Category: Speeches

Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Statement on Covid Security at UK Borders

The statement made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2021.

I beg to move,

That this House calls on the Government to immediately introduce a comprehensive hotel quarantine system for all arrivals into the UK, thereby securing the country against the import of new strains and maximising the effectiveness of the country’s vaccination programme; to publish the scientific evidence which informed the Government’s decision not to introduce a comprehensive hotel quarantine regime to flights from all countries; and to announce a sector support package for aviation focused on employment and environmental improvements.

I am grateful to the Minister for coming to speak in today’s debate. I think it is the first time that I have appeared opposite her in one of these debates.

Last week, the country passed the heartbreaking milestone of 100,000 deaths as a result of this awful pandemic. I know that everyone across the House mourns all those lost, and we think today of all the families up and down the country for whom life will never be the same again.

Our United Kingdom is a country of incredible resources and many of the world’s finest scientists. It has the dedication and brilliance of our wonderful NHS and care workers—indeed, all our frontline workers—and yet we have still ended up with the worst death toll in Europe and the worst economic hit of any major country. We have to learn the lessons fast. More than 50,000 people who died as a result of this awful virus in the UK died since 11 November. We have to ask why the United Kingdom has fared so badly, not as some sort of academic exercise, but to save lives.

In recent days, the Government’s chief scientific adviser said:

“You’ve got to go hard, early and broader if you’re going to get on top of this. Waiting and watching simply doesn’t work.”

That is the lesson that he is advising the Government to draw: to go wider when they can. But are Ministers really learning that lesson?

We are an island country. Our border protections should have been one of our strengths throughout this pandemic, unlike countries that have very long land borders that they would have had to police. Instead, it has been one of our greatest weaknesses. Our country’s doors have been left unlocked. First the virus and then its mutations have been imported to our shores. The lesson is that failing to act quickly and decisively leads only to greater pain further down the line.

From 1 January to 23 March last year, only 273 people from four flights were formally quarantined, when over 18 million people entered the country by air. That came at a time when we all saw the terrible scenes in northern Italy of hospitals being overwhelmed, when our constituents were contacting us questioning why there were not better and more effective controls at our airports, and when our own chief scientific adviser to the Government said

“a lot of the cases in the UK did not come from China”

and that they

“came from European imports and the high level of travel into the UK”

at that time.

I wrote to the Home Secretary in April to ask her to learn the lessons from that, but still the UK remained an international outlier. In May 2020, the UK stood with only Iran, Luxembourg and the US Virgin Islands in having no border protection measures in place. In that first national lockdown, 446,500 people—nearly half a million—arrived in the UK. It was not until 8 June last year that formal quarantining was introduced. Even when border testing was made compulsory, which was only this month—10 months after the first lockdown began—the Government still had to delay the implementation as they could not get the necessary systems in place. Where has the proper strategy on border testing been? This essential and vital strategy would have made such a difference.

Rather than careful planning, we have experienced chaotic scenes at Heathrow, even in recent weeks. Covid is not going away. We need this strategy, and we need it now. The Government border policy has lurched from one crisis to another devoid of strategy, and we have seen that only in recent weeks with the announcement of the Government’s latest proposals on hotel quarantining. Limiting restrictions to just a small number of countries means that the protections do not go anywhere near far enough, with the threat of new variants coming in from other countries not on the red list. In the words of the Government’s chief scientific adviser, are they really going “hard, early and broader”? Absolutely not. Again, it is too little too late. Even when Ministers made the announcement, they had no date for bringing it into effect.

Our vaccine roll-out is a source of great hope for the whole country, and great credit must go to our scientists and all those involved in the vaccine programme, but the biggest threat to the vaccine programme is from mutant strains of the virus. We know where some mutant strains have emerged because of the advanced genome sequencing that detected them, but too few countries have that expertise. We know the virus will mutate further, and we cannot risk one of those mutations undermining our vaccines. Back-Bench Conservative MPs who do not support this motion today are sending a message that they are willing to take that risk.

