Robert Jenrick
MP for Newark · Reform UK · United Kingdom
“Robert Steele was a beautiful four-year-old boy who died three weeks ago in Newark when he was thrown from an off-road bike that was being driven by a 24-year-old man. This is the culmination of a number of incidents in my town, and many others across the country, involving off-road bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters.”
“The Minister said that Governments are elected to lead. Most people would assume that means that Ministers are elected to lead, because they are accountable to Parliament and to the people.”
“There is an air of total unreality hanging over this debate. Successive Governments have run down our Royal Navy to its present enfeebled state, they have conspired to surrender other British sovereign territory and we have a Government who procrastinate about signing off a new oil field in the North sea—let alone about one in the south A…”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position. I have known him for a long time—I wish him well. He has a huge task ahead of him. Earlier in the summer, the Prime Minister said that walking the streets of Makerfield lodged in his mind that so many working people want to see the personal allowance raised.”
“Imagine that you are a worker at JLR worried about your future, and you have the misfortune of watching the Chancellor’s speech, which contains searing economic insights like, “I want to see businesses make a profit.” There was nothing about scrapping electric vehicle mandates, bringing down energy costs by getting rid of net zero targets…”
“The sight of the Government escorting illegal migrants into Portsmouth harbour, the home of the Royal Navy, was a national humiliation. Sometimes I wonder whether Members of this House have no appreciation of the level of anger there is in the country at the rapes, the murders and the billions being wasted that should be being spent on th…”
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“Lenders have welcomed the progress on that guidance, which will help to ensure that more than half a million leaseholders in blocks of flats over 11 metres will not need a separate EWS1 assessment to get a mortgage. That builds on the interventions we have already made to create and train many more assessors, and we are doing more so that they can access professional indemnity insurance to get on with the job. Today, in addition to providing certainty to leaseholders, we are providing confidence to lenders. Following discussions that my right hon.”
“That is the approach that we are taking through the Building Safety Bill, the new building safety regulator, the Fire Safety Bill and the new national regulator for construction products, which I announced in January. I am determined that we will have a world-class building safety regime. We need everyone to follow this sensible, proportionate approach so that this part of the housing market can move forward and homeowners are not disproportionately impacted. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has consulted on new guidance for valuers on when an EWS1 form should be required. The Government endorse its work to ensure that assessors have a stronger basis on which to make good, proportionate judgments about valuation risk.”
“In the actions we have taken and those we take today, we have already very clearly prioritised public safety. However, it is also important that we put the risk of a fire, and in particular the risk of a fatal fire, in context—it is low. Last year, the number of people who died in fires in blocks of flats over 11 metres was 10—an all-time low—and fire-related fatalities in dwellings in England have fallen by 29% over the past decade. By way of comparison, more than 1,700 fatalities were reported on our roads in 2019. Of course, any death is one too many, and the tragedy of Grenfell Tower lingers with us and demands action. That is why it is right that we address safety issues where they exist and are a threat to life, but we must do so proportionately, guided at all times by expert advice.”
“In introducing the levy, we will continue to ensure that the homes our country needs get built and that our small and medium-sized builders are protected. In addition, a new tax will be introduced for the UK residential property development sector in 2022. This will raise at least £2 billion over a decade to help to pay for cladding remediation costs. The tax will ensure that the largest property developers make a fair contribution to the remediation programme in relation to the money they make from residential property, reflecting the benefit that they will derive from restoring confidence to the UK housing market. The Government will consult on the policy design in due course. Fourthly, I know there are many people across the country who are concerned about the safety of their home.”
“Thirdly, while the problem is not one of leaseholders’ making, it also cannot be right that the costs of addressing these issues fall solely on taxpayers, many of whom are not themselves homeowners and can only dream of getting on the housing ladder. The Government have always expected the industry to contribute towards these costs, and some have done so. Today, I am announcing that we will introduce a gateway 2 developer levy, which will be implemented through the forthcoming Building Safety Bill. The proposed levy will be targeted and will apply only when developers seek permission to develop certain high-rise buildings in England, helping to ensure that the industry takes collective responsibility for historical building safety defects.”
