Contribution
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate in the place—just for today—of my noble friends Lord Jamieson and Lady O’Neill of Bexley. I too welcome the Minister to her place.
I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. We speak often, on our third floor, and she has spoken on these matters tirelessly and from the heart for a very long time. It really is a very long time, for the House knows only too well why we are here. More than nine years on from the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the consequences of systemic building failures are still being felt across the country.
The Public Accounts Committee estimates that up to 3 million people may have been affected by the cladding crisis. As of this year, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, between 5,900 and 7,400 residential buildings of at least 11 metres in height have or had unsafe cladding requiring work. However, only 38% have completed remediation, 16% have started and—the truly appalling figure— 47% have not begun at all. This is clearly not good enough. From these Benches, we accept that successive Governments have struggled with this issue, but this is not progress, with many thousands of residents and leaseholders living in unsafe or unsaleable homes.
We therefore welcome the intention behind the Bill, which seeks to extend protections, impose enforceable duties on freeholders and developers, and give leaseholders meaningful routes to secure remediation when others fail to act. We agree that leaseholders must be protected and the pace of remediation must accelerate dramatically. However, the Bill raises some significant questions.
First, on scope, the Bill applies to any residential building containing one or more leasehold properties, with no minimum height or storey threshold. As we have heard, many speakers have spoken about the benefit of this, but do the Government know how many additional buildings this would bring into scope? Do they have an assessment of the cost implications? Do they have a plan to ensure that the system can cope with the increased caseload?
Secondly, this brings me to enforcement. The Bill substantially expands the powers of the Building Safety Regulator, but the regulator is already under intense pressure over significant backlogs and regulatory delays. I think we should say that, under the stewardship of the noble Lord, Lord Roe of West Wickham, decision rates are showing signs of improvement and new turnaround targets have been set. But in this context, there is a question as to whether it is wise to increase the regulator’s powers further at this point. Would the Government ensure that the regulator has the capacity to administer the expanded responsibilities the Bill would create?
Thirdly, on the Government’s own housing targets, Ministers have pledged to build 1.5 million homes in this Parliament, yet only 208,600 net additional properties were delivered last year—a fall from the previous year. On current trends, the Government are on course to miss their target by 400,000 homes. What assessment has been made of the impact of the Bill on housing supply?
Leaseholders should not bear the cost of historic failures that they did not create. The previous Conservative Government established that principle through the Building Safety Act, remediation orders, contribution orders and the responsible actors scheme. Over 50 developers signed the building safety repairs pledge, yet progress has been and remains far too slow, as we have said.
Let us not forget that behind every statistic is a family living with fear, uncertainty and financial strain. These are people unable to sell their homes, facing unaffordable insurance premiums and receiving service charge demands they cannot pay. As I think everybody has said in this Chamber, these are people who have done nothing wrong and done everything right—saved, bought responsibly and invested in their future—only to find themselves trapped by failures they did not cause.
The Bill seeks to address those failures, and we on these Benches support its aims—and, on a personal note, and echoing the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, I really applaud the inclusion of manufacturers for the first time—but, as His Majesty’s Opposition, we will scrutinise its implications carefully and hope that the Government will do the same. I think we can all agree that leaseholders deserve clarity, competence and urgency, not another cycle of delay. We must be sure that this legislation would deliver the protection, accountability and acceleration that has eluded us all for far too long—and, if it is not this legislation, that the Government’s own legislation will properly address the wrongs that the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seeks to put right.