right hon. Friend is putting her shoulder to the wheel. Will she visit Hackney to see the work that the council has been doing to build properly affordable social rented council housing? The council could do so much more with more Government support.

[Angela Rayner]

We have over 160,000 children in temporary accommodation, as I have said at the Dispatch Box a couple of times, and it is a scandal that we are in this situation. That is why the Government are making these changes. We make no apology for changing the mandatory housing targets to get Britain building again, because we need those homes and those kids deserve better. We also need to cut the number of children living in temporary accommodation, including B&Bs. We are determined to do that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

The Government have taken action. We will ensure that empty homes are brought back into use. We make no apologies for asking that homes are of a decent and safe standard. People should be able to live in their homes without the risk of hazards that are dangerous to their health.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

In my constituency, one of the big challenges for the private rented sector is the need to house families who are in temporary accommodation. It is very often a five-year tenancy; sometimes it is longer. Such families really should not be in these sorts of homes, which are often overcrowded, leading to damp and mould, whatever the best intentions of the local authority that housed them. In order to improve standards across the board, will my right hon. Friend pledge to ensure that we are pushing for much-needed affordable social rented housing, so that those tenants can move into it, and other private tenants can move into these homes, which will then be improved?

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome this commitment to local government and recognise that the Minister has a big job to do in addressing the challenges that have arisen because of the last 14 years—not least in local government audit. I welcome what seems to be a commitment to embracing the Redmond review. Will he give more detail about what will replace the Office for Local Government?

[Jim McMahon]

Most in the sector would agree that Oflog—the Office for Local Government—had a vague remit that was an expensive way of gathering data. In the end, if it were to be developed, we could risk mission creep whereby its remit would verge into the areas that local authorities so disliked about the former Audit Commission. We are trying to get the right balance between the early warning system that enables us to see which individual councils are under stress, and, importantly, noting any developing systemic threats or themes for which central Government might have to take much earlier action. We want to rebuild that early warning system.

However, we are absolutely clear that we are not replacing the Audit Commission. For one, it was hugely expensive, and we need to ensure that any money goes to the frontline of local public services. Honestly, councils do not need inspectors going in to mark their homework when they should be trusted to get on and do the job well. People understand what the National Audit Office is, so we hope that they will understand and see the benefit of a local audit office, and that it will be embraced by the sector.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are continuing to see what measures we can take, and I have taken nothing off the table. I am working with my officials to make sure that those who are responsible are the ones who pay, not taxpayers.

Important progress has been made since 2017. Fire and rescue services are better trained and better prepared for large-scale emergencies, improvements have been made to local authority building enforcement, and a poor culture among tenant housing associations is being tackled through regulation. However, we must go further. If you speak to those who live in unsafe buildings, it does not feel like there has been progress—it does not feel like progress to them. They still feel trapped, powerless in the face of a system that is not designed for them, so this Government are acting.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

As my right hon. Friend has just said, many of my constituents feel very trapped, so I welcome the acceleration of action. However, does she have any timeframe—or will her Department be working up a timeframe—for when that action will have an impact on constituents? Some of mine will be facing bankruptcy because of the challenges they have been facing. I should declare for the record that I am a leaseholder.

[Angela Rayner]

The absolute deadline we have put forward as part of our remediation acceleration plan is 2029, but we want to go much further. The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris), and I have met with developers and others, and we continue to push really hard on this issue—it has been one of our No. 1 focuses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, as I did during much of our work on the Select Committee. One of Martin Moore-Bick’s recommendations was exactly that: that all test results should be published, not just the ones that support the safety of the product. That would go a long way towards ensuring that the true safety of the products is established.

The BRE findings highlight a shocking betrayal of trust, and a callous disregard for public safety, driven by financial gain. The report also identified severe leadership and management failings within the London Fire Brigade. It described a chronic lack of effective management, an undue focus on processes, and a complacency among senior officers regarding the brigade’s operational efficiency. Those weaknesses hindered the brigade’s ability to respond effectively to the crisis, and underscored the need for systemic reform and improved leadership in fire services.

To address those failings, the phase 2 report made far-reaching recommendations, including the establishment of a single construction regulator; centralising fire safety responsibilities under one Secretary of State, to end fragmentation across Departments; regular updates to approved document B, to keep fire safety regulations current; and the creation of a chief construction adviser and a college of fire and rescue to ensure high standards in fire safety training and practices. We fully support those recommendations and urge the Government to implement them swiftly and effectively. We will scrutinise their progress to ensure that the necessary reforms are delivered without delay.