“Taken together, this means the Government are providing more than £5 billion, including a further £3.5 billion announced today, plus the significant cost of the very generous financing scheme, which will run for many years to come, to ensure that all leaseholders in medium and high-rise blocks face no costs or very low costs if cladding remediation is needed. Where it is needed, costs can still be significant for leaseholders, which is why we want to take these important steps. We want to ensure that the Government develop this long-term scheme, which will protect leaseholders with financial support. Taken together, this means that the Government are helping leaseholders to move forwards with greater certainty and more confidence about the future.”
“Secondly, for lower and medium-rise blocks of flats, the risks are significantly lower and the remediation of cladding is less likely to be needed; in many cases, it will not be needed at all, but where it is, costs can still be significant for leaseholders. That is why I am announcing today that the Government will develop a long-term scheme to protect leaseholders in this situation with financial support for cladding remediation on buildings of between four and six storeys. Under a long-term low-interest scheme, no leaseholder will ever pay more than £50 a month towards the removal of unsafe cladding, many far less.”
“We will make further funding available to pay for the removal and replacement of unsafe cladding for all leaseholders in high-rise residential buildings of 18 metres and above, or above six storeys, in England. We continue to take a safety-led approach, and this funding will focus on the higher-rise buildings, where the independent expert advisory panel tells us time and again the overwhelming majority of the safety risk lies, in line with the existing building safety fund and the anticipated scope of the new building safety regulator that we are establishing and will shortly be legislating for. This will ensure that we end the cladding scandal in a way that is fair and generous to leaseholders.”
“However, it is clear that without further Government intervention many building owners will simply seek to pass these potentially very significant costs on to leaseholders, as this is often the legal position in the leases that they signed. That would risk punishing those who have worked hard and bought their own home, but who have, through no fault of their own, found themselves caught in an invidious situation. Importantly, it would also risk slowing down the critical works to make these homes safer. I am therefore making an exceptional intervention today on behalf of the Government and providing certainty that leaseholders in high-rise residential buildings will face no cost for cladding remediation works.”
“Thanks to a considerable effort, including during the pandemic, almost 95% of all high-rise buildings with unsafe ACM cladding identified by the beginning of last year have been remediated, or workers are on site now doing the job. That rises to 100% in social housing. Guided by expert advice, the work to remove other types of cladding that are also unsafe—albeit less so than ACM—where they pose a genuine risk to life is also under way. It has always been our expectation—our demand—that building owners and developers should step up to meet the cost of this work. Where they have not, or where they no longer exist, the Government have stepped in, providing £1.6 billion to remediate unsafe cladding.”
“That is why today I am announcing an unprecedented intervention—a clear plan to remove unsafe cladding, to provide certainty to leaseholders, to make the industry pay for its faults of the past, to create a world-class building safety regime and to inject confidence and certainty back into this part of the housing market. First, we will finish the job we have started on remediating unsafe cladding. After the tragedy of Grenfell Tower, the expert advice that this Government received identified aluminium composite cladding, or ACM—the material on the tower—as by far the most unsafe form of cladding. It should never have been used, and our independent expert advisory panel recommended that it should be the focus of our remediation work.”
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I want to make a statement on housing and building safety. Beyond the covid-19 pandemic, the Government want to build back better—better homes, better infrastructure and better communities. The foundation of those ambitions, and the mission of my Department, is safety and fairness. We have all been moved by the stories we have heard and the people we have met—homeowners placed in difficult and sometimes impossible situations through no fault of their own. I appreciate the frustration, the worry and the despair that at times they feel. I share their anger at the errors, the omissions, the false promises and even the outright dishonesty, which were built up over many decades but which this Government are determined to tackle.”
“Friend the Chancellor and I were working with the lenders, the insurers, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the leaseholder groups to bring forward what we have announced today, which I hope all fair-minded Members across the House will see as a significant intervention. It does get unsafe cladding off buildings and end the cladding scandal. It does provide reassurance and confidence to leaseholders. It does ensure that the developers and the industry pay their fair share. It does build a world-class building safety regime, and it does enable us now to move forward to reopen and restore confidence in the housing market so that the country can move forward again.”
