My Lords, the most important work this House does is to legislate and, within that work, to assert its view and opinion against the Government and the other House, because that is where we are acting independently, as opposed to acting simply either as a rubber stamp or a deliberative assembly. It always amazes me how little time and attention we spend on our most important function. Many noble Lords are in Committee until 11 pm or midnight, day after day. We discuss amendments a first time, refine them for Report the second time and may come round to them again at Third Reading.
However, when it comes to the most controversial issues in a Bill, which, by definition, are those which we send to the other place, we are expected to hurry them all through. Very inadequate notice is given of matters coming back to this House. There are no proper structured arrangements for discussion, in the way that there are for the ordinary consideration of legislation. We are faced with reasons on hugely weighty issues from the House of Commons as to why it will not accept our view, which usually consist of one or two lines of the utmost banality: statements like “Because the Government has announced it intends to bring forward its own legislative proposals”, full stop.
That is supposed to be a reason why we should set aside all the hours of deliberation by this House, as well as its votes, and simply accept a government assurance. We are always put under great time pressure, and then the Salisbury convention is brought in telling us why this House, having spent hours—and having had many votes—on these issues, should not even spend the proper time and consideration required, including using our undoubted powers to continue to ask the House of Commons to consider these matters again.
Other legislatures with two Chambers deal with these matters much better. They have arrangements for joint sittings on issues that are contested between the Houses, which I believe that we should have. Our arrangements are due only to historical reasons dating from the Middle Ages. One of the right reverend Prelate’s 133 predecessors probably devised these arrangements in the 13th century, even before “Yes Minister”. They are absolutely not fit for purpose in the 21st century. We inhabit the same building; we have electronic means of communication; we can consider these matters better. By definition, when we come to this stage of a Bill, these are always weighty and substantial matters. We would otherwise not be engaging, for the second or third time, in a conflict with the House of Commons.
These are hugely important issues. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said that we needed to be objective rather than emotional. But the objective thing to be on this issue is emotional because we are dealing with people who face, as the two right reverend Prelates and the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said, potential bills of £40,000, £50,000 or £60,000 apiece. This will drive them into bankruptcy and cause them huge mental anguish. In some cases—let us be frank; we have all heard of such stories—it can lead to suicide, since these are absolutely catastrophic impacts on individuals. We, as legislators, have a duty to take account of that and reach the best possible arrangement. I stress that we should not be railroaded on issues of this kind into either having to cave in or taking quick decisions before there has been proper consideration.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London referred just now to the Archbishops’ Council. I know that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury has been leading work on this issue, with a number of extremely distinguished experts on housing, and would like to meet the Minister. The very least that the Minister should say in response to her, assuming that this amendment goes back, is that before it comes to this House again he and the Secretary of State will meet the right reverend Prelate, the most reverend Primate and their advisers—who I happen to know include a former Permanent Secretary and other very senior and expert people—to discuss these issues. These are matters of huge anguish and importance.
It is very important that we play fair by people who, as everyone has accepted, are not facing big charges which were expected. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said that in respect of property one has duties, responsibilities and risks, but these are not normal risks. People should be expected to bear normal and reasonably foreseeable risks but these were completely abnormal, of a scale they could not have been expected to foresee or budget for.
Their other consequences have not even been mentioned in the debate so far. This is leading to a substantial seizure of the entire property market at the moment. Large numbers of people with leasehold properties simply cannot sell them at the moment. Until these risks are properly quantified, and the allocation of the burdens is properly determined, people cannot sell. It is a huge problem in the property market, and this will continue until it is done.
When the Minister, for whom we have great respect and who knows these matters at first hand, as the former leader of a local authority with large numbers of leaseholders, said that the Government were seeking to crunch through these matters bit by bit and deal with them, that goes straight back to “Yes Minister”. The Grenfell Tower fire was on 14 June 2017. That is, by my calculation, three years and nine months ago. We are not exactly rushing with indecent haste to deal with these issues. It is perfectly reasonable to expect that the Government should do their job, which is to safeguard the community on matters of huge public importance, including putting schemes in place. It took 20 years to build the great wall of China, and we are saying that after four years, the Government still do not have a proper scheme in place to deal with these issues.