The hard truth is that we have no certainty about where the next more dangerous strains of Covid will emerge. We have been warned that new strains are already potentially threatening vaccine efficacy, and yet we still have around 21,000 visitors entering the country daily. It will make no sense to people that Britain’s borders are still open while the country is locked down. That is why Labour is calling for decisive action today through a comprehensive hotel quarantine policy, and that would mean a policy of enforced quarantine restrictions on arrivals. Of course I accept that there would need to be exemptions, especially in areas such as haulage to keep the country functioning, but our starting point must be a comprehensive policy. Failing to adopt that policy risks undermining the huge gains that have been made by the vaccine roll-out, threatening life and hope.

The existing quarantining system is not working. To see that, we have only to look at the Government’s own figures, which show that just three in every 100 people have been successfully contacted for quarantine compliance —yet another Government failure. Other figures suggest that just one in 10 passenger locator forms is checked at airports. None of that is good enough, and it has happened because the Government have failed in their duty to properly drive a consistent strategy and high performance through our measures at the border and the checks of the isolation assurance service.

Yet those inadequate measures are still our protection against the virus for all but a limited number of countries on the red list. Devoid of strategy, the Government continue to be behind the curve, hoping for the best. It is little wonder that there seems to be such confusion and unedifying counter-briefing among the Cabinet on the policy, because frankly, it makes no sense. We do not even know at the moment when the policy will be introduced and whether the Government propose legislation for it, as has been speculated.

I have great respect for the Minister, as she knows, and it is great to see her present for the debate, but I note that the Home Secretary is not participating in it to defend Government policy, which after all is part of her departmental responsibilities. Frankly, she has every reason not to be present, given that the Home Office has lost 400,000 police records and she still has not explained what has been lost, let alone how she will retrieve it. We also know what her personal view is of Government policy. There has been alleged briefing to newspapers that she does not agree with Government policy, but if there was any doubt about what her view was, we can all watch the video of her telling Conservative party members that she advocated for the borders to be closed back in March last year.

We know that the Home Secretary does not support, and has not supported, the Government policy on the borders that she has had to defend in public, so who does support it? The Health Secretary, who was said to be opening the debate instead of her, is not present either. It is said that there have been briefings to newspapers that he is another Cabinet Minister who does not agree with the policy. Perhaps the Minister can outline and promise to publish the full scientific data that underpins the Government’s decision to create a so-called red list of countries, and set out not just the commencement date but what she envisages the exit strategy from the measures to be.

How on earth can the Government be assured that the measures will prevent emerging strains from countries outside those on the red list? The truth is that the Government cannot answer that question. As a result, the policy is fatally flawed. A comprehensive quarantine policy would give us the best possible chance of preventing a new strain from undermining the astonishing collective sacrifice of the British people. It cannot be right that, with the ineffective quarantine system that is in place, 21,000 people continue to enter the country on a daily basis.

I recognise, of course, the huge challenges to the aviation sector and its supply chains, the impact on the tourism and hospitality industry, and the number of jobs that it supports. I have heard about it in my own discussions over the past year, and when I have been able to visit our airport frontline. Let me also pay tribute to Border Force, the police and our wider law enforcement community. They have worked heroically, but the gaps in our defences that have existed and do exist are not their fault, but the failure of Ministers.

That failure also extends to economic support. It is why the Government must come forward with the long-promised sector-specific support deal called for by my hon. Friend the shadow Transport Secretary, saving jobs and ensuring that there are environmental improvements as set out in this motion. Let me be clear: we need to see this support package, and the money needs to be properly targeted to meet its aims. We have seen appalling fire and rehire tactics, which should be outlawed. That practice has no place in our country and it is an insult to workers. Staff salaries should be protected with a clear commitment to workers’ rights, and let us see a commitment to cleaner fuels and other cutting-edge low or zero-emission technologies. Companies’ tax bases should be in the UK, and there should not be dividends paid until a company is commercially viable. UK-based suppliers must be the priority, and operators must comply with consumer rights regulations. The Government have known the need for this for months, and inaction and continuing inaction is not the answer.