“We know that, in Scotland, according to a recent freedom of information request, the Scottish Government have done absolutely nothing. The funding they received from the building safety fund is sat in a bank account in Edinburgh, and they have done nothing with it. I would be interested to know from the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) what the Welsh Government are doing. I do not know. Perhaps she can inform us. The hon. Lady herself came to this late. It was only a week or so ago that she convened the first debate on this in her tenure. She did not offer a plan. She did not show an appreciation of the scale and complexity of the issue. She offered a taskforce, a committee. Empty words, I am afraid, and gestures. That is not good enough. While the hon. Lady was doing that, the Prime Minister, my right hon.”
“That will provide peace of mind to hundreds of thousands of leaseholders, and I think it can be seen as a generous, affordable way forward for the taxpayer. We have to remember that, when the Prime Minister and I came to office 18 months ago, there was only £200 million of Government money available to support leaseholders in this situation, and that that in itself was the result of incredibly hard work by my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). Today, 18 months later, there are many billions of pounds of support in direct Government grant and then billions more, no doubt, in financing scheme funding available to support those leaseholders and to get the situation under control. Meanwhile, what is happening in other parts of the country?”
“I pay tribute to everyone who has been part of that over the course of the year, including those keeping the works going during the pandemic, which many politicians, including Labour politicians, asked us not to do. That was the wrong judgment, but we kept those works going. For lower-rise buildings—those of four to six storeys—we are bringing into play this important new financing scheme. That means that those leaseholders who at the moment have impossible costs, causing great worry and strain, will now be able to have the reassurance that those costs will be turned into manageable ones. They will never need to pay more than £50 a month—many will pay far less—and only where the cladding really does need to come off to ensure that the building is safe.”
“We want the building owners to step up and meet the cost, but where that is not possible—in many cases, I am afraid it is not, because the building owners are no longer around—the taxpayer will step in and meet the cost, with the advantage of the levy and the tax to help recoup the costs. That must be the right approach. The hon. Lady asks whether enough progress has been made. Actually, we have ended 2020 with 95% of buildings over 18 metres with the most dangerous form of cladding—ACM cladding—either having been remediated or with workers on site doing the job. That is 100% of the buildings in the social sector, which is a huge step forward.”
“I am pleased that the hon. Lady welcomes many of the proposals we have set out today. This is an unprecedented intervention, and it is one of the most generous, if not the most generous, of its kind anywhere in the world. She asks, importantly, why we have focused on high-rise buildings. We have done so because that is time and again where all the independent expert advice leads us. We must make these judgments on the basis of expert advice. With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, I think we need to follow the expert advisers, not her instincts. We are focusing on the buildings over 18 metres, where the work needs to get done, and in those buildings we are ensuring that the leaseholder never pays.”
“It does not preclude any actions by the building or the leaseholders against insurers, those holding warranties or the developers, and those actions should take place. We want to see those who made these mistakes brought to book. We do not want this all to fall on the taxpayer; that is absolutely essential. This is a very difficult judgment. We have to ensure that we are striking the right balance between the interests of leaseholders who are homeowners and those of the broader taxpayer. I think we have done that today, and I hope that this is a major step forward in the battle against this issue.”
“I praise my hon. Friend for his determined campaigning on the issue over many years, which I think everybody in the House has recognised and for which many leaseholders will no doubt be grateful. I have been pleased to work with him and to take his advice when it has been needed. I assure him that the funding that we have made available today will provide leaseholders with the certainty and confidence that they need. Any leaseholder in a building of over 18 metres will now know that they will not have to pay for the removal of cladding, and leaseholders in the buildings that are lower rise—11 to 18 metres—can take great comfort from the fact that this new financing arrangement will be in place.”
“These are loans on a long tenure that will remain with the building, ensuring that the leaseholders themselves can move on with their lives.”