Some have questioned the pace of the remediation efforts. I think the Secretary of State was right to do so. I emphasise that the remediation efforts prioritised the highest-risk buildings, and by July 2024, 98% of high-rise buildings with the most dangerous, Grenfell-style ACM cladding had either completed or started work. On the remaining buildings, enforcement action is being taken against non-compliant owners. The complexity of the buildings and legal disputes over responsibility have caused delays. Nevertheless, all building owners must step up, take responsibility, and act swiftly to address the issues, or face the consequences of their inaction. It is important to note that the building regulations regime was established under the Building Act 1984, and fire safety reforms were introduced by other Governments in previous decades, as the Secretary of State acknowledged.

From 2010, the coalition Government sought to remove unnecessary bureaucracy, but fire safety and building safety were explicitly excluded from those reviews. The inquiry acknowledged that key safety regulations, including the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 were excluded from deregulation initiatives. Under our leadership, safety was never treated as red tape. Nevertheless, as the report confirms, mistakes were made by Ministers and officials on our watch. The frequency of changes under Governments of different political stripes, and the frequency of changes in housing Ministers and Secretaries of State, would not have helped. I hope that Parliament may learn that lesson for the future. Since 2017, the Conservatives in Government led comprehensive reforms of building compliance and fire safety. Measures introduced include the Fire Safety Act 2021 and the Building Safety Act 2022, which created the Building Safety Regulator to oversee stricter compliance with standards.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

One issue that arose at an early stage, about a year after the tragedy at Grenfell, was the need for fire safety surveyors. These people are experts and take about three years to train. In retrospect, does the hon. Gentleman not think that a lesson for future Governments of any colour is to look at such issues at an early stage, because we still have a shortage of those people now in 2024?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I agree. Mistakes were made—there is no doubt about it. As the phase 2 report recommends, there should be greater oversight and regulation of people who proclaim themselves to be experts in these fields. I agree with the hon. Lady’s points.

Accountability must remain a cornerstone of our response. Those who knowingly cut corners on safety to maximise profits must face justice. We call on the Metropolitan police and the Crown Prosecution Service to pursue criminal charges against those responsible, be it through a deliberate act, a willingness to look the other way, or gross incompetence. Companies implicated in such wrongdoing should not receive future public contracts. Let us be clear: this was not the responsibility of any single Government, Minister or official. As the report sets out in its opening paragraphs, failures occurred over decades, involving Administrations of all political colours. We must approach these difficult questions with the honesty and determination that they deserve, ensuring that we learn the lessons of the past to protect lives in the future.

While we have made significant progress, the journey is far from over. As we look to the future, we must acknowledge the hard questions raised by the report about past governance. Those failures occurred over decades, involving Administrations led by Labour, the coalition Government, and Conservative Governments. This was a systemic failure, which requires an open and honest response. Our party’s record demonstrates our commitment to making things right. We took swift action after the tragedy to establish the public inquiry, launch the independent review of building regulations and fire safety, and allocate significant resources to remove unsafe cladding from high-risk buildings. The Fire Safety Act 2021 implemented recommendations from phase 1 of the Grenfell inquiry, and the Building Safety Act 2022 overhauled existing regulations, setting up the Building Safety Regulator to oversee stringent compliance measures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am very happy to agree with the hon. Gentleman and to welcome the Secretary of State’s announcements today about accelerating all of this and ensuring that action is taken much more quickly. I hope that that will result in much quicker action for his constituents.

I was addressing the first major recommendation in our submission to the inquiry, which is that there should be established an independent building safety investigation branch of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, reporting directly to the Secretary of State. That removes any possible conflict that investigations have with any other part of the system. The idea that the Health and Safety Executive or the new Building Safety Regulator should be conducting investigations is absolutely fine, but we can never guarantee that they will not come across a failing of their own and be conflicted in that investigation. The public will not have confidence in any investigation that they conduct unless there is an independent investigation that looks at all the elements of the system. The Hackitt review rather overlooked this issue. It failed to underline how future fire incidents would be investigated. This is a gap that is still to be addressed.

The current system of resort to public inquiries, as the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green confirmed, takes far too long. I feel for those who were caught up in the tragedy directly. They have waited far too long. An air accident investigation rarely takes more than a few months because the capability exists. In the Grenfell case, the Housing Ombudsman still felt that

“residents’ complaints were dismissed and devalued.”

I think the inquiry was overwhelmed with so much material and so many different elements. In a way, its terms of reference were too wide to be able to capably come up with a comprehensive set of safety system recommendations.