As hon. and right hon. Members cast their votes today —indeed, whether or not they choose to cast votes at all—I ask them to think back and learn the lessons. If we had introduced quarantining for high-risk countries only a year ago, what would have happened? As one Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies member, Sir Jeremy Farrar, put it:

“We need to learn the lessons from 2020…If we’d imposed restrictions in January and February last year we would probably have imposed them on high risk countries—China maybe. But almost all the virus that arrived came from Europe.”

There is no point, either, in offering a false choice or a bogus dilemma between protective health measures at the border and the economy. Our best chance of breathing life back into the UK aviation and tourism industry is to be able to lift as many restrictions as possible here at home as soon as it is safe to do so with the vaccine roll-out.

Crucially, that would all be put at risk if a new strain took hold that is resistant to the vaccine, yet the quarantine policy as it stands does precious little to stop that. It cannot predict where the next strains will emerge, and in its current form it cannot stop arrivals in the UK breaking quarantine rules. The existing quarantine system just is not effective. The Government have created an Achilles heel that undermines the heroic efforts of the British people in tackling this virus. Members across this House believe that as well—perhaps even members of the Cabinet. Now is the time to act. Lives will depend on it and our futures depend on it. I commend this motion to the House.

03/02/2021
Hilary Benn – 2021 Speech on Unsafe Cladding

The speech made by Hilary Benn, the Labour MP for Leeds Central, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2021.

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), whose amendments to the Fire Safety Bill I have signed. I will speak on behalf of my constituents in Leeds—they include Hayley Tillotson, whose story has moved us all—who find themselves in desperate circumstances not of their making. They saved up. They bought what they thought was the home of their dreams. It has now turned into a nightmare as the outer layers have been peeled back on each block to reveal the full horror underneath. Their homes are firetraps. They are worthless. They cannot borrow against them. They cannot sell them. They are trapped by waking watch bills, trapped by rising insurance, and trapped by the fear that they will be told they must pay to fix this, even though they are not in any way responsible.

The impact on the mental health of my constituents is enormous, because every day they wake up and are reminded of this nightmare with no apparent way out. Today’s debate is so important, because we, together on both sides of the House, need to give them hope by calling on the Government to draw up a plan to sort the situation out.

Ministers know that the building safety fund will not deal with the problem. Why? Because the cost of making every home safe is way in excess of the money allocated so far, and we know that Ministers are looking at a loan scheme. I am not opposed to a loan scheme in principle, provided that leaseholders are not required to pay the loans back. After all, they did not fail to put in the firebreaks or cover the blocks in unsafe cladding, so why on earth should they have to pay?

This is a story of monumental regulatory failure and of flats being built as cheaply as possible—in many cases without even complying with the building regulations. Like the Minister, I applaud those freeholders and developers who have taken responsibility and sorted things out, but I deplore those who have tried to walk away and claim that it is nothing to do with them. Those who developed and constructed the buildings should pay, the industry as a whole should pay, and the Government should pay because they allowed it to happen. We all have a responsibility for that.

The most important thing of all, however, is that we act now to bring this crisis to an end, because that is what the leaseholders I represent and Leeds Cladding Scandal, which has done such a great job, want. More than anything else they just want to feel safe and secure in their homes once again, so that they can get on with their lives. We have a responsibility to make sure that that now happens.

03/02/2021
Stephen McPartland – 2021 Speech on Unsafe Cladding

The speech made by Stephen McPartland, the Conservative MP for Stevenage, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2021.

I would like to pay tribute to UK Cladding Action Group and End our Cladding Scandal for the massive work they have done, along with the Select Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith), to raise the profile of this issue and help millions of leaseholders.

I am sorry that the Labour party, the official Opposition, has played a little bit of politics today. We are very close to having the support in the House of Commons to force our amendment into law. Sadly, the vote today makes no difference whatever to any leaseholders. However, what we can do is focus on the amendments to the Fire Safety Bill, as those votes do make a difference. I say to the Minister that we are very close to having the support in the House of Commons, and we have the support in the House of Lords to keep sending the amendments back. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen and I therefore urge the Minister to work with us to ensure that leaseholders do not have to pay.

