Topical Questions
We absolutely welcome the fact-finding mission’s report. Indeed, we were the initiator of the fact-finding mission, and we remain a huge champion of its work.
Showing every spoken contribution, including 11,997 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
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Electronic Monitoring of Offenders
Serco continues to be awarded lucrative Government contracts despite repeated failures, while probation officers have been pushed to breaking point. Will the Minister commit to bringing back in-house electronic tagging and probation services, as I proposed in my amendment to the Bill that became the Sentencing Act 2026, so that we are not rewarding private profit over public safety?
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
Time and again today, we have remembered all those who tragically died in the Grenfell fire all those years ago. We look back on that not only because they deserve our tribute, but because we all know in our hearts that it did not need to happen. It could have been avoided, and the warnings were there years before. As has been said a few times today, the fire happened nine years ago, and we still have not got things right. I cannot speak any more eloquently than my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) did. He spoke for only a few minutes, but he has campaigned relentlessly on behalf of his constituents <span id="257" class="column-number" data-column-number="257"></span>for many hours, days and months—not only to make sure that we get the truth and learn from it, but to keep championing all those people who are still worried. Many feel trapped in homes in which they should be able to live safely and comfortably, but in which they cannot. I really welcome what the Government are doing today, and I pay tribute to the Secretary of State and her Ministers. In 2024, the Secretary of State began the remediation acceleration plan, because it was taking way too long. Relevant legislation has been passed in this place before, but we see that it is not delivering. There are too many gaps, and I believe that this Bill is a great step forward. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for saying that she will add to it, and I am sure that she has been listening carefully to what has been said today and will continue to listen, not just to us in this place but to the people we represent. I know that she and her Ministers have been meeting people affected by this issue and representatives of End Our Cladding Scandal. One of the big champions in my constituency, Sophie Bichener, has been working in this area for years, and she has acknowledged those meetings. When we talk about examples in our constituencies, we sometimes think that MPs who represent big cities will have a lot, which might be true. I represent a new town, just like my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince), who represents another fine new town that is not far from Stevenage. We do not have as many examples as the House might think, but I want to highlight two. It does not matter that we do not have many, because those residents who have been trapped for so long really feel it. In Stevenage we have Monument Court and Vista Tower, and I want to relay a couple of my residents’ expressions of despair. One resident of Vista Tower said: “Since the Grenfell disaster we have been imprisoned in a property that we cannot sell, has no apparent value and has continuing yearly safety improvements. But worst of all, the owners of flats have no visibility as to when this nightmare will finish.” Another said: “I am living in a home that I know to be unsafe, with no clear timeline for when the necessary remediation work will be completed. The ongoing uncertainty is causing significant stress and anxiety, particularly as I have two young children whose safety and wellbeing are my priority. I am also facing increased insurance costs and am having to deplete my savings to cover the financial burden. I cannot sell my property because of the unresolved cladding issues, leaving me effectively trapped in a home that may be unsafe and unable to move forward with my life.” Those residents are just two examples of people trapped in their own homes, not knowing if they are safe after all these years. Residents in Vista Tower are now going through a second round of remedial works. They have been told that they are to be decanted, but for how long? We do not know. When is that going to happen? We do not know. Vista Tower itself has been the subject of many legal actions going on for years, and there seems no end to it. We have to give those residents the hope of an ending, so that they can get on with their lives, feel safe in their homes and, if they want to do so, move on and live elsewhere. <span id="258" class="column-number" data-column-number="258"></span> I am pleased that the Bill takes us forward on some of those matters, but it has been very difficult for many Members to hear about some of the issues that have been raised today. We need to ensure that non-qualifying leaseholders, such as those living in Vista Tower and Monument Court, are not left with unaffordable bills to fix historical defects, such as the fire safety defects, so I am pleased to hear movement from the Secretary of State in that regard.
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
I thank the hon. Member for making a very sensible point. I am pleased that the Bill takes forward the idea of having independent actors to step in, which I would always welcome—the more of that, the better. We cannot have the developers or freeholders of these buildings essentially marking their own homework. We must ensure that buildings are reviewed holistically and made safe as a whole. As I have said, Vista Tower is facing a second round of intrusive works and the decanting of residents, so we need to ensure that such things can be avoided. That is why it is so important to have compliance plans and, more importantly, to ensure that residents are informed of and are able to influence and shape these plans. I welcome the moves in that regard. For Vista Tower, there have now been eight years of fighting, with no timeline for ending it. We must therefore make sure that remediation compliance plans guarantee access to assessments, work specifications, delivery timetables and completion evidence, with real and meaningful engagement for leaseholders, while also providing them with accessible routes to challenge decisions and raise concerns about their homes. In that way we can give leaseholders, but also the flats market as a whole, confidence that when work is required, it will be done properly and collaboratively. Today is a day of real progress—we are filling the gaps one by one—and I am pleased to hear that Ministers are listening. They should carry on listening to make sure that the Bill becomes an Act that finally gives people who are living in fear of the future and uncertain about what is going to happen to their home the release from all of that that they truly deserve.
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
I call Jessica Toale.
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
With the leave of the House, I call the shadow Minister.
