Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

Sarah Olney Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

I start by adding my voice to the tributes paid by the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) to the victims and survivors of the Grenfell disaster. I will not forget waking up that morning and seeing that appalling tragedy unfolding on our television screens; many people across London will have felt the same. I welcome the Government’s attempts to ensure that such a tragedy does not happen again, but it is almost unbelievable that nine years later we are debating this particular bit of legislation in our collective effort to ensure that buildings can be made safe.

Like the Fire Safety Act 2021 and the Building Safety Act 2022, the Bill is a step in the right direction, but—again—it does not go far enough. As the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), who is no longer in her place, has raised repeatedly, the PAS 9980 regime, which allows a fire engineer chosen and paid for by the building owner to declare dangerous cladding tolerable and decide that no work is required, will remain in place. Would hon. Members in this House feel reassured if a fire engineer paid for by a building’s owner declared the cladding in their block of flats to be “tolerable”?

The anger that followed the Grenfell disaster was directed towards those in power who repeated the sentiments that officials had known about the dangers posed by unsafe cladding but did not care enough to act. Much of the feeling was that the people in Grenfell and others who lived in council housing did not matter enough for serious action to be taken to prevent such a disaster. That speaks to a wider issue that we in the House all need to work to address: accessibility to safe and secure housing.

New high-rise homes must be built with materials that do not burn. If combustible cladding is considered too dangerous for new high-rise homes, what reassurances does that provide to people living in “tolerable” levels of danger? That should not be our benchmark. All Londoners should be entitled to housing of a standard that is higher than tolerable.

In March 2026, the Government announced a new package of support for house building in London, which provided temporary relief from developer levies. However, BusinessLDN has highlighted that the costs associated with the community infrastructure levy relief included in the package would be offset in effect by the additional costs from the building safety levy in more than a third of cases. I welcome the Government’s intent to remediate building safety defects via the building safety levy, but the two policies seem to contradict each other. Just this morning, a headline in the Financial Times read, “Labour's housebuilding target effectively dead’. We should not be deciding between building houses and building safe housing.

If the Government’s assessment is that housing developments are being stalled in London due to costs, does more need to be done to incentivise developments following the introduction of the building safety levy? I would be grateful if in winding up the Minister could reflect on what the Bill’s measures on manufacturers and developers of construction products providing some of the costs towards remediating cladding mean for the building safety levy and the particular stress that is placing on house building in London.