Building Safety Bill

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

Despite repeated promises to make buildings safe and protect leaseholders, and four years on from Grenfell, hundreds of thousands of people still live in unsafe homes and millions are caught up in the building safety crisis. Leaseholders are facing costs of hundreds of pounds a month for service charges, insurance premiums and waking watch, before even getting into remediation costs. The Government’s building safety fund excludes buildings under 18 metres, it is not distributed on the basis of risk, and just 10p or 12p in every pound of the fund has been allocated. There is also uncertainty about who will cover the cost of other fire safety defects and interim safety costs.

I appreciate that this debate has been very technical, but we must ensure that the voices of those leaseholders trapped in dangerous buildings are heard, and I want the Minister to hear testimony from people in Luton South. Tom, who lives in the Point Red building, says:

“We are left with terrible uncertainty, unable to move on with our lives, not knowing if we are going to be bankrupt and homeless by the end of the year. We sleep in a death trap every night.”

This afternoon’s statement and the added issue around the EWS1 forms is yet another layer of uncertainty, as it stands. Tom is a primary school teacher and his partner works with vulnerable children. The key workers we have relied on over the past 15 months have been forced to the edge of ruin month after month due to the life-ruining costs of fixing a problem they did not create. Will the Minister respond to Tom and his partner? How does he propose that they raise money to pay the remediation costs that are not covered by Government funding? It may be a shock to Conservative Members, but we do not all have trust funds or multiple assets to fall back on.

The mental health of innocent leaseholders has severely deteriorated, and the Government should ensure that they can access free support to reduce some of their anxieties and worries. The Bill needed to include explicit legal protections to ensure that millions of pounds of building safety remediation costs are not passed on to innocent homeowners and tenants. I support Labour’s call for a new building works agency that would go block by block to identify which works need doing, and then fix, fund and, crucially, certify them as safe and sellable at the end to allow leaseholders to finally move on with their lives.

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee’s report stated:

“It would be unacceptable and an abdication of responsibility to make them contribute a single penny towards the cost of remediating defects for which they were not responsible.”

This should not be the leaseholders’ burden to bear. It is developers that created the crisis by putting profit before protections. How can it be that property developers, who make millions each year, are protected, while teachers, nurses, shopworkers, transport workers, carers and pensioners are left to pick up the bill?

Building Safety Bill

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As a member of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee and having set on the Bill Committee, I welcome many of the Bill’s provisions. However, as a point of principle, no innocent leaseholder should have to remediate any historical cladding and non-cladding defects. We have heard that point made so well across the Chamber all afternoon.

Key now is what the Bill does not include, rather than what it does. We have heard much about the amendments that the Government propose will be considered in the other place, and I reiterate the call that we must have a full debate on the Bill’s return to the House to ensure those statutory protections for leaseholders. The proposal to make developers pay £4 billion for cladding removal in buildings under 18 metres is unclear on how quickly developers will be asked to pay and what measures the Government will take if they refuse. Without immediate compulsion, the process threatens to continue to be drawn out, with innocent leaseholders trapped in properties that they cannot sell and paying bills that they cannot afford. Does the Minister think it is right that social landlords have paid millions more than developers to fix the building safety scandal at the cost of delivering new social homes? I hope that we will see urgent action to appease concerns raised by leaseholders and Members across the House and to allay genuine concerns that it is one rule for council and social landlords and another for the Government’s developer friends.

We have yet to see the clarity that we expect on specific parts of the Bill for the significant numbers of leaseholders who face huge bills to fix non-cladding defects. If the Secretary of State is serious about ending that injustice, leaseholders must be protected from the cost of covering all historical defects. I reiterate the point made by many that those who created the crisis must be made to fix it.

I press the Government again to listen to leaseholders about how the ordeal has affected their mental health. Leaseholders in Luton South have told me how their mental health has suffered severely because of their fear of debt and bankruptcy and the pressure of the situation. One constituent told me how the threat of bankruptcy threatened their professional title and, therefore, their career. The scandal has prevented people from moving on with their lives—it is a form of purgatory.

When we discussed mental health in Committee, the Minister suggested that leaseholders should refer to their GPs, but we know how many pressures they are under. The Guardian has reported that officials have told leaseholders to call Samaritans. Both suggestions are simply inadequate. I repeat the ask that I made of the Secretary of State during last week’s statement for specific mental health support for affected leaseholders. We have had much debate today and through the consideration of this Bill that has been very technical and about buildings, but I stress again that this is about people and how they are affected. We must ensure that the leaseholder and tenant voice is heard as the Bill continues through its process.

The point has been made more than once, both today and over the past four years, that a disaster such as Grenfell must never happen again. The insufficient action for nearly five years shows the need for an interventionist Government to make people safe, as the market alone is incapable of doing that. I support my party’s calls for the Government to set up a building works agency that would go block by block assessing risk, commissioning necessary fire safety work, certifying that work and pursuing those responsible for the costs. I look forward to hearing from the Secretary of State with regard to those issues.

Innocent leaseholders need action. Comprehensive measures must be implemented to prevent this disaster from ever happening again.