It is also notable that although there was an inquiry into the Lakanal House fire, we had another inquiry into Grenfell. Public inquiries do not seem to resolve problems. A building safety investigation branch would transform that. It would operate independently, modelled on similar bodies for air, marine and rail. These bodies have proven their worth in both the rail and aviation. No public inquiry has taken place into an aviation accident since 1972 and there has not been a public inquiry into a rail accident since the Ladbroke Grove inquiry, because people have confidence in the new independent arrangements. They conduct rapid investigations. They focus not on blame, but on understanding failures and issuing binding recommendations for the future.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

The hon. Gentleman has spent a lot of time in this House thinking about how systems work. Does he not think that there is now an argument for the Government to have a proper review process of all coroners’ recommendations and all public and other inquiry recommendations, so they do not just get responded to in the moment and then not followed up in the months and years that follow?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am sure that may be a very good suggestion, but the point I am making is that we need an apex to our safety system. Whatever else the Government do to remediate the safety system as it exists at the moment, they need an independent safety investigator as the apex of the system, which is like a guardian angel over the whole system. The hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater said there should be—I think I quote him correctly—an independent oversight body. Well, this is the body he seeks. It would be constantly looking for risks in the system, not just investigating accidents, and following up directly with the Secretary of State to say, “This has not been done.”

Crucially, the independence of the bodies is what commands public confidence. They also provide a very significant capability that no other regulator can do—a safety investigation body is not a regulator, of course. They provide a legal safe space where anybody can go and say anything without fear or favour. Witnesses have protection and, if necessary, anonymity, so they can openly speak without fear of retribution of being sued or the words they give in evidence being used against them in court. This creates a culture of openness that accelerates the learning process while maintaining accountability.

The introduction of a BSIB would not trespass on any other part of the safety system, such as the HSE or the Building Safety Regulator. It is an essential additional capability which needs to exist, otherwise we do not have that ultimate check over the whole system. Regulators, if necessary, can still run their investigations, as I was saying before. The safe space in the safety investigator does not protect anyone from legal culpability, as we saw when the air accidents investigation branch investigated the Shoreham air crash. It passed a file to the police, because it believed there had been negligence. The pilot was prosecuted. The safe space does not protect someone from wrongdoing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I associate myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell), and others, and I very much welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s written statement today, and her speech highlighting why the Government are acting and what they are doing.

We know that this was a systemic failure over many generations and across many parts of Government. In fact, in 2018 the late James Brokenshire issued a ministerial direction to civil servants to ensure that the original money was spent to remove the most dangerous cladding. I spoke to the senior civil servant who had had to go back and speak to predecessors about what had gone wrong, but no one had seen this coming. So I say to the Deputy Prime Minister that if there is a bigger lesson in this, it is about how the Government manage risk and watch for the unintended consequences of actions. Even with all the problems nobody intended that such things would happen, but that is what can happen if we do not keep our eye on the ball, and I hope my right hon. Friend will take that back to the heart of Government.

The impact in my constituency has been immense. Hackney as a borough has the second largest number of unsafe buildings in London, with the London Fire Brigade showing that 93% buildings in Hackney are at high risk—a larger figure than all other London boroughs except Tower Hamlets, as we heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran). We have 72 buildings that are over 18 metres tall. Together, Hackney and Tower Hamlets in the heart of east London account for almost a quarter of the buildings in London with fire safety failures. I invite the Minister to meet us in any of our constituencies, or indeed in this place, to talk about what can be done across east London, because the impact is terrible. Insurance premiums have gone up massively. Many of my constituents who are leaseholders face bankruptcy. The mission to achieve change by 2029 will be too late for some. There is also disruption to their lives. They are unable to move on, and are putting off having a family. Their lives are on hold while they wait for the matter to be resolved.

I concur with the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) about housing associations, but in the interests of time I will not repeat them. Some of these properties are owned offshore or have opaque ownership. That is one of the reasons that James Brokenshire issued a ministerial direction. He realised that one of the buildings with the worst cladding had had 89 owners since it was built. If there is one thing that the Government can do, they can stop our homes becoming vehicles for offshore finance. That is why 2029 is a challenge.

The National Audit Office report that has been cited says that we will not see changes until 2035. With the construction industry in its present state, and all the other pressures that the Government will face when trying to invest in infrastructure, I would love to hear from the Minister how we will ensure that we have the right construction skills in this country and, if it is what is required, that the Government will allow migration in order to ensure that we have the right skilled people in place.

Finally, I will highlight a wider issue about how we support families affected by fire. On 5 June this year, during the election campaign, a fire gutted a building on Dalston Lane in the Pembury Estate, with 36 households escaping with just the clothes on their back. Of those households, 10 are still in temporary accommodation—the Peabody housing trust did a good job in the early days of getting them housed—and many are still living in hotel rooms. Someone who is in her 90s is trying to be offered a place by an estate agent. Today, I launch a campaign, which other Members are welcome to join, to require landlords to have a wider set of plans to help tenants in the aftermath of a fire or other crisis. Yes, there is the immediate challenge—happily, there were no fatalities on Dalston Lane—but the ongoing impact on residents is immense, with mental health challenges, disruption to their lives and trauma. We need a holistic approach to supporting tenants and residents in those situations, and every landlord should be required to have that model.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

This evening’s debate has been appropriately serious and wide-ranging, and I will open by thanking the many who have enabled it to be just that: the excellent journalism of the BBC, which has ensured that not just the initial fire, but the inquiry and the lessons learned from it have remained at the forefront of public debate; and the survivors, the supporters of Grenfell United, some of whom are here tonight, and the many others who contributed to the inquiry process and to ensuring simply that Grenfell remained at the forefront of the public mind. I also thank Sir Martin Moore-Bick, who chaired the inquiry. I know it was the subject of some criticism when he was first appointed, but when we read the phase 2 report and consider everything that led up to it, we can see that it is a serious piece of work that puts us in a position to make good decisions about what needs to change.