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Council Housing
I will start by singing the praises of what we have done in my constituency, because Labour’s record at Cannock Chase district council shows what can be achieved when a council is ambitious about providing the homes its residents need. After more than 30 years without building new council homes, the last Labour administration, which I was proud to be part of as deputy leader, got building again. It started with the most unglamorous of sites: old garage blocks that were becoming increasingly difficult to rent out, many of which had turned into magnets for antisocial behaviour and drug dealing. We turned them into new homes, filling some of the biggest gaps in our housing stock. We also partnered with Lovell Homes to redevelop the former Aelfgar school site in Rugeley, where 58 new homes have been delivered, including 29 council houses. The ribbon may have been cut under Reform, but the groundwork was done under Labour. That brings me to the Government’s plans to help councils do more, because in Cannock Chase a lack of ambition was never the problem, finding affordable finance was. That is why I welcome the extension of preferential public works loan board rates, which will help make the numbers stack up for councils looking to invest in new homes. I also welcome the council house building support fund because councils need the right people and expertise to develop schemes, build pipelines of projects and put together strong bids for funding. That is something that my council found that we often missed out on when councils of other similar sizes were getting funding awarded. I hope that my district council will make full use of that opportunity. I will also touch on empty homes, something that two constituents raised with me just last week. One is concerned about the number of green belt sites having to be released. The other, who is trying to get on to the housing ladder, very much welcomed the upcoming Your First Home scheme announced by the Prime Minister but felt that bringing empty homes back into use should also be part of the answer.<span id="89WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="89WH"></span> I therefore welcome the Government’s boost to the powers that councils can use to tackle the issue of long-term empty properties. Again, I encourage Cannock Chase district council to make full use of them, including for two semi-detached houses on Poplar Street in Norton Canes that have stood empty for many years. I am also interested to hear from the Minister about whether there is scope to take the number of long-term empty homes into greater account when housing targets are calculated. Finally, I welcome the Government’s plans to tighten right to buy because we need to ensure that the council houses that we build remain available to people who need them well into the future. As we make it easier for councils to build again, I hope that we can gradually work towards ending right to buy altogether and protect that housing stock for the long term. That is ultimately what the debate is all about: making sure that people have access to a decent, secure and genuinely affordable home, whether that means building on a neglected garage site, regenerating a former school or bringing empty property back into use. Cannock Chase Labour has shown that councils can deliver, and I hope the Government’s measures will give more councils the means and confidence to do so in future.
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Services for Children in Care
I would like to take this opportunity, as I have not yet had one, to warmly welcome the Minister to his place. I know that he is covering tonight for the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), but I am sure that he will do a fantastic job. I know that in his role on early education, which is also an area of interest for me, he will be a steadfast champion and a fantastic member of this Government, so I welcome him. I first applied for this debate after a conversation I had at the West Chadsmoor NHS clinic back in June. I had gone there to talk to the team about the fantastic Pride in Place funding coming to our area and to meet some of the brilliant clinicians based there who specialise in areas such as child and adolescent mental health services, paediatric podiatry, occupational health and various forms of family support. As I am sure Members across the House will have experienced, I often leave a visit in my constituency with much more work than I walked in with, but that is of course what I was elected to do, and it is a pleasure to do that work. One of the conversations I had at West Chadsmoor raised an issue I felt needed to be brought to this House. It was about vulnerable children being placed in Staffordshire by local authorities elsewhere in the country and the problems that arise when the right people are not told that those children are coming. I heard from clinicians that increasingly they are coming across young people who have been placed in our area without Staffordshire county council being notified. Sadly, CAMHS staff sometimes encounter those children for the first time when they are in a serious mental health crisis. The doctors I spoke to described young people who might be self-harming or experiencing suicidal thoughts. These are children who will almost certainly have already experienced deep trauma, family breakdown and considerable instability. Then they are moved miles from home—sometimes hundreds of miles—and the support that they had, we hope, been receiving does not always follow them. The statutory requirement is for the responsible local authority to notify the host local authority when a child or young person in care is placed within its area. but I am hearing that this does not always happen and does not always include the relevant information regarding identified risks and support needs. Consideration should also be given to the suitability of the placement, such as the availability of local services. When a local authority decides to place a child in another part of the country, that child arrives with their own history, their own vulnerabilities and, often, an established package of support. Yet the authority responsible for receiving them may not even know they are there. The clinicians who want to do their best to replicate that support are sometimes left on the back foot. They may only discover the child when something has gone wrong and they come to them in a very bad way. That is not a sensible way to organise care for any child, let alone one who is already vulnerable, which is why, of course, the legal duty to inform exists.<span id="273" class="column-number" data-column-number="273"></span> In my constituency, we have seen rapid growth in independent children’s homes in recent years, partly because of the relatively low property prices but also, as we know, because of a chronic lack of foster carers. As a former foster carer myself, I very much welcome the recruitment campaign that the Department launched last week.
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Services for Children in Care
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. He always has a kind word to say and a valuable contribution to make to any debate on any topic, which is quite impressive. He is absolutely right to highlight the fact that there are so many people in our country who would love to foster and have the attributes and the motivation to do so, but who simply cannot afford to because the costs they would have to meet exceed the payment they would get. We need to raise awareness of the fact that fostering is paid for—many people do not realise that—and we need to bring those stories to the House, as he has rightly done, to highlight the need to do far more to support our foster carers, who do an incredible amount.
