Contribution
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.