I believe that the Department has been incompetent throughout this saga. It has created a whole host of problems, especially with the consolidated advice note published in January 2020. Buildings over six storeys or 18 metres were already involved in this crisis, but the note then involved any building of any height, taking the number from around 1,700 buildings to well over 100,000. On top of that, buildings under 18 metres can still be built with combustible cladding.

We must also focus on fire safety defects. I hear the Minister when he says that the Fire Safety Bill is not the right place for this, but I remind him that the Bill builds on the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which tried to clear up two ambiguities around cladding and front doors. The Fire Safety Bill also ensures that costs can be recovered from leaseholders, which puts that cost on leaseholders in law. The Building Safety Bill is not in front of us, but it will also ensure that leaseholders are liable. That is not acceptable to me, and it is not acceptable to leaseholders. We have been very clear that leaseholders do not have to pay.

The Government must provide a safety net. They must step in and help leaseholders. I will not accept loans for leaseholders. If the Government announce that, I will vote against it. We cannot have leaseholders pay 90% mortgages of £150,000 and then maybe have to repay a loan of £75,000. Building societies and banks will say that they can offer mortgages only if they are affordable, and having such a debt on a property is not affordable. I urge the Minister to work with us to deliver for leaseholders and to ensure that they do not have to pay.

03/02/2021
Seema Malhotra – 2021 Speech on Unsafe Cladding

The speech made by Seema Malhotra, the Labour MP for Feltham and Heston, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2021.

The Government’s handling of the cladding crisis has lacked any sense of grip or urgency. Almost four years on from Grenfell, it is heartbreaking to see the pain that families are going through. I thank The Sunday Times for its campaign.

Residents are facing lockdown in inflammable buildings with potentially huge bills for repair work, higher insurance, and interim safety measures such as waking watch. They are also unable to sell their flats. An estimated 4,000 residents in Hounslow alone are affected. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) has also supported many affected constituents. They include young couples, now with children, trapped and unable to upsize to a home big enough for their growing family.

The situation is now not just about cladding. There is also a worrying lack of transparency and speed from housing associations such as A2Dominion and FirstPort. They were slow to undertake the survey work needed on fire safety, despite residents asking for clarity a year ago. With permission, I will share part of a letter that my constituent Pamela Canales received last week from A2Dominion. It reads:

“We wrote to you in June 2020 to let you know your building needed an ‘intrusive survey’. Our fire safety contractor carried out an intrusive survey in several different areas of your building…The results showed that there are issues with timber cladding, insulation inside the masonry walls with incorrectly installed cavity barriers between flats and cavity closers”.

It goes on to say:

“If you would like to re-mortgage or sell your flat, the mortgage lender involved will probably ask for an (EWS1 form). Your building received an ESW1 rating of Option ‘B2’—confirming combustible materials are present and remedial work is required. It is likely a lender will ask for more information about what work is needed, the likely timescales and the costs of carrying out the work. Unfortunately, we don’t know that information at this stage.”

On who will pay for the remedial works, it says:

“At this stage it is too early to say. We fully understand this is a key area of concern for residents and this is a top priority for us. We do not wish to pass cost onto leaseholders and will only do this as a last resort.”

A2Dominion and others do not have a good track record on transparency of costs for leaseholders. This morning, residents told me:

“We don’t know how much this is going to cost us. We don’t know if we will have to vacate the building. It’s time for us to have answers. It’s stressful enough already with the pandemic. We can’t go on like this.”

We need a Government-led plan now to fix the cladding crisis that does not burden leaseholders with the cost. Those responsible must pay.

03/02/2021
Felicity Buchan – 2021 Speech on Unsafe Cladding

The speech made by Felicity Buchan, the Conservative MP for Kensington, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2021.

I pay tribute to my constituents—the Grenfell bereaved, the survivors and the wider community. I was shocked by several of the recommendations that came out of the Grenfell inquiry in November and December, especially those relating to building products, their testing and their marketing. It is clear that there have been regulatory and corporate failures. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has announced a new regulator for construction products and will start a review of the testing process.

