My Lords, this has been a very good debate. I have enjoyed listening to virtually every speech, including that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I am not going to pick out any speech that I did not like, but the contributions were very good. I am reminded of when I met someone who worked for Senator Cory Booker when he was mayor of Newark, which is a deprived part of the United States. Apparently, at a Democratic National Convention he came out with a phrase that sticks with me. He said:
“If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”
When it comes to making sure that we get the polluter to pay, this Government are not proud about picking the best ideas that people have put forward today and putting them into the toolbox to ensure that we do precisely that.
I think of my noble friends Lord Young and Lord Blencathra, to whom I will add the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, as the three wise men. I was Faith Minister, so that description is appropriate. I have to say that the prize for the wisest of the wise goes to my noble friend Lord Blencathra, who seems to have that intellectual agility to change his position based on circumstance. He is someone who was a distinguished chair of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee one week, and the next week says, “Well, that was last week and this is this week. Come on Secretary of State—think about these ‘just in case’ powers”. We will think about them, but I thank him for providing us with that breadth of thinking.
I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Blencathra for suggesting that we look at reordering the Bill or setting objectives, as the Fisheries Act does. He also gave some advice; I will read out a note about why there needs to be a maximum for the levy. These are all great tips. To the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I say that we will look at whether we can produce a written Explanatory Memorandum and of course we need to do impact assessments. These are all jobs of work and we will see how quickly we can get those things done. This is all in the spirit of wanting to be helpful and to have a better Bill, so I take all those points on board.
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Where I push back, with all respect, is that one of the things I was passionate about was to have a cap on liability, and the Florrie’s law thing is not to be knocked. It is separate to “polluter pays”; it is a protection in law to stop those Section 20 notices flying in. Leaseholders are given these bills, sometimes even in draft form, and suddenly feel they have to pay. It is important to understand that the cap works as a cap—a maximum. It also applies to the money already spent by a leaseholder on interim costs. We are talking about retrospective compensation. If they have spent £7,000, £8,000 or £9,000 on interim measures, they are already approaching the liability cap.
It is very important to see the cap as a way of stopping it exceeding that amount over time. That is not to say it is a panacea but, as I have said to my noble friend Lord Blencathra in discussions in person, we should see protections as one thing and “perpetrator pays” as another. Let us not knock the idea of a cap. It was put in regulation as Florrie’s law by my noble friend Lord Pickles, who I consider my mentor. It is a good idea to have that cap and I hope it gets the Committee’s support, but that is not to say we do not need to find the best possible tools to get the polluter to pay.
I have the words ringing in my ears from my noble friend Lord Young: “We are not there yet”. I think he has said that in every single speech so far since I became Building Safety Minister. What an enormous job of work we have done, and it is always greeted by “We are not there yet” —but I happen to agree with him. Rome was not built in a day. All I hope is that we do not take as long as building the great wall of China, which took some 2,000 years, but with his help and others’ we will get there.
I want to respond specifically on whether a developer is off the hook if he sells the building. I was struck by that, to the extent that I wanted to get a response. Developers are expected to fix their own buildings.
The developer may be liable under the Defective Premises Act. Cladding manufacturers may be liable via our new course of action in Amendment 108. We are also extending the reach of civil liability to remove the protections that SPVs offer—that is piercing the corporate veil.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, the way to get stuff done quickly is not to have a government programme then outsource it to a project management company, but to get the developers to fix their own mess. They can go off and do that. They have the engines to do that—they are builders, for God’s sake—so, yes, they have to go out and fix their buildings. The problem is the orphaned buildings where you cannot find someone who is responsible. The industry collectively recognises that it needs to make a contribution to those orphaned buildings as well. Negotiations are going very well; I have been in those negotiations and it recognises that we need to do this.
This is where I get to the point about the impact on supply. Although they are different, I do not make a distinction between public and private housing. If we have to fix a problem that exists in both social housing and private housing—and we recognise, collectively, that we need to fix that problem—I am afraid that, as the Minister for Building Safety, I probably will have an impact on supply. You have to put effort and energy into fixing a problem. It may be that there is an impact on supply. It is not for me or the Government to say what level of impact that will be but, crumbs, we have to get this right. It is right that we get the housing that we have today right.
We need to build new homes, of course, but to say that we can build the same number when we have to fix so many is a commitment I cannot make, although I am just the Building Safety Minister. We have to look at these things and recognise that there is a job of work to do to manage our existing asset base, but we also have a duty to build new housing and it will be difficult to do both. That is what both the registered social housing providers—registered social landlords, as they are called—and the developers have to do. They have to manage their existing base and add to new-build housing, and that is the problem.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, there is a total commitment to enforcing the law. That is why the strategy is to raise voluntarily and, if not, to impose in law. There is also absolute clarity that, if we put some £11 billion towards affordable housing—more will be social rented housing—there is a total commitment to protecting that money to ensure that we deliver the new homes that we so badly need. But let us recognise that there is a shortage of homes of all types and tenures. As a proportion of housing, social housing stayed broadly the same over the last 10 years. We have seen a massive increase in private rented housing, which is effectively providing a lot of the housing that would otherwise be social housing today. There has also been a decline in home ownership so we need more housing, including social rented housing. Supply is important for all types and tenures. I am sure that the noble Baroness would agree with that.