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Services for Children in Care
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who speaks from deep personal knowledge of this topic. She is right to highlight the experience of foster carers in her constituency, who all too often feel that the buck always stops with them and that there is never any let-up. It can be an incredibly challenging role—we are talking about some of the most vulnerable children in our society, who often have incredibly complex needs that present themselves in many different ways. It is the responsibility of our society as a whole to ensure that those children are well cared for, but we also need to ensure that our foster carers have the support and the wraparound care that is needed to succeed, because they play such an incredible role. When my husband and I were fostering, we were very fortunate to have that support from our county council, and we need to ensure that that support is available to everybody.<span id="274" class="column-number" data-column-number="274"></span> Staffordshire is increasingly welcoming children who are placed in our county by local authorities elsewhere in the country, and I am very glad that our county is able to play that role in caring for vulnerable young people. The figures for Cannock Chase give us a sense of how the picture is changing. In 2025-26, five children’s homes opened and two closed, with a net increase of seven places. The county council told one of the councillors in my constituency that there are 19 homes for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties and seven for children with learning difficulties. Because of the high level of EBD homes, the county council is even taking the step of asking potential providers not to set up new EBD homes in my constituency for the time being, despite the shortages we are all aware of. As more homes open, our local services clearly have a growing role in supporting children whose previous care arrangements may have been organised hundreds of miles away. I am proud that Staffordshire can provide care for those children, but I want to ensure that the local authorities placing them here are giving our services the information that they need early enough to plan properly. My point is not that Staffordshire should do less to support these children; it is that, if we are going to provide that care, we must have the communication and co-ordination needed to do it as well as possible. These children deserve more than a placement address; they deserve a joined-up package of care that follows them wherever they move to. The doctors I spoke to explained that, when Staffordshire county council receives the appropriate notification, CAMHS has a chance to contact the young person’s previous NHS trust, establish what support they have been receiving and work out how that support can be continued locally. That is the difference between planning for a child’s needs and reacting when those needs escalate. Without notification, that opportunity is taken away. The receiving services may not know about the child, may not have their clinical history and may not understand what treatment or support has been interrupted. It also means that GPs may not know that a young person has entered their area; diagnoses, risks and existing care plans may not accompany the placement; responsibility for GP registration, crisis support and ongoing care may remain unclear; services might respond without essential clinical and contextual information; and young people may experience avoidable crisis escalation—emergency department attendance and in-patient stays are all too common. Fragmented arrangements can undermine safeguarding and continuity of care. Commissioning of provision is carried out by local authorities, but if they are not aware of what has been commissioned from the home area, which can often include a comprehensive health package to sustain the placement, it is not hard to see where things can go wrong. In some cases, local services can end up duplicating already commissioned input, leading to double-funded provision. That complexity is compounded when multiple providers operate within one geographical area. In Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, there are multiple CAMHS providers, alongside specialist children in care health teams hosted by different organisations. Acute hospitals attended by young people may be managed by separate provider trusts, many of which do not have access to community <span id="275" class="column-number" data-column-number="275"></span>health records that are held elsewhere. These organisational boundaries can create barriers to timely information sharing and co-ordinated care. Similarly, when children move between multiple out-of-area placements, information can become fragmented across different systems and accessing records held by external providers may not be possible. The issue is particularly relevant to my constituency and the wider Staffordshire area, where, as I mentioned earlier, we have seen an increase in the number of children’s homes in recent years. As that number grows, we need to be confident that the right safeguards, oversight and support are keeping pace. A children’s home is not simply a property with staff in it—it is a place where some of our most vulnerable children should receive the care, stability and specialist support that they really need. To give a tragic example of how badly things can go wrong, I will share one story from Cannock Chase. Last summer, a constituent in Hednesford raised concerns with me about the care being provided to a vulnerable young person in an independent children’s home very close to where he lived. That young person had clearly had an incredibly traumatic experience at a young age and had complex needs. The placement was intensive, to the point where the home accepted just one child at a time, supported by several staff, 24/7. However, the company responsible for that home clearly had no intention of following through on the promised support package, which was not put in place. I heard that CAMHS were not even contacted, despite the company having put in its bid that local CAMHS services in my area were good and dealt with looked-after children very well, and that it had already made preliminary inquiries with CAMHS. The promised two-on-one or three-on-one support was not followed through either, to the point where the young person was at one point left alone and was found by neighbours banging on doors, clearly in extreme distress and mental health crisis. I cannot independently verify every detail of that story and I do not want to prejudge any investigation that might take place. I have also visited excellent homes in my constituency, run by people who care deeply about providing the highest quality trauma-informed care, and I believe they are the majority. However, these concerns underline why we need effective oversight and clear accountability for the care being provided. This is not a narrow issue affecting only children in residential care or those in Staffordshire alone. It speaks to a wider challenge in how we co-ordinate support across local authority boundaries. Figures that I have seen show that in 2024, 45% of looked-after children were placed outside their home local authority, up from 40% in 2015. While 69% were placed within 20 miles of home, that proportion has fallen from 76% in 2015. The same challenges can affect kinship families. The 2024 annual survey by Kinship found that nearly a third of kinship families lived in a different local authority area from the one the child had lived in before coming into their care. Of those families, 57% reported difficulties accessing support as a result. These are different circumstances, but they point to the same question in my mind: when a child’s life crosses a local authority boundary, does the support they need follow them? Whether a child is living in a children’s home or being cared for by a grandparent, aunt, uncle or another <span id="276" class="column-number" data-column-number="276"></span>family member, we must not allow administrative boundaries to become barriers to accessing the right support. That leaves me with four questions for the Minister, who as I said is standing in for the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington, who I know is doing a lot of work in this area. First, what steps are the Government taking to ensure local authorities meet their existing statutory duty to notify receiving authorities when placing children out of area, and to identify where that duty is not being met? Secondly, how are the Government working with health partners to improve the sharing of information when a child moves, so that their clinical history, existing treatment and crisis support arrangements can follow them and the services can plan ahead? Thirdly, how will the Government ensure that their regulatory and inspection framework provides effective oversight of children’s homes, so that the care and supervision children are promised is the care they actually receive? Finally, as the Government expand placement capacity and roll out regional care co-operatives—a very welcome development to my mind—how will they ensure that these reforms improve not just the availability of placements, but the co-ordination among local authorities, children’s homes and health services? I began by talking about the clinicians at West Chadsmoor NHS clinic, and I will end by returning to them. They see children who have already faced more disruption to their young lives than most of us can even imagine. They want to give those children the stability, understanding and care that they deserve, and the least we should expect of the system that supports them is that it gives those professionals the information and co-operation they need to do that. A child should not have to experience a crisis before the services around them realise that support has fallen away; a family should not have to become an expert in local government responsibilities before it can access help; and a local authority boundary should never become a barrier to a child’s wellbeing. I recognise that the Government are taking steps to address the shortage of placements. The £560 million investment in children’s homes and foster care, alongside the roll-out of regional care co-operatives, is intended to help to create more suitable places closer to where children live. That matters, because the best way to manage the challenges of out-of-area placements is, wherever possible, to avoid placing children so far away in the first place. When children do need to move, we must ensure that their care and support move with them. I welcome the steps that this Government are taking to increase placement capacity, strengthen the system and improve how services work together. The investment in children’s homes and foster care provides an opportunity for us to ensure that more children can be cared for closer to home. My ask is that, as this work progresses, we keep the experience of the child at its centre. That means pushing local authorities to share information, health services being able to plan ahead, and clear accountability for ensuring that the support a child needs is actually there. Every child in care deserves stability, safety and the chance to thrive, wherever they are placed. I look forward to working with the Minister <span id="277" class="column-number" data-column-number="277"></span>to ensure that the Government’s reforms deliver those outcomes for children in Staffordshire and across the country.