“We have set an upper limit of £50 a month, which provides a great deal of comfort to leaseholders that they will never need to pay more than that per month. That is about the equivalent of the average service charge for a purpose-built block of flats. I appreciate that it is a cost that no one would wish to bear, but it is a reasonable one in balancing the interests of the taxpayer with providing support and protection to the leaseholder. We will bring forward further details on how that scheme works as quickly as we can. It is important also to say that the arrangement that we will be creating is not a loan to an individual; it is a financing scheme with buildings. The loans do not sit with the individual and will not affect their credit rating.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Lady for welcoming much of the substance of today’s announcement. I draw her back to my earlier remarks: to the best of my knowledge, the Scottish Government have made no use at all of the funding that they have been provided with through the existing building safety fund. Important questions now need to be answered by her Government in Scotland as to what is actually happening there. What are they doing to support leaseholders? How are they making those buildings safe? With respect to the financing scheme that we are bringing forward in England, it will be a matter for the Scottish Government—or, indeed, the Welsh or Northern Irish Administrations—to decide whether they wish to create a similar scheme.”
“In addition to that, we will bring forward the financing scheme, the details of which, as I said, will be published shortly, but it is a very generous scheme and there is a significant cost to the taxpayer in ensuring that the £50 cap gives that added level of protection and reassurance to leaseholders. The total intervention that we are making today is, as my hon. Friend says, one of many, many billions of pounds. That is a difficult judgment, which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have made with me, but we believe this is a fair and generous settlement to help everybody to move forward.”
“I praise my hon. Friend, who has been a fantastic Member of Parliament for Kensington since she was elected and has raised with me this and other issues arising out of the Grenfell tragedy almost every week—in fact, we meet every week to discuss these issues. My hon. Friend is right to say that this is a very substantial intervention. We have already made £1.6 billion available, and we estimate that it will require another £3.5 billion to complete the remediation of unsafe cladding on buildings over 18 metres and to make good on the promise we have made today to leaseholders.”
“What we are doing today is stepping in in a way that Governments have not done in the past—that they have not done when people’s homes have been flooded or subject to subsidence or other unforeseen and incredibly difficult and challenging issues. We have chosen to do this because we have immense sympathy for the leaseholders affected and, as a matter of basic public safety, we have to get these unsafe materials off buildings as quickly as possible. I think this is the right judgment and the right balance to strike between the interests of the leaseholder and those of the broader taxpayer, but I would be delighted to come before the hon. Gentleman’s Committee to discuss this issue in more detail soon.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman and the members of the Select Committee for their expert advice on this issue over a number of years, and to me personally as Secretary of State. I would of course be delighted to come before the Committee to discuss this issue further in the near future. The hon. Gentleman says that this announcement does not go as far as he would have liked. I appreciate that sentiment, and no doubt there will be leaseholders watching today who would wish us to go even further, but this is a very significant intervention—we do have to keep coming back to that fact. Broadly speaking, English property rights are based on caveat emptor—buyer beware—and the contents of the leases, contracts, warranties and insurance policies that we as homeowners sign.”
“We want to see a major change in the culture of the industry, so that homeowners get the product—the brilliant, beautiful, high-quality home—that they deserve. We have set up a new homes ombudsman, which will be passed into law as part of the building safety regulator. The new regulatory regime, which is already in existence in shadow form, will be put into permanent form through the passing of the Building Safety Bill. For higher-rise buildings—those over 18 metres—that will create a very strict, world-class regulatory regime.”
“I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. We all believe in home ownership. We want to get more people on to the housing ladder, and we know that owning a home is one of the most special achievements in life. But we also know that, in recent years, some of our developers—and some of our most prominent ones, too—have built homes that are to a poor standard; they have admitted it in some cases. We need to make sure that that is corrected, so that the quality of homes in this country is high and members of the public can have confidence when making that life-changing investment. It cannot be right that buying a home affords someone less protection than buying a mobile phone or many other things we do in our daily lives.”
“Lady’s proposition is with respect to other materials beyond cladding. All the expert opinion says, “Focus on cladding. That is the primary risk here—that is the focus that Government should have.” I will keep following expert advice. If the Labour party’s position is that we should not follow that, and that in fact the Chancellor should write a blank cheque and say that absolutely any building safety defect on any building of any height should be paid for by the taxpayer, that is a very substantial cost, and I would be interested to know how she intends to fund that. With respect to the insurance companies, I do now expect them to step up and ensure that their premiums are proportionate and risk-based, because I think some of them have been exploiting leaseholders in a very difficult position.”