I think the whole House would agree that we need a comprehensive and speedy solution to the leaseholder situation. Leaseholders are in this dilemma through no fault of their own, and as colleagues have said, in many cases they are sitting on unsaleable properties that are potentially dangerous. I welcome the fact that the Government made available £1.6 billion for cladding remediation, and I am glad to hear in particular of the progress on ACM cladding remediation. However, I suspect that £1.6 billion will not be enough. Today, I call on the Government to put together a substantial and comprehensive package such that we can remove all dangerous cladding on high-risk buildings. I agree with colleagues that we must ensure that freeholders, insurance companies, warrantee holders and developers pay their fair share, but I do think the Government need to put together a comprehensive package.

I was delighted that the Secretary of State and the Chancellor took time last week to hear me make the case for more Government money. I am glad to hear the Minister at the Dispatch Box say we will make important announcements in the short term. It is now three and a half years since the Grenfell tragedy in my constituency. We need to make urgent progress, so I look forward to hearing the Government’s announcements over the next few weeks.

03/02/2021
Royston Smith – 2021 Speech on Unsafe Cladding

The speech made by Royston Smith, the Conservative MP for Southampton Itchen, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2021.

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I say that just for the avoidance of doubt, as I do not think the leasehold property that I own is included in this matter.

The cladding and fire safety crisis has blighted too many lives for far too long. Leaseholders bought their homes in good faith. They would have trusted the developer to build a safe home and they would have trusted the Government to ensure that it conformed with the law. Most would have needed a valuation for a mortgage and nearly all would have used a solicitor to ensure that everything was legal. Governments have encouraged them to buy by offering them incentives to do so. Buyers had every reason to expect that our building regulations were sound and could be more than forgiven for believing that modern flats built in Britain would be safe. However, the events of the past few years have shown that this is not the case. Leaseholders have had to wake up to a sobering reality that the dream of home ownership has turned into a living nightmare as they face huge bills and bankruptcy.

Let me make something clear: the Government are not to blame for this situation. This is not the fault of my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State or the Housing Minister; it is a failure of building safety regulation over many decades, involving many Governments. Regardless of what happens today, the Government have an opportunity to sort this out once and for all. They can give leaseholders the certainty and security they deserve and let the unwitting victims of this crisis once again sleep soundly in their beds at night.

The Government may feel that our amendment to the Fire Safety Bill is defective. Perhaps it does not do what leaseholders would like or it would slow the progress of the Bill. There is a simple solution, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman): accept our amendment, tidy it up, and ensure that it does protect innocent leaseholders.

The shadow Minister for Housing and the Leader of the Opposition said in interviews today that we should put party politics aside and work together. I could not agree more. Labour has had seven weeks to sign our amendment—seven weeks of victims of this scandal begging it to join us—and what has it done? It has done as it always does—ignored the opportunity and instead jumped on a passing bandwagon. Labour has led the victims of the cladding crisis up the hill, and now it is going to abandon them at the top.

There are options for the Government, and I know that they are working hard to find one that works, but today I ask them to accept our amendment and once and for all tell the leaseholders that it is not their fault and they will not have to pay.

03/02/2021
Margaret Hodge – 2021 Speech on Unsafe Cladding

The speech made by Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP for Barking, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2021.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman).

In June 2019, Samuel Garside House, a block of flats in Barking, was consumed in a wild inferno, going up in flames in seven minutes. It is a miracle that because the fire occurred in daylight, nobody died, but many residents, mainly leaseholders, lost all their possessions. In Barking, leaseholders are families who a generation ago would have been housed by the council, but with the shocking lack of affordable social housing, their only option is to stretch their finances to the absolute limit by buying a lease. They live on the edge from one pay cheque to the next, and they cannot even afford household contents insurance. They, and thousands of others in my constituency, certainly cannot afford to pay for putting right the mistakes of others. They are locked into an absolute nightmare in unsafe homes, unable to sell, unable to remortgage, and facing mounting bills to fix a crisis they did not create. The Government’s response today had little basis in reality. They have, in truth, shunted this into the “too difficult to tackle” box and abandoned leaseholders,

In three minutes I have three issues. First, the Government must act to protect all multi-occupancy buildings. Fire does not discriminate between one height and another. Samuel Garside was below 18 metres but it was a lethal fire trap. Arbitrary height thresholds do not work. All leaseholders must be covered and existing buildings must also be remediated.