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Services for Children in Care
It is good to hear that Ofsted is adapting and growing its inspection regime to reflect the fact that many children’s homes are opening, and <span id="279" class="column-number" data-column-number="279"></span>the variation in practice seems quite large. Will my hon. Friend ask the Minister for children and families to look into whether Ofsted’s capacity to carry out inspections matches the growth in children’s homes in certain parts of the country, such as mine? We are seeing rapid growth in a short space of time. We need to make sure that the situation does not run away from us in those areas, and to avoid poorer practice in areas where there are not as many inspectors as we need.
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Topical Questions
About 13 million people have been displaced in Sudan, but they are far from safe. Earlier this month, a drone strike near one of the displacement centres in Blue Nile killed 31 people, mostly women and children. This is the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster. Where are the protests on the streets? Where is the round-the-clock media reporting? Where is the online coverage? Will the Minister set out what the Government are doing to raise awareness of that catastrophe and how we can galvanise international action?
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Cask Ale: Intangible Cultural Heritage
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) and for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing this debate on what is undoubtedly a crucial part of our national heritage, especially in the midlands. Cask ale has been part of British life for generations. <span id="64WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="64WH"></span>The skills involved in brewing, conditioning, storing and serving it have been passed down over centuries. Recognising these traditions as intangible cultural heritage would be a fitting acknowledgment of their importance. It is about more than just the beer itself. Pubs are places central to community life. They are places where friendships are made and people come together, and are therefore significant in the fight to reduce loneliness in today’s world. In many rural communities, the village pub is one of the last remaining places where people of all ages and backgrounds can meet. Nowhere is that more apparent than in our local authority area of Derbyshire Dales, where we have around 132 pubs, equivalent to 18.5 pubs per 10,000 residents. Excluding some unusually small local authority areas, that gives us the highest number per capita in the country. Those pubs are enormously important to our visitor economy, supporting jobs not just behind the bar, but in brewing, farming, food production, distribution and hospitality. They encourage visitors to stay longer and spend more money in our local businesses. One excellent example is Thornbridge Brewery in Bakewell. Thornbridge produces some outstanding cask ales, which are enjoyed locally, across the country and internationally. Its riverside brewery and taproom employs more than 100 people, and the taproom is also an important events and live music space. As a former musician myself, I particularly welcome that. Pubs and breweries provide opportunities for emerging artists to perform, develop their skills and find an audience. Their contribution to our cultural life goes well beyond what is in the glass. I welcome the vital steps taken by the Government to support pubs and breweries, including reduced duty on qualifying draft beer and improving small producer relief, but there is more to do. At the autumn Budget in 2024, the Government announced that they would consult on improving access to pubs for smaller breweries, including through greater provision for guest beers. I would be grateful if the Minister could update the House on the conclusions of that work, when it might be published and what measures are being considered to improve market access. As has been said, there is a useful example in Scotland, where the Scottish pubs code provides pub tenants with a route to request a guest beer agreement, allowing them to sell at least one beer of their choosing outside the usual supply arrangements. I encourage the Government to consider introducing a similar provision in England. It could give independent breweries greater access to the market, offer publicans more choice and allow customers to enjoy a wider range of locally produced ales. Recognising cask ale as intangible cultural heritage would be a positive step, but recognition should be accompanied by practical measures to safeguard the breweries, pubs and skilled workers who keep that heritage alive. Our pubs are not simply businesses; they are part of the fabric of our communities, our economy and our national identity. They are worth celebrating and protecting.
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Social Housing Bill (Second sitting)
Regarding social landlords reassessing the use of their stock, does the Minister agree that there needs to be more focus on the needs of disabled members of our community? My constituent Keeley Callan came to see me on Friday. She is disabled, and I would argue she is actually disabled by the social housing system because she has been waiting for at least five years to move into her own accommodation. That is totally unacceptable, given her equal rights to housing in law. Will the Minister briefly reflect on that as he sums up?
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Domestic Farming and Food Supply
On imports, the hon. Lady might be touching on one of the really important topics for the farming community, which is the huge power of the supermarket chains in setting prices. Farm-gate prices are clearly making it very difficult for farmers to earn the decent living that they so deserve. Does she agree that the Government should absolutely take on board some of the comments by Baroness Batters on that, and do everything they can to ensure that farmers get a fair price and that competition works not just in the interests of the supermarkets, but in those of our farmers?
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Strengthening Community Resilience
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Will he join me in praising Ben Brook, the chief fire officer in Warwickshire, and his firefighting and administrative teams for their brave efforts this summer? In July, there were 771 incidents, which is the highest number on record—double the rate in July 2021. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government will do all they can to provide the fire service in Warwickshire with the resources it needs, and will offer help with reaching out to the public about the parts of his statement to do with their involvement in resilience?