“I am disappointed by the tone of the hon. Lady’s remarks. She has followed this issue closely and has fought for her constituents, and I praise her and recognise her for that hard work, but this Government have done a huge amount, and I entirely reject her accusations. We have brought forward the public inquiry. We have planned and are now legislating for a new building safety regulator—a world-class regulatory regime. We have brought in people to ensure that the unsafe cladding on ACM-clad high-rise buildings is remediated, and that work has progressed a great deal over the course of the year. As I said earlier, many Labour politicians, including the Mayor of London, opposed that initially, at the height of the pandemic. We have done a great deal, but there is more to be done. I do not know what the hon.”
“Friend is also right to say that today’s announcement will create certainty and confidence for the broader construction sector to come forward and enter the market to do this work. That will create thousands of jobs, and I encourage businesses large and small to take part in this major initiative.”
“The approach that I took when I became Secretary of State was to set a target for us that we would either remediate all buildings or get the workers on site by the end of last year. As I say, with a few exceptions —largely because of the covid-19 pandemic—we achieved that. We have used project managers and consultants to ensure that every single building in that cohort is being individually managed. My Ministers and I have been meeting with the contractors, the leaders of local councils, the chief executives and the residents’ management associations of those buildings regularly to ensure that progress is happening. That work needs to continue and to broaden out to all those buildings that will benefit from today’s announcement. My hon.”
“We are working with the insurance sector, which I think now needs to take a more proportionate, risk-based approach. These might be outliers, but some of the examples I have heard of insurance premiums rising by 1,000% are completely out of kilter with the statistics I gave earlier, that last year only 10 people tragically died in buildings over 11 metres, and only 41 people died in any house fire at all in this country. With respect to waking watch, I think that is a very challenging issue, but we have brought forward our £30 million fund to replace waking watches with high-quality, effective fire alarm systems. That fund is now open, and I encourage any building—perhaps including the one in the hon. Lady’s constituency—to apply for it, get the fire alarm installed and then hopefully reduce those costs quickly.”
“I certainly can, and I thank my right hon. Friend for the work he has done on behalf of his constituents. We have corresponded many times on this subject. Today’s announcement will provide comfort and reassurance to hundreds of thousands of leaseholders. I also draw his attention and that of the House to the work we are doing with RICS, which will ensure that about 50% of those individuals who might have required and EWS1 form will now no longer need to go through that laborious and often expensive process.”
“We are working intensively and extensively to tackle the issue, and I hope that today’s intervention will be a permanent and lasting settlement.”
“Actually, the Government acted decisively in the immediate aftermath of Grenfell Tower. Expert opinion has evolved over time. The first expert advice that the Government received was, as I said earlier, to focus on ACM cladding—the type of cladding on Grenfell Tower—and on those buildings over 18 metres. We put in place the funding to do that where the building owners and the industry were not able to, or would not, pay themselves. The expert advice then said that there were other materials that were somewhat less unsafe but which, none the less, still could be unsafe. That work is under way, and the Chancellor gave an extra £1 billion to do that at the Budget a year ago. Now, we have brought forward this very substantial intervention today.”
“The announcement that we have made today and the work that the Chancellor and I have done with each of the major retail banks, which strongly support the intervention, give much greater confidence to lenders, surveyors and insurers to re-enter the market, to bring down those premiums, to lend against these buildings and to enable the market to move forward again. This will take time and there is more to be done, but I think we will see the market moving forward now in a way that it has not done in recent months.”
“They should still come forward, as well as paying their fair share through the levy and the tax that I have announced today.”
“The hon. Lady raises an extremely important matter. Let me be absolutely clear: the first thing that the Government have done is establish the independent Grenfell inquiry. That has already heard some absolutely shocking allegations of malpractice and, in fact, outright dishonesty among some of the construction products manufacturers. It will be a matter for the police whether they choose to take forward criminal prosecutions against individuals or companies involved. On remediation, we want the building owners to pay. Some have, and I am grateful to them for that. In fact, some of the large volume house builders, even today, have come forward saying that they will pay more. That needs to continue, and nothing that I have said today should take away from that.”