Secondly, I have spent months of research trying to identify the owners of blocks in Barking. Ownership is often hidden. The properties are sometimes held through companies located in tax havens. Freeholders who make easy money by charging a ground rent are getting away scot-free. Freeholders must contribute towards the massive remediation costs, alongside developers, contractors, suppliers and regulators.

Thirdly, the Government must solve the spiralling cost of building insurance. Some are struggling to find any insurance cover at all. Residents of one block are facing a 900% hike in their building insurance. The Association of British Insurers told me that the Government are simply not engaging in a realistic dialogue to produce a scheme where risks are shared between the taxpayer and insurance companies. They have done so on covid issues but they have singularly failed where people are living in danger in their own homes.

I have not forgotten my constituents, but the Government have failed them. Those living in the Ropeworks, Academy Central, Spring Place, Samuel Garside, Central House, Benedicts Wharf, Rivermill Lofts, 360 Barking and Spectrum Building are all being left behind, abandoned by the Government.

02/02/2021
Clive Betts – 2021 Speech on Unsafe Cladding

The speech made by Clive Betts, the Labour MP for Sheffield South East, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2021.

I begin by thanking the Father of the House for his very kind comments. Certainly, we have worked together on these issues. I congratulate all the members of the Select Committee as well. We have looked at the issue of building safety, particularly cladding, on a number of occasions, and we have produced a number of reports, all of them unanimously. It is to the credit of all members of the Committee—I notice that the next speaker will be the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who is an important member of the Select Committee—that we have done so on a cross-party basis.

I will quote one or two of our very clear recommendations. In 2019, we said that the Government should provide funding to remove

“any form of combustible cladding…from any high-rise or high-risk building”,

regardless of height. In our 2020 report, we recommended:

“The Building Safety Fund will need to be increased to address all fire safety defects in every high-risk residential building—potentially costing up to £15 billion.”

Then we did pre-legislative scrutiny of the Building Safety Bill, and we said:

“The Government must recommit to the principle that leaseholders should not pay anything towards the cost of remediating historical building safety defects”.

We have been very clear on all those matters: leaseholders should not pay. They should not pay some unidentified, affordable amount or fair amount, and neither should we get into a position of offering them loans to pay off the debts, because what do loans do but put leaseholders in more debt? At the same time, loans would put many of them into negative equity.

The leaseholder should not pay, and we know that developers and others eventually should be held accountable, but as the Father of the House has just explained, so many potential organisations could be held accountable and the legal arguments will go on and on. Many of the developers have gone out of business and do not exist anymore. Yes, we should pursue them, but in the meantime, the Government have to stand up and commit far more funding than is in the Building Safety Bill, which simply does not cover anything like the £15 billion of potential costs. Eventually there might need to be an industrial levy to pay part of it, and it is for the Government to come forward with recommendations, if they so choose.

The issue is not just about high-rise buildings over six storeys—I think the Minister has accepted that point. It is about all buildings where people could be at risk, including residential homes, care homes and so on. It is also not just about cladding, but about all potential fire risks in buildings, such as dangerous balconies, faulty fire doors, missing firebreaks and faulty installation —all the things together that need putting right to make the buildings that people live in safe.

Finally, we talk about numbers, but in the end behind all these numbers are individuals and families living in potentially dangerous buildings with debts around their neck that they cannot afford to pay, unable to sell their homes if they so wish. We owe it to them to get action on this issue immediately.

02/02/2021
Peter Bottomley – 2021 Speech on Unsafe Cladding

The speech made by Peter Bottomley, the Conservative MP for Worthing West, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2021.