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
I wish we did not have to be here debating this Bill today—first and foremost because we are doing so largely due to the Grenfell Tower fire, more than nine years ago. It is right that we again remember the 72 who lost their lives in an entirely avoidable fire, and recognise the suffering that the bereaved, survivors and Grenfell community in my constituency continue to endure. I place on record my thanks to the Prime Minister for his commitment, at Prime Minister’s questions two weeks ago, to work with me every day for justice for the victims. I also thank the Secretary of State for her determination to find solutions across Government that will implement the Grenfell inquiry recommendations and make necessary changes to how our state functions, including on building safety. Our hope and expectation is that those responsible will face the full force of the law by May next year, when the Crown Prosecution Service makes its charging decisions on the 20 organisations and 54 individuals passed to it by the Metropolitan police. While we wait, almost 10 years on, for justice through criminal accountability, we must also pursue justice through meaningful change in policies, laws and culture. That is how I approach the Bill. The second reason I wish we were not here is that I believe many of the provisions in the Bill should have been enacted a long time ago and, at very least, should have been part of the Building Safety Act 2022. How is it that, in a similar timeframe since Grenfell, the state of Victoria in Australia has completed works on 99% of the 1,600 buildings that needed remediation, while we have completed only 39% of 4,724 identified buildings? More have not even been assessed, which is something the Bill tries to address. In 2020, Victoria passed a law setting up a group that assessed all buildings over three storeys, identified those at risk using a common state-prescribed standard and then paid for the work via an up-front fund, in part capitalised by developer contributions.
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Residents who raised concerns were ignored, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea made a decision to cut costs that resulted in the contract that ended up being a major contributory factor in what happened. I have not had the chance to say this on the record, but I am pleased that one of the individuals involved in that is no longer at the Barnet tenant <span id="226" class="column-number" data-column-number="226"></span>management organisation. That decision was wrong, and it has been corrected. I am glad that that has been done. In short, in Victoria the government stepped in and put homeowners and residents first. In this country, the previous Government took a market-based approach that has comprehensively failed to deliver remediation in a timely way. Why? It is because, for too long, the British state has been too passive in the face of this problem, relying on private developers to come up with the answers while millions of people suffer the consequences. The British state’s response to the cladding scandal has exposed many of the weaknesses that this Government want to fix: unaccountable power, opaque ownership and a shirking of responsibility; penny-wise cost cutting that stores up massive costs in the future; and a lack of public control over the basics of life, including housing. I hope that the Bill will contribute to that effort by creating more jeopardy for those delaying remediation and more options to finally fix every building that needs it, but the work to make buildings safe must continue even while we debate the Bill. Existing powers such as remediation orders and remediation contribution orders can be useful tools if Ministers provide a hands-on grip on the crisis by co-ordinating local remediation plans, creating national standards and ensuring that tomorrow’s Budget continues to fund the Department to get the work moving now. We need belatedly to shift to a “fix first and fast” model based on risk, as the Secretary of State said, leveraging all existing avenues to get work started.
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. At the very least, there needs to be independent scrutiny of these assessments so that people can feel reassured that someone is checking whether they pass muster. It should be about the whole of the building being made safe—I think the Secretary of State referred to that. Cladding defects are an extremely important component, but there are internal fire defects that also need to be assessed, which have contributed to rising costs. I welcome the remediation backstop in the Bill that will give Homes England and local authorities the power to step in, but that should not only be a tool of last resort. It should be something that gets the system moving as quickly as possible, because leaseholders in particular have ended up shouldering the burden in recent years. To give one example—others have already <span id="227" class="column-number" data-column-number="227"></span>spoken about leaseholders they represent—residents at Shaftesbury Place in Earl’s Court approached me in 2024 after receiving huge increases in their service charge, driven by a disputed fire risk assessment which led to a massive spike in insurance premiums for the building from £15,000 a year to £310,000. The following year it went to £375,000. For one leaseholder, their annual bill for the insurance went from £269 to £4,146. The landlord, Notting Hill Genesis, which is in a shared ownership scheme, told leaseholders that the insurance rise was linked to a fire risk assessment that it had commissioned, but residents disputed it alongside the classification of the building as high-rise. In fact, it had even miscalculated the number of storeys in the building when it did the assessment, which obviously undermined confidence in that assessment. The Building Safety Regulator later agreed and removed the building from the high-rise register. Until recently, several residents were still receiving legal threats about the non-payment of those charges, causing them huge worry and anxiety—let alone their concerns about the value of their investment in the shared ownership scheme.