It is our parliamentary duty to consider these most serious of matters. We need to ensure that we get it right for the sake of the survivors and the families of victims, but also for all the other people who have been spoken about in the Chamber this evening: those who live with anxiety about their own personal safety and circumstances, and those with a stake in the system, who need to ensure that the legislation that has flowed since the tragedy, and the actions that the new Government will need to continue, are fit for purpose. To that end, I confirm that the Opposition will support the Government to implement the proportionate and necessary measures that are required to keep the public safe.

Many Members across the Chamber have said that those who have intentionally cut corners on building safety need to be held to account, and the Opposition agree. While it has taken a long time, the inquiry process has gathered really good evidence, which will provide the Metropolitan police and others that may be involved, including the Crown Prosecution Service, with the beginnings of the evidence base needed to hold specific individuals to account through criminal charges and to pursue action against those developers and contractors who we now know clearly and fraudulently cut corners on building safety for their own financial gain. It has been said very clearly that we also need to ensure that the bigger businesses—the big corporates—that may have condoned that action need to be excluded from profiting from future public sector procurement activity.

There will be further lessons to learn from the inquiry. I pay tribute to a number of Members who made very serious and considered speeches. The hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) talked about the rise of the tenant management organisation. That is example of where there will be difficult questions for all parties and Government Departments to consider. The purpose of the previous Labour Government in introducing arms-length management organisations was to create a mechanism by which additional funding could be put forward to enable a higher standard to be achieved in the social housing sector.

However, I also know—the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation is a good example of this—that that created an additional barrier of governance between the local authorities, which in most cases were the freeholders of the properties in question, and the tenants, who in theory gained additional control through the creation of boards to oversee what happened in their buildings. However, as the phase 2 report spelt out very clearly, effective governance often failed to materialise. Instead, there was often mutual finger pointing, with each thinking that somebody else was responsible for the critical fire safety issues. Those lessons about governance, however difficult they may be for both sides of the Chamber, must not be glossed over.

It is clear, as has been set out, that the Government intend to take robust action. It is the Opposition’s contention that they have solid foundations to build on. As the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) set out, James Brokenshire—the then Minister, since sadly deceased—set out swiftly after the fire, once some initial information about its causes was available, that £400 million funding was to be made available to social housing providers and local authorities in 2018 to ensure the swift remediation of social housing settings with the most high-risk cladding on the exterior.

That was followed with legislation: the Fire Safety Act 2021, the Building Safety Act 2022 and the Social Housing Regulation Act 2023. Each was designed, as the process of inquiry was progressing and as other evidence came to light, to ensure that we were addressing, as far as we could, those things that we were legally able to do at each of those stages, first on the basics of fire safety, and then on to the broader lessons emerging about building safety and ensuring that social housing regulation—in what is a diverse sector—was fit for purpose.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; I want to repeat the point I made earlier, to see if I can get a response this time. We knew at various stages that there needed to be skilled people, from surveyors to contracting, to carry out the remediation work. Looking back, does he regret that perhaps some of that effort was not put into developing those skills earlier, so that constituents of ours who are still waiting for remediation could perhaps have had it done more quickly?

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question, and I am sorry to hear about Paul’s experience with that particular property management company—an experience that will, I know, be reflected in the experiences of many others across the country. There are two existing routes to redress in such circumstances, the property redress scheme and the property ombudsman scheme, to which people can submit complaints. I will happily write to the hon. Gentleman to set out in full the various sources of advice and support and the avenues for redress that his constituent might pursue before we bring in more fundamental changes to the regulation of the sector.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I should draw the House’s attention to the fact I am a leaseholder subject to service charges, as are hundreds of my constituents. There is very often a real lack of transparency and accountability from service providers. Bills are not very clear, and it takes quite a lot of effort to understand them. The Government could regulate, but will the Minister use his convening powers to encourage service providers to do better, prior to discussing legislation that could take a very long time?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I am more than happy to look into what more can be done by convening to get the various interested parties around the table. The Government are committed to implementing the provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, which includes measures to increase the transparency and standardisation of service charges and empower leaseholders in that way.