I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He is an expert in this area, and I very much respect what he says. The answer is that it is for the Government to resolve this crisis. It is not for leaseholders to foot the bill. We suggested a national taskforce, whereby the Government could take responsibility for assessing the costs of the remediation work and then find out who is responsible, so that, as with the polluter pays principle, we could get to the point where the people who were responsible for the problem were paying the bill. That is fundamentally what we are trying to achieve, because in law at the moment, those who can least afford to pay are the only ones having to pay. The Minister says that there are flaws in the way the amendment is worded, but he could have amended it.
Lords amendment 2 would place robust requirements on building owners or managers and implement the key recommendations from phase 1 of the Grenfell inquiry. The Minister said that he had concerns with the way the amendment was worded. Again, the Government could have tried to amend it and to fix some of the problems along the way, but have chosen not to do so.
The Government said that they would implement the Grenfell phase 1 inquiry recommendations in full and without delay, and Lords amendment 2 would be a straightforward way for them to fulfil that promise. It seeks to require the owners of buildings that contain two or more sets of domestic premises to do four simple things: to share information with their local fire and rescue service about the design and make-up of the external walls; to complete regular inspections of fire entrance doors; to complete regular inspections of lifts; and to share evacuation and fire safety instructions with residents. Those measures are straightforward and supported by key stakeholders. Indeed, a common response is incredulity that these measures are not already in law.
The Government have even tried to water down proposals on the evacuation of disabled people, as has been reported today. They have proposed requiring personal evacuation plans for disabled people only in buildings with known safety issues and a waking watch. It is only after legal action by the families of those who died in the Grenfell Tower fire that the Government have relaunched a consultation on this.
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The fire safety consultation included proposals to check flat entrance doors every six months, but Sir Martin Moore-Bick said that all fire doors should be checked every three months. Ahead of setting up the Grenfell Tower inquiry, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), said that
“we cannot wait for ages to learn the immediate lessons.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 168.]
Nearly four years after Grenfell, and over a year after the recommendations were published, we have waited ages. It is shameful that these things are not enshrined in law.