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
My experience from this case corroborates what my hon. Friend says. I met the Association of British Insurers, and the scheme it introduced subsequently kicked in and has in the last year brought down the buildings insurance, but only by about half—certainly not to anywhere near what it used to be. I hope that Ministers can look at insurance when thinking about protecting leaseholders from higher costs. The end of the story for the building is that, following pressure from me and my team and from organisers in the building, Notting Hill Genesis has finally agreed to reimburse all the residents. It will repay the difference in the increase for the past several years. I thank Thomas, Hamid, Ian and all the other residents in that building for their work. That is just one example of what is happening in building after building across the country. I welcome the Bill in the sense that it is an opportunity to fix some of the flaws left by the previous Government and to create a better system, including through the register, a consistent approach to external walls in fire risk assessments, and by listening to campaigners across the country, such as End Our Cladding Scandal, who have helped to give a voice to those most affected. I know that they will have the ear of the Secretary of State and Ministers as the Bill continues its passage. Clearly, one element at the heart of the Bill is who should pay. I agree that it is high time that the construction product manufacturers who contributed to the cause of this crisis should pay towards resolving it. I really welcome part 5 of the Bill, which strengthens and extends provisions in the Building Safety Act on retrospective liability for cladding products, and the Secretary of State’s announcement today on the <span id="228" class="column-number" data-column-number="228"></span>Government’s intention to go further. The Grenfell inquiry found that companies including Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex engaged in systematic dishonesty and deliberate manipulation of testing that misled buyers into thinking their products were safe. It is extraordinary that, aside from their payments into a civil settlement, these companies have not paid towards resolving a crisis of their making. In Arconic’s case, its civil settlement was overwhelmingly covered by its insurance and was dwarfed by the payment it made to its own shareholders in compensation. It is clearly not right that leaseholders, taxpayers and even the developer levy should shoulder the bulk of the costs, while companies such as Arconic do not. That is yet another reason that they should be nowhere near public contracts and supply chains, especially while criminal investigations are ongoing. I know the Secretary of State is committed to working across Government to use every procurement power the Government have to ensure that that is not happening, and I will fully support her in that goal. I also look forward to the new system of construction products regulation being implemented, with consistent safety standards and a single products regulator under the Building Safety Regulator; that will make a big difference. I am glad that protection from costs for leaseholders has been discussed in the Bill and the debate so far. They are not responsible for this crisis, yet they are the ones picking up the bill in far too many cases. I hope these new powers will give local remediation efforts such as the London Joint Remediation Partnership Board an extra tool to do the building-by-building analysis that cuts through the bureaucracy and delays to find a solution. I am sure that the communities who have enfranchised their buildings or exercised right to manage will be really pleased to hear the announcement today on ensuring that they are protected. We want more leaseholders to take control of their buildings, appoint their own agents and run their own affairs. We will see more in the leasehold Bill soon, and it is right that the Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill should provide some consistency in protecting them, too. The building safety crisis has become one of the defining symbols of state failure in the past decade. The entirely avoidable tragedy of Grenfell and the loss of 72 lives should have been a catalyst to making buildings safe as quickly as possible and recovering the costs later. Of course, if we had listened to the coroner after the Lakanal House fire in 2009, not only may it have been possible to prevent the Grenfell fire, but we could have put a halt to new build flats across the country being constructed with cladding that was putting lives at risk. Judge Frances Kirkham said then that approved document B of the building regulations concerning external fire spread, fire-resisting properties and cladding panels should be reviewed. That simply did not happen in the way it should have done, as the public inquiry found. That missed opportunity is devastating for the Grenfell families but it is also devastating for everyone who bought a flat across the country in a building that could have been built or refurbished differently if that recommendation had been implemented. Think of the billions of pounds wasted that could have been invested in building more homes, including social and affordable homes. That is why I will continue to campaign for a national oversight mechanism to ensure that there is <span id="229" class="column-number" data-column-number="229"></span>independent scrutiny of recommendations of inquests and inquiries, so that change actually happens. I am delighted that the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the Minister are supportive of that effort, and I hope we can now make rapid progress towards setting it up. The Prime Minister said something at the homelessness summit on Monday that really resonated with me: “names not numbers”. He was talking about how to best support people off the streets. We need a similar approach to this crisis. Behind every statistic is a family who are stuck, who cannot sell their home, who are worried about the value of their main asset and who have had to take on another job of chasing for answers about when the work will be finished, all while they suffer the anxiety of living in an unsafe building. I hope today marks a shift in approach under a Government who I know are absolutely committed to doing all they can to end this scandal once and for all. The new tools in this Bill will certainly help, and the ones announced at the Dispatch Box today will help even further. With the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the ministerial team providing the leadership that this crisis needs, I am sure we can right the wrongs of the previous approach and deliver the solutions that so many people across the country are crying out for.
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Council Housing
Sir Jeremy, it is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship. Across the span of one of England’s largest constituencies, housing, or the lack of it, is one of the main drivers of people coming to my constituency surgeries. It is one of the main drivers of people in desperate need of a place to call home, as my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) has just movingly set out. It is an issue that needs to be taken far more seriously, not just in this place but across the country. The particular lack of access to affordable and social housing in some of our most rural communities is something that has escaped much of the national debate in recent years. Unfortunately, I must say that the Morpeth Conservatives, who run Northumberland county council, are currently engaged in what I can only describe as an ongoing misinformation exercise about the impact of <span id="99WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="99WH"></span>trying to provide more housing. It is very clear to me that what is needed across Northumberland is appropriate development of the homes that are needed to allow people to build lives and communities, and to keep those communities together and functioning, but also to provide long-term stability to young people growing up in those communities, so that they know they will be able to have a life where they have grown up, should they wish to, rather than growing up with their noses pressed against the windows of communities that they will never be able to be part of because they cannot get a home there. I will not keep colleagues’ attention for too long, but the crucial thing, from where I stand, is delivering those homes in areas where people can have access to them, where they can be rented at a reasonable rate, and, crucially, ensuring that they are not removed from circulation but are accessible to local people, so that those people can work in the pubs, shops and businesses that keep the lifeblood of our communities moving. Without that, we will continue to see younger people forced out of rural communities, forced to leave their families and unable to care for their elderly relatives. That is something that comes up far too often—time and again—in my regular constituency surgeries.
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Council Housing
On that point, will the hon. Lady give way?
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Council Housing
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this important <span id="104WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="104WH"></span>debate on the delivery of council housing. I appreciate his passion for the subject following the debate that he brought forward last September on the provision of council housing. I also thank all Members for their rich contributions. They really reflect the challenges that exist across the country. Nearly 180,000 children are in temporary accommodation in this country, and over 1.3 million households are on local authority housing registers. Members across the House will agree that we cannot allow that to continue, because behind every one of those statistics is a person, a family and a child. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Housing Minister and the whole Government are clear on our resolve and intention to tackle the issue. We are also clear that councils have a leading role to play. Under the leadership of the Prime Minister, the Government are committed to delivering the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period. That level of ambition is necessary because of the scale of the challenge that we are facing. This Government are removing barriers and backing councils to use all the levers at their disposal to deliver safe and decent homes at a scale not seen for decades. We have taken decisive steps to improve councils’ financial resources, capacity and capability to invest in new and existing homes, and the social and affordable homes programme funding is putting councils at the heart of that delivery. It is the biggest long-term investment in social and affordable homes in recent memory. Initial allocations under the programme were announced in August and, for the first time, three councils outside of London—Newcastle, Eastleigh and Cambridge—were awarded strategic partnership status. The Greater London Authority has also offered allocations of at least £6 billion to providers of social and affordable housing, with 60% going to local councils.