It is on record that I am a leaseholder, and I face no problems of these kinds. I have been working on leaseholders’ problems for well over 10 years, with the support of the campaigning charity Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister and to the Secretary of State, who are now showing that Government understand a large part of the scale of the problems. I believe that it is better if we do not have a vote today. We should look on this debate as a “take note” one. We are all trying to face the problems of our constituents who are living in homes that are unsafe, unsaleable and unaffordable. I pay tribute to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and I look forward to hearing the Chair, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), speak shortly. Its reports on the situation of leaseholders even before we knew about this tragedy and its subsequent reports about the Fire Safety Bill are important.

I wish Michael Wade well in trying to advise Government on finding ways forward, and I commend the then Prime Minister who, on 27 June two and a half years ago, said that the Government do not rule anything out. What needs to be ruled in are, first, making the money available so that buildings can be made safe; secondly, challenging the insurance industry, which is putting premiums up at rates that I think should be investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority to see whether they are fully justifiable; and, thirdly, making sure that in the end, and as we know from court actions and inquiry results we can anticipate, the people who are responsible for this chaos—dangerous chaos—will actually have to pay. I do not think the taxpayer should necessarily have to do it; the Government have to make themselves responsible for finding the way forward.

Those who are responsible—not all, knowingly—include the developers, the builders and the present landlords, some of whom were the developers. They include local building control possibly, national regulators certainly and the component manufacturers. Those of us who have been speaking about the problem for the past three years—and I wish that some of the other advisers to Government on leasehold issues had been saying the same thing rather more clearly—think that this has to be tackled in a way that cuts short waiting for court actions that may take 10 years and provides the money now, by the end of the year, so that work can be started and finished as soon as possible and so that people have homes they can stay in or leave safely, and are affordable. I would trust those on the Select Committee most to work with Government to make sure that we find the solution, and I would hope to know that we have done that before we have got another few months further forward.

02/02/2021
David Linden – 2021 Speech on Unsafe Cladding

The speech made by David Linden, the SNP MP for Glasgow East, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2021.

The Grenfell fire of 2017 was a catastrophic event and its devastating consequences are still being seen even today, with the public inquiry revealing new information each week. I want to take a moment to remember all those who died in the fire—all those lives so needlessly lost. I also want to pay tribute to the tireless campaigning by their families. It is vital that the victims of the fire and their families receive the justice they deserve through the inquiry. It is my hope that, because of the work of the Grenfell inquiry, serious measures will be put in place to prevent another catastrophic event such as Grenfell from ever happening again.

However, when we look at how the UK Government are currently tackling the cladding crisis, we see that their policies fall short. For example, the fund provided by the UK Government is not enough to cover all the properties with dangerous cladding, leading to a first come, first served approach and many people still living with unsafe cladding on their properties. Obviously, housing and local government is a devolved issue, but the UK Government’s building safety programme will undoubtedly have consequences for Scotland. Despite the building safety programme applying only in England and Wales, its advice is being used by insurance companies and mortgage providers in Scotland to guide their decisions. The EWS1 form currently applies only to properties in England, but the Glasgow Times has reported that inspectors are using the form and granting homeowners a certificate of safety. Without the EWS1 being law, homeowners are looking towards England’s cladding situation as guidance.

While these decisions by the UK Government are positive for improving safety, they have meant that many property owners in England are unable to remortgage, sell or insure their properties, as insurance and mortgage providers refuse to accept the risk of external cladding. Residents are not legally responsible for the external cladding and do not have the money to remove it, which has left huge numbers of people completely stuck and unable to sell their properties.

Guidance is now even affecting properties below the 11-metre and the 18-metre mark. Again, while this currently applies only to England and Wales, insurance companies in Scotland are also following these recommendations, thus affecting Scottish homeowners and tenants. Surely the UK Government and the Minister can see that it is completely unfair that residents and leaseholders are burdened with the costs of removing cladding that they had no say in installing. There are certainly reports of residents in England facing huge and very unfair repair bills, while the housing firms that own the at-risk buildings are having their costs recovered.

