Fire Safety Bill

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 29th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab) [V]]

I would like to associate myself with the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), the shadow Home Secretary, both in welcoming the Bill and in relation to what is needed in respect of fire safety, funding for fire services and, in particular, justice for the Grenfell community. I shall focus my remarks on the plight of leaseholders in my constituency, who have been badly affected and for whom I believe the Government need to take much stronger action.

I represent hundreds of people who have been affected by cladding-related issues, including those in the Islington Gates development and at Brindley House in my constituency. Islington Gates is a 144-unit development, and Brindley House is a 182-unit development. Both have flammable cladding, which has rendered the buildings unsafe. In my view, the Government have not moved quickly enough in dealing with cladding that is not of the ACM type that we saw in the Grenfell fire. I welcome the new £1 billion fund, but it took far too long for us to get to that point. It was the result of sustained campaigning from Members across the House, the Labour Front Bench and campaign groups such as the UK Cladding Action Group, the Birmingham Leaseholder Action Group and Manchester Cladiators, alongside many others, who kept up the pressure on the Government ahead of the Budget, that the announcement of the remediation fund was eventually made.

Some big questions remain unanswered about that fund, on the speed with which the fund will be paying out for remediation works and on whether there is enough money to cover the cost of all the works that will be required in buildings such as Islington Gates and Brindley House. If the money is not enough, the Government need to make it clear that they will meet any and all of those costs, and that the £1 billion fund does not represent the limit of the support that the Government are prepared to make available.

These issues are difficult enough for the people who live in these properties, but many, such as those I represent, have now been overtaken by another even more pressing matter: the insurance cover for their buildings. On this issue, there has been a depressing lack of understanding and engagement from Government. If we are not to preside over an even bigger social disaster, that has to change.

At Islington Gates, residents were already paying very large sums for interim fire safety measures before they were hit with a fivefold increase in the cost of insuring their building from £36,000 to £190,000. They had to find a consortium of five insurers to provide cover for their building. When those sums are added to the money that leaseholders already have to find for interim fire safety measures, they are looking at bills of many tens of thousands of pounds—more than some of them will earn in a whole year. For residents of Brindley House, the new quote for their insurance costs is 1,000% higher, having soared to £530,000; the commission and taxes alone on their premium are more than the whole of their premium for the previous year. Last year, they spent £150,000 on internal compartmentation and fire door works; they are paying over £180,000 for their 24/7 waking watch; and on top of all that, they have had to pay £100,000 to replace their fire alarm system.

Can Ministers on the Treasury Bench imagine the stress of receiving a bill for a sum that is much more than they earn in a year? On top of that is the tightening of everyone’s financial circumstances as a result of the covid crisis. My constituents are enduring a level of stress that has left them at breaking point. Their situation is unconscionable, given that they have done nothing wrong. They are facing the consequences of national regulatory failure, and they should not simply be left to it. I have asked the Government repeatedly to take action on insurance for buildings affected in this way. In other parts of the sector, where insurance companies have been unwilling to provide affordable cover for natural disasters such as flooding, the Government have stepped forward with measures such as the Flood Re scheme. I urge them to consider stepping forward in a similar way on cladding insurance cover. It offends every part of our British values, our sense of fair play and decency, that people face ruin through no fault of their own. It is a national failure and it requires a national response.

Fire Safety Bill

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab) [V]]

There is a simple question for the House to consider today: should leaseholders be forced to pay for essential remediation works that they are compelled to undertake to their properties that have come about through no fault of their own? The only possible answer is no.

We know that the cladding calamity that has befallen so many of our constituents did not come about because leaseholders have failed in any way. All the costs that are attributable to the cladding scandal are down to failures by developers and successive Governments, who have presided over shocking, scandalous regulatory failure, which has pushed thousands of wholly innocent people to the brink of financial ruin.

We all know that the costs of the regulatory failure that has created this crisis are in the many billions of pounds, but they must not fall on the ordinary people who are not responsible for this mess. There are other ways, I believe, that the Government can raise the necessary money. They should introduce a levy on developers and the construction industry to fund the cost of remediation —both cladding removal and remediating the many other fire risks that many of us in the House have been raising for quite some time.

The Government should also strengthen procurement regulations so that local authorities and metro Mayors can prevent developers and construction companies that are failing to live up to their moral obligations and put right the fire hazards that they are responsible for creating from bidding for any further publicly funded development contracts. In that way, we can reward those who are doing the right thing and putting right the cladding issues in the buildings that they were responsible for putting up and, hopefully, force a rethink on the part of those who are failing to live up to their responsibilities by preventing them from bidding for further taxpayer-funded contracts.