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Council Housing
Leeds city council is ambitious for its city and is a key member of the West Yorkshire combined authority. It is doing a lot of work, not just on housing but on bringing forward brownfield sites through growth and infrastructure funding to make sure that, as many Members have said, housing goes alongside that wider community infrastructure. In addition to the funding that I have just mentioned, over £21 billion is still to allocate, which will be prioritised for social homes, particularly council homes. That reflects our commitment to increasing council house delivery. To further improve financial capacity, deliver new supply and invest in existing homes, we have committed to a <span id="105WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="105WH"></span>10-year social housing rent policy with a convergence mechanism. That gives councils much needed certainty on their income to enable them to increase and manage their housing portfolios efficiently and effectively.
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Council Housing
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point about the different approaches across the UK and how we can all learn from each other on what works, as well as learn from the areas where it perhaps did not go quite as planned. I will make sure that I pass his comments on to the Housing Minister to have conversations across Governments. We have also provided greater certainty on future costs associated with the decent homes standard and the minimum energy efficiency standards. We have allocated more than £1 billion through the warm homes social housing fund to improve the energy efficiency of social homes. Quality matters, as rightly outlined by my hon. Friends the Members for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) and for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury). In addition to revenue, we know how important borrowing and the capacity to borrow are for councils’ delivery plans. Since 2023, a preferential borrowing rate has been available from the Public Works Loan Board for council house building. This rate will be extended and we will be announcing more details in due course. We continue to work closely with councils and the wider sector to understand the remaining barriers to council house building and investment, including the impact of the housing revenue account debt and borrowing rates. We have also increased the threshold at which councils must open a housing revenue account from 200 homes to 1,000 homes. That is enabling small councils to deliver more homes without incurring additional operating costs. We have also heard from councils that workforce shortages, skills gaps and capacity pressures will constrain their abilities to build. That is why we are investing a further £46 million over the next three years through capacity to build funding, on top of the £17 million already invested since 2025. That will help councils develop an ambitious pipeline, strengthen specialist housing capacity and make the most of the Government’s wider investment in council house building. These gaps have been identified by Members in the debate today, including the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and my hon. Friends the Members for Hexham (Joe Morris), for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) and for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham). Finally, we are taking decisive action to reform the right-to-buy scheme, which has acted as a break on council confidence to invest in new social housing for too long. We are reforming the scheme to ensure that more homes are built than lost, while maintaining an important route for social housing tenants to own <span id="106WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="106WH"></span>their own homes, which was mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth). My right hon. Friend the Housing Minister is at this very moment in the Bill Committee, debating the detail of our reforms. The Social Housing Bill builds on the reforms to cash discounts that we implemented in 2024 to ensure that more social homes are protected, while removing powerful disincentives to build. Notably, we are tightening the eligibility requirements and exempting newly built social housing from the scheme for 35 years to ensure that homes are not sold before councils have recovered their investment.
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Council Housing
Today is not about getting into the rights and wrongs of individual programmes at local authority level. The hon. Member and I have had many conversations about Birmingham city council in the past and I am sure that will continue. The matter here today is how central Government ensure that we have the framework, the incentives and the funding to get councils building council homes and social homes in their area. In addition, we have enabled councils to retain 100% of receipts from right-to-buy sales and provided greater flexibility on how those receipts can be used. That includes permitting councils to combine receipts with grant funding to unlock capacity for house building. These measures are already bearing fruit. Councils delivered around 10,600 homes in 2024-25, which is the highest level since current records began in 1991-92. Our package of right-to-buy reforms is estimated to deliver a net gain of around 18,000 social homes over the next 10 years, compared with a pre-reform baseline of a loss of 26,000 homes. My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) mentioned empty homes. We are strengthening powers to bring empty homes back into use by reforming empty dwelling management orders. We are reducing the period for which a property must be empty before it becomes eligible from two years to six months under that programme. We know that we must go further and faster to deliver the good-quality, affordable homes that people need. We also know that councils share that ambition. The Government are committed to backing councils to build at a scale not seen for decades, and to build the right homes in the right places. We will continue to work with all levels of local and regional government to turn that ambition into homes and better outcomes for local people, so that everyone across the country has access to a home that is decent, secure and affordable.
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
Over the weekend, in Ebbsfleet in my constituency we saw the damage that a fire in a residential block can cause. I express my concern for those in Bodycomb Street who were harmed in that fire or have been displaced by it. Another block nearby, Heron Court, has recently had a waking watch imposed on it by FirstPort, with the costs accruing to residents. Do not those two instances underline for everyone in the House how important it is that we get the Bill through Parliament so that we can get some recompense and support for residents who are suffering under the current regime?
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Polar Regions
Yesterday I visited the National Oceanography Centre, with the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), to learn about the UK’s leadership in polar science, and the real highlight was that I got to meet Boaty McBoatface. Will the Minister tell us a bit more about how the FCDO is co-ordinating cross-Government work to deal with emerging climate and security threats, as well as how we can leverage the UK’s leadership in science and technology, climate finance, diplomacy and defence to that end?