It will be difficult to do that when we have such a mess to fix. I do not want to resile from the fact that it will be difficult but we are asking the people out there
who manage their assets, and who wanted to build new homes to meet the demand, to walk and chew gum. We have to think about doing those two things together.
I love the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans because he is so passionate. He has been a massive campaigner on this, and I appreciate that. But I just do not agree about the sanctity of social housing providers that have built rubbish—and I will give an example. A registered social landlord who owns a piece of land will have, to use the phrase in the amendment,
“designed, specified … or supervised the works”,
and they will have brought in a construction company. There are examples of that in the area where I used to be council leader. They will have done exactly what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said when she described a developer, and got a construction company to build on their land. In this case they built homes of various sizes, wrapped in aluminium composite material or high-pressure laminates, without compartmentalisation. Then they are going to people with narrow shoulders and saying, “You pay for the mistakes that we oversaw if we can’t get the funding from government”. That is just wrong.
If you a polluter—it does not matter whether you are a social housing or a private housing polluter—you have to step up and take responsibility. I was a council leader for six years. If a council oversees its own land and builds rubbish it should do something about it, as it has broader shoulders than these leaseholders and shared owners, and the bailout should not just come from the taxpayer. That happens to be my opinion; it is not in the speaking notes. We have to be consistent about this. The levy should apply to people who have polluted, irrespective of whether they are a council, a social housing provider or a private developer, because they oversaw and built rubbish. As we know, if what you do does not meet building regulations then you contravene them, irrespective of whether an inspector of some description whom you selected signed it off. That is why we have things like the perpetrator pays provision and the polluter pays provision. I feel that very strongly.
I believe we have to be consistent about this, as hard as it is and irrespective of the noble objectives of a council. I was a councillor for 16 years, so I know what it is like to serve a community—it was amazing to serve mine, in the ward where I lived, for 16 years—and of course I understand that. But as a council leader, I would be ashamed of building rubbish. I would say, “I’ve got broader shoulders than some of those leaseholders”, and not run to the taxpayer to bail me out. I would try to fix it, as best I could, and go to the taxpayer only if that were not possible.
The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, raised resources and said that he was not sure that local authorities were up to it. I completely disagree. When I ran a small local authority in London, we had 5,000 people working for us—these are big entities. We have 300 authorities in the United Kingdom, and they are relatively big entities. I know that small district councils might be small, but even that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock—Kirklees—is big. It has massive turnover and a huge
payroll, I am sure. I believe that local councils do have the heft to contribute to the quality and safety of the built environment, so do not underestimate the ability of local authorities to be part of the solution.
I am being told to wrap up very quickly—in five minutes—because we want to get through to the next bit. I have lots of speaking notes, but I think I have responded to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. We will resist exempting social landlords, for some of the reasons I pointed out. I think I explained that in my preamble.
I say to my noble friends Lord Young and Lord Blencathra and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, that I am very much in listening mode. I would love to get something in the toolbox that helps us get the polluter to pay where building regulations have been contravened —which is a crime, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, pointed out. Let us get the best thinking to work and, like a mélange, pick and mix to see what we can do. Noble Lords know how government works, but I really appreciate the work and effort that have gone into this. I pay tribute to all the campaigners, and I know the legal brains behind both amendments are considerable. I am sure we can get something to add to the toolbox. That is all I will say at this stage. I will not comment further specifically on the three ideas pooled today, but I pay tribute to the three wise men.
I have some briefing on fire risk assessment authorities, on Amendments 79 to 84 which my noble friend Lord Blencathra tabled. I am afraid the Government cannot accept these amendments as they would interfere with our fire safety regime and the wider reforms we are delivering through the Bill. I am happy to meet my noble friend outside the debate to say why we are resisting them, but their spirit is right. That is the point—I understand why he has tabled them and I am with him in spirit. As the Opposition would say, acta non verba—I am giving him a lot of verba, but maybe not an acta on that one.
On Amendment 148, on the inspection of the Act and the building safety objectives, I again thank my noble friend and assure him that the Building Safety Bill already delivers on his objectives, as outlined in his amendment. I also welcome the intent of his amendment, which I believe is already captured in the government amendments tabled to the Bill. Again, I am afraid it is more verba than acta, but I thank him for raising this.
This has been an extremely good debate, with everybody wanting to stand shoulder to shoulder with leaseholders and shared owners—who have even narrower shoulders than some leaseholders—and wanting to protect them and deliver for the campaigners who have fought inveterately for some months to ensure that we recognise, as we all do, that they are victims of this crisis and need to be protected, and that we must get the polluter to pay. This group of amendments and all the thinking here today has been incredibly helpful. I thank everybody for the spirit in which this debate has been carried out.