I recently heard the story of Sophie Grayling, a mother who was so proud to buy her first home in 2017. However, the flat that she bought was part of a building clad in ACM cladding—the exact same type, as we know, used on Grenfell Tower. Ms Grayling’s building is under the 18-metre threshold for the fund offered by the UK Government to remove the cladding, and with cladding remaining in place she has seen the sale of her home fall through, is facing a bill of thousands to fix the block’s issues and, most importantly, every night puts her child to bed with the knowledge that her building is covered in the same material that saw 72 lives lost in the inferno at Grenfell.

It is clear that that is unjust. Homeowners like Ms Grayling now face a Catch-22 situation: they either pay out of their own pocket to fix a problem that is not their fault or stay stuck in an unsellable flat that risks their safety. That story is not unique. More than 1 million people are still unable to remortgage or sell their properties because of the cladding. However, the frustration does not even end there: the UK Government are attempting to silence homeowners currently waiting for support, demanding that they do not speak to the media.

Homeowners applying for the fund to help to pay to remediate buildings will not be able to talk to a journalist. I know that the Minister said earlier that people should not listen to petty officialdom, but in order for petty officialdom to come to the fore at some point a Minister was not doing their job in terms of signing this off. People who are stuck in that incredibly tough position—unable to sell their house and facing massive bills because of the UK Government’s policy—must be able to speak to the press and expose the reality of how the cladding scandal is being dealt with.

In Scotland, cladding has been handled differently. As I said, housing and local government are devolved, so the removal of cladding is within the remit of the Scottish Government. That has enabled Scotland to require buildings to be constructed in a way that aids in the prevention of fires, which has contributed to Scotland having only a handful of properties—albeit, in my view, still too many—with Grenfell-style cladding compared with more than 450 in England.

However, even with that lower number, the Scottish Government are avoiding being complacent on cladding through the building standards futures board, and are continuing to improve building standards across all of Scotland. They are looking at other issues related to fire outside of cladding, such as holistically addressing high-rise buildings to make them safer, leading to requirements that will soon be introduced for sprinklers to be installed in new-build social housing and flats.

The UK Government should similarly address the cladding scandal by placing a focus on those who own and rent properties with unsafe cladding. The people most affected by the dangers of cladding should be at the centre of the discussion. Instead, the UK Government are burdening them with huge costs and the inability to sell or remortgage their flats.

John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)

The hon. Member has obviously been very critical of the UK Government and full of praise, as usual, for his colleagues in the Scottish Government, but he will be aware that the press reports in Scotland are highly critical of the high-rise inventory and how the Scottish Government have managed it. Furthermore, the group set up by the Scottish Government to allocate the almost £100 million fund that was designed to support people having to deal with cladding issues has not met since April last year. I would like to hear his comments on those points, please.

David Linden

I am grateful to the hon. Member for that intervention. Speaking as someone who has 10 tower blocks in my constituency—I do not know how many there are in rural Scotland—I am very familiar with the issue, and I assure him that the conversations that I have on a regular basis with the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning, Kevin Stewart, indicate that it is a very high priority for the Scottish Government. That is precisely why they have taken that action. I am none the less very grateful to the hon. Member for making what I am sure is not a party political point on what I think we all agree is a very serious issue.

The English fund covers only around one third of the costs to remove cladding in England, and with its being first come, first served, it will exclude some of the buildings in the most dire need of remediation. The UK Government should invest the money necessary to ensure that all at-risk residences in England can have remedial action carried out on them. The UK Government should also follow Scotland’s example of targeted support for the most at-risk buildings to avoid the first come, first served approach.

Instead of the UK Government’s policies targeting the companies responsible for the dangerous cladding, they are burdening homeowners and leaseholders. When we look at preventing further fires caused by cladding, it is important that we keep renters and homeowners in mind, such as Sophie Grayling and her young son, both of whom are stuck in an unsafe flat facing huge bills. We should consider the impact on homeowners and renters who already feel unsafe in their own homes. It is time for the UK Government to step up and truly tackle the cladding crisis, and help those in the most vulnerable position.

02/02/2021