But what is clear is that the Government must not pin the spiralling costs of this crisis on the ordinary people who are currently facing financial ruination. I urge all Members to keep the amendment tabled by the Bishop of Saint Albans in the Bill, because to do anything else is a dereliction of our duty. This House must do the right thing by leaseholders this evening.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The first thing to say is that I agree with many of the comments that have been made. It simply cannot be right that leaseholders are faced with bills of tens of thousands of pounds. Nevertheless, I cannot support the amendment because I do not think it is effective, for a number of reasons. First, it seems to put somebody—an indeterminate person—on the hook for fire safety remediation forever. As I read it, it is not limited to historical defects.

Fire Safety Bill

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab) [V]]

Four years have passed since the Grenfell tragedy, and once again the House is debating whether or not to protect leaseholders from the costs of remedying fire safety defects caused by a failure of regulation and negligence, as well as by deceptive practices in the building industry. Meanwhile, the Government continue to dither and delay, and order their MPs to vote against amendments designed to protect leaseholders. Make no mistake, the funds that the Government have made available thus far have taken too much time to come on stream. The money will not ultimately be enough to meet the scale of the crisis and, crucially, interim costs are not covered.

On top of all those costs, today we have heard about the cost of insurance. I have lost count of the times that I have pleaded with the Government to do something about insurance costs. In my constituency there have been insurance increases of 1,000% in affected buildings. Those are shocking figures, and this shocking situation is falling on deaf ears as far as the Government are concerned. Long before any cladding is removed from these buildings, the people living in them will have been ruined by the costs of insurance and interim measures such as waking watches to keep their buildings open. There is simply nothing left to remedy the internal fire safety defects as well. Leaseholders need the protection that the Lords amendment would offer.

We should never forget that at any point, a further tragedy could—God forbid—occur. That is a terror that leaseholders in Brindley House in my constituency have had to face, because on 31 January this year there was a fire in a flat in their building. I have seen the burned-out husk of that flat for myself. The fire service said that the residents were only two minutes away from the fire engulfing the whole of their building. Two more minutes and the windows in that flat would have shattered, and the cladding wrapped around that building would have caught fire. When I heard that, my blood ran cold. Can the Minister imagine what it must be like for the people who live in Brindley House? That is the risk, that is the fear, and that is the scale of the financial ruination that people in my constituency and all over the country are trying to cope with.

One of my constituents recently said to me that he now thinks it will be less stressful to declare himself bankrupt and become homeless than to try to find a way to carry on as a leaseholder. At the very least, the Government could and should support the Lords amendment, or indicate a clear way through the crisis, so that we send a clear signal to all leaseholders that we will stand with them.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]]

I start from the principle that successive Secretaries of State and Ministers have said from the Dispatch Box that the leaseholders are the innocent parties in this scandal and that they should not have to pay a penny piece towards the costs of remediation. I applaud the Government for coming forward with £5.1 billion of public money to support the remediation of unsafe cladding, but our problem is that it is not enough. The estimate now is that £15 billion will be required and that the extra £10 billion will have to come from leaseholders as the last resort, because building owners will naturally pass that on to leaseholders wherever they possibly can. They are the ones in situ; they are the ones facing these huge bills.

The Government say that further proposals will come forward on the forced loan scheme. We were promised in the earlier statement in February that the loan scheme would be announced at the Budget. Now, I did make the assumption that that was the Budget in 2021, not the Budget in 2022 or 2023. The reality is that the evidence given to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee and other bodies suggests that the forced loan scheme is nowhere near being available. We as Members of Parliament are not even able to scrutinise the proposal, so those who are living in blocks of flats of six floors or less do not even know how that scheme will work. My estimate is that many people will end up with a bill that will last for 100 years, therefore factoring in, almost inevitably, a dramatic reduction in the value of their properties. Equally, we know that the fire safety remediation required in addition to the remediation of unsafe cladding almost dwarfs the costs of remediating the cladding. All those costs will once again be passed on to the innocent leaseholders.

I understand that my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench has to defend this position and clearly wants to get the Fire Safety Bill on the statute book. Let us be clear. I do not think any MP wishes to prevent the progress of the Fire Safety Bill. What we do need, however, is surety and assuredness, because the draft Building Safety Bill will almost certainly take 18 months to two years to bring to fruition. The leaseholders do not have that time to wait. My right hon. Friend the Minister has made it clear on a number of occasions that he finds the amendments defective. Well, there is still time. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) that there is a solution. If the Government reject that solution, let them come forward with their own solution in the House of Lords. Let us agree that the leaseholders do not have to pay a penny and the Fire Safety Bill can go on the statute book, as we would all like to see.