UK Parliament / Open data

Fire Safety Bill

Proceeding contribution from Felicity Buchan (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Wednesday, 24 February 2021. It occurred during Debate on bills on Fire Safety Bill.

This Bill is very important to me and my constituents, and I want to pay tribute to the Grenfell community—the bereaved and the survivors. I want the Bill to be implemented as quickly and as robustly as possible so that it is not subject to any future uncertainty or challenge.

We need to get on with this. We need to stop all the ping-ponging between this place and the other place. It is very clear that there is a systematic scheme here. There is this Bill, which is very simple. We have had the consultation on the fire safety orders and the regulation. We need to get on with that. We need to implement that work and then get on with it. We then need the Building Safety Bill. That needs to come to this House and, again, we need to get on with it. We owe that to my constituents.

The first phase of the Grenfell inquiry report came out in October 2019, 16 months ago. We, collectively—both in this place and the other place—need to get this legislation implemented and make sure that these dangerous buildings are remediated. The more we talk, the more we argue, nothing gets done—and there are dangerous buildings out there.

We have a simple piece of legislation that we can get enacted. We have a big pot of money. The totality of the pot could be as high as £10 billion. Let us implement this legislation, let us start assessing and prioritising the buildings, and let us start spending this Government money. We have time to review the details of the financing scheme. I just want to make the point that, yes, the Government are taking responsibility for buildings over 18 metres, but there is a reason for that: buildings over 18 metres, according to all the independent risk assessors, are way more dangerous. They are four times more likely to have fatalities.

I empathise hugely with leaseholders, but there is still a subsidy in there for leaseholders of buildings between 11 metres and 18 metres. So let us just get on with this today. After that, we can review the details of the financing package and amend the Building Safety Bill, but this Bill is the first step and we need to get on with it.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
689 cc968-9 
Session
2019-21
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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