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So I strongly urge the House to agree to both my noble friend’s amendment and those of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, partly because they are correct, but also because these are huge issues that will, of necessity, require further elucidation and debate. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans did something that politicians in this House very rarely do, which was admit that his Motion is not perfect. He pointed to one or two defects, which is an unusual procedure in the House.
What is now needed is a further process of deliberation, because the costs involved and the impacts on individuals are huge. The figures are not even agreed. There is a big difference between what the Government say is the average cost estimate for remedial work, £9,000, and the £50,000 that the right reverend Prelate said. That £41,000 is about one and a half times the average yearly wage in this country. It would be good to agree some of those matters and to have a proper scheme. Certainly we should not be railroaded into closing this matter down today. We should send these amendments back to the House of Commons, because it would give us a reasonable length of time—we do not want another ping- pong taking place later this week or next week—to consider these issues and for a scheme to be brought back.
I will make a few comments on the substantive points at stake. The Minister circulated a letter this morning. Again, it came at the last minute; I read it literally just before coming into the Chamber. It said three things in response to my noble friend Lord Kennedy’s amendment. First, it said that the Government would publish responses to the fire safety consultation. It said that they had done it today, but I could not find them in the printed papers. It also said that they would publish regulations to deliver on the Grenfell Tower inquiry’s recommendations and would indicate where further legislation would be forthcoming. To those of us who are not encyclopaedic experts on what is going on with the Grenfell Tower inquiry and the matters at stake, what the Government are saying is not clear.
Perhaps I could press the Minister on my noble friend Lord Kennedy’s Amendment 2B, which proposes in new subsection (1):
“Within 90 days … the Secretary of State must publish draft legislation to require an owner or a manager of any building … to … share information with their local Fire and Rescue Service in respect of each building … undertake annual inspections … undertake monthly inspections of lifts … and share evacuation and fire safety instructions with residents of the building.”
I would think that all noble Lords would consider these proposals reasonable and essential, so can the Minister tell us whether my noble friend’s four points are met in the responses to the fire safety consultation and regulations to deliver on the inquiry’s recommendations, which they are publishing today? This is crucial to how we decide to proceed with my noble friend Lord Kennedy’s amendment.
On remediation costs, it seems the crucial point is the proposed new subsection (1) in Amendment 4F of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, which states:
“The Secretary of State must design and implement a scheme”
to deal with costs,
“including but not limited to the building owner, freeholder or developer.”
So the question for the Minister to answer at the end, which is crucial to how we decide to proceed, both in the vote at the end of this debate and afterwards, is what the Government’s intentions are in respect of designing and implementing a scheme.
I take up the point of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, both about the scale of the costs and the absolutely correct liability to which developers should be held. Developers such as Barratt have armies of lawyers and the capacity to see off little people—which is most people when it comes to the likes of Barratt. If they have to deal with Her Majesty’s Government in respect of their liabilities, and a Minister of the calibre of the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, turns up on their doorstep and says that they are expected to shoulder these costs —as per a scheme that has been designed and is being pushed by the Government—I assure your Lordships that it will lead to a much bigger result than if it were all left to individual leaseholders and freeholders.
So can the Minister say what the Government are intending to do? Is their intention to stand by and leave hundreds of thousands of leaseholders at the mercy of individual negotiations and freeholders? Or will they move with a Government-led and nationally driven scheme to recover these costs, wherever possible, from developers who have made an absolute killing—sorry, that is not an appropriate word in this context—a fortune on developments, as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, rightly said? They often expect returns of the order of 20%, 25% or 30% when taking forward these developments. As has been shown, with substandard cladding fire safety regulations have not been properly enforced, so it is reasonable that they should be held accountable, and it is the Government, on behalf of the people at large, who should be holding them accountable. Before we pass this legislation into law, we should be assured that the Government have a proper, viable and effective plan to bring that about.