“The levy and the tax that I have announced today and that my right hon Friend the Chancellor and I will be setting out more details on ensure that the industry pays its fair share, in addition to it stepping up and paying for the remediation of buildings for which it has responsibility. It has to be said that there is no simple solution to this. Many of the builders and developers who constructed these buildings are long gone—they have gone into administration or they are shell companies offshore. This is not a simple challenge to fix, as some have suggested, but I hope the measures that we have taken today will go a long way.”
“Friend Lord Greenhalgh who leads on building safety have engaged repeatedly with insurers and we will do so again.”
“I pay tribute to the right hon. Lady for the work that she has done. She and I have worked together since the terrible fire that her constituents suffered in Barking. She is right to raise the issue of insurance, as other Members of the House have done already. There is a challenge here, because, as with the lenders, the insurers are faced with assessing a new and heightened level of risk. None the less the Association of British Insurers now needs to step up and take a proportionate risk-based approach. As I have said repeatedly, the risk to life in buildings is, mercifully, very low, with the tragic exception of the events of 2017. Insurers should be pricing that risk correctly and not passing on those costs or even profiteering on the backs of the leaseholders. Both myself and my hon.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We all feel immense sympathy for the leaseholders, who are innocent parties in this situation, but it also is not right that the taxpayer—the broader taxpayer, many of whom are not home owners at all—should have to step in and foot the bill. We have tried to strike a balance today in terms of ensuring that the developers, the builders and the industry behind this pay a fair share. The draft Building Safety Bill that we will introduce later this year will bring forward a very tight regulatory regime so that buildings over 18 metres—the high-rise buildings—are built to a very high standard and these issues should not happen again.”
“Of course there are choices at every turn, and that, in itself, will have consequences and make it harder for those housing associations to invest in more affordable and social housing, or other important aims that they and I share, like making buildings more energy-efficient to meet our climate obligations. That is the difficult situation that we find ourselves in. I am also acutely aware of the challenges faced by shared owners, and we will make particular provision to protect them so that they do not have to meet disproportionate costs with regard to cladding remediation.”
“The hon. Lady raises an important point. We have been working very closely with local authorities since the start of this issue in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy. I have engaged repeatedly with the National Housing Federation, which has done excellent work in this regard. We did provide funding to help support them. We are focusing the funding that we have provided on those housing associations or local councils that cannot fund this themselves, either through their own reserves or their ability to borrow. Most housing associations can do that, but there will be a small number that cannot.”
“I go back to the point that I have tried to make repeatedly: in many, many cases it will not need to be done because we want surveyors and the industry to take a proportionate, risk-based approach that takes true account of the risk to life in those properties, which for most leaseholders, mercifully, is very low.”
“Let me be clear on this point once again. The expert advice is very clear. It says that we should focus our attention on the buildings where there is a higher risk—buildings over 18 metres—so it is right that the Government choose to do that when they are using such large sums of taxpayer money. For buildings between 11 and 18 metres—between approximately four and six storeys—we are bringing forward this financing scheme, which will enable leaseholders to move forward with confidence and certainty in the knowledge that they will never need to pay more than £50 a month to meet the cladding remediation, where that absolutely needs to be done.”
“We also, of course, want to see the building owners step up and pay for those works. Where there has been poor workmanship, the building owner needs to take responsibility, and we will continue to do everything we can to support lease- holders to pursue those claims.”
“My hon. Friend has championed her constituents in this regard, and she and I have discussed the issue in the past. I hope the announcement will provide comfort to some of the constituents I am aware of in Eastbourne. One building in particular that we have corresponded on is above 18 metres, so will certainly be a beneficiary of the scheme, if it has not been a beneficiary of previous ones. My hon. Friend is right to raise the fact that other building safety defects, which we have spoken about in the past, have also come to light, whether that is fire blocks, insulation or fire doors. Some of those works will need to be done, taking a proportionate, risk-based approach, where there is a true risk to life, so that the bill for the leaseholders is not disproportionate.”