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last, but hopefully not least. I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for bringing forward the Bill, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe <span id="259" class="column-number" data-column-number="259"></span>Powell) for all his work to honour the victims and families of Grenfell, and to ensure that nobody else suffers the horror of such unavoidable tragedy. I fully support the Government’s determination to accelerate remediation and better protect leaseholders who have been left carrying the emotional and often financial burden of a crisis they did not create. As we have heard from many hon. Members from across the House today, too many people across the country have been trapped in unsafe homes, facing uncertainty, financial anxiety and delays that have stretched on for years. Everyone deserves to live in a safe home and that is why the Bill is so important. I welcome many of the provisions in the Bill, from the clear legal duty of responsibility for unsafe buildings to the stronger enforcement with clear consequences to ensure that leaseholders are not left paying the price for failures that were not their fault. I do, however, have to be honest about some of the practical barriers that are impacting my constituents and delaying works on the ground. In my constituency, residents in several high-rise blocks have contacted me repeatedly about remediation delays. In one case, a developer is ready to proceed with the necessary cladding works that would make the building safe, but has been waiting for approval from the Building Safety Regulator since the middle of 2024. The decision on certification has been pushed back six times. I have written to the Minister in the other place, Baroness Blake, regarding the case, but it remains a significant problem and the BSR delayed approval yet again only last month. Another property in my constituency is similarly impacted. The contractor has bought materials and submitted the relevant applications to the BSR in August 2025, but was rejected several months later. The application was submitted again, but it was rejected in May this year. In the meantime, residents continue to live with significant damp, mould and fire safety issues in the building. These are not isolated incidents and I could relay others—and I will, because this is significant. One building, a social housing building in my constituency, had some botched internal works, leaving really unacceptable conditions in communal areas and embarrassment for residents. One of them brought me in and showed me a piece of exposed wall with mould all over it where they had affixed a nametag that said, “Jackson Pollock 2024”. That building is on a hill, and when they brought in a contractor to remediate the internal bits of the building, they discovered that the building is smaller at the front than it is at the back. They then had to reclassify the building and submit an application to the Building Safety Regulator. I have very little faith in the fact that those residents, who have already been waiting more than two years for the internal works, will get them done in good time. This is not about weakening standards or cutting corners; it is about robust scrutiny and effective regulation that is absolutely necessary. The point is that residents, leaseholders and good contractors who are trying to do the right things should not be increasingly frustrated by these delays. My residents need certainty that the plans to make their homes safe can actually take place and be done at pace. We on the Labour Benches all want stronger regulators, but there appear to be genuine questions about whether the Building Safety Regulator has sufficient capacity <span id="260" class="column-number" data-column-number="260"></span>and specialist resources to process applications as quickly as everyone would like. Concerns about delays with the regulator have been raised elsewhere, including by the Industry and Regulators Committee in the other place. The provisions in the Bill are necessary and long overdue, but if the ambitions of the Bill are to be realised in practice, the Building Safety Regulator must have the capacity and resources to match those ambitions. I would be grateful if the Minister, in her closing remarks, could address Building Safety Regulator resourcing and capacity. Will she also consider meeting Members from across the House whose constituents are experiencing delays, so that these concerns can be discussed directly? The regulator must have the staff, expertise and support it needs to ensure that vital remediation projects are not delayed unnecessarily. The people living in these buildings have waited long enough. They deserve safe homes. They deserve certainty and to see progress. I am proud to support the Bill and I hope that the Minister will address my concerns in her closing remarks.
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SEND Provision: Rural Communities
That is a particular problem in Cornwall, because we are on a peninsula. Numerous children had no specialist place at all by September, because the options simply were not there. Going out of county is just too far for many people.
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Council Housing
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this vital debate. I know from years in Cornwall how big an issue the lack of affordable and council housing has become in my constituency of Truro and Falmouth. In Cornwall, the picture is stark: we have far lower levels of council housing than other parts of the country: only 11% of our stock is social housing, and the country-wide average is 18%. Cornwall’s HomeChoice register has over 26,000 households waiting for a home, against an estimated stock of 33,000 social and affordable homes right across Cornwall. We also have 800 households in temporary and emergency accommodation. The housing revenue account has a legacy debt of £92 million from the 2012 self-financing settlement, and that severely constrains Cornwall council’s ability to build, maintain and deliver social housing. Cornwall housing also has very low rental income, the result of decisions made by previous Lib Dem and independent council administrations. Bringing rents closer to national levels through rent conversions will take time, and the lack of income from low rents has resulted in a backlog of repairs that it is really struggling to get on top of. The Government’s extra £1 billion for the social and affordable homes programme and the preferential rates for council house borrowing are very welcome, as are the safeguards in the Bill, for example, on rights to buy new builds. In Cornwall, we have housing associations that are strategic providers, working hard to build and provide homes in Cornwall, but our HRA struggles with its debt and repairs and has no headroom to borrow. HRA reform will be crucial if we are to build council homes in Cornwall, as will making it easier for HRAs to borrow.
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Electronic Monitoring of Offenders
A Lords Committee criticised the Ministry of Justice under the previous Government for reappointing the contractors after repeated failures. Serco had an issue with finding a tag small enough for the elderly mother of my constituent, which delayed her release over Christmas. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that contractors manage to tag all prisoners before they leave prison?
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Strengthening Community Resilience
As a Cornish MP, I can tell the House that we had 18,000 off-grid again this weekend with Storm Austen. We all worked together closely during Storm Goretti, and I want to mention Cormac, our farmers, the National Grid and our parish councils. National guidance was missing during Storm Goretti. It is really important that we now have it and that we have a locally led response, with parish emergency plans in place. Other countries have been doing this for years and I am really pleased that this Government have finally brought it in and have launched the campaign. One issue we will always have, though, is comms. We do not have copper wire any more. Perhaps internet and mobile phone providers should be category 2 responders under the Civil Contingencies Act. I wonder if the Minister could comment on that.
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West Bank: Illegal Settlements
<Question HRSContentId="{2B5686D7-67E4-46B5-BA33-8435460294ED}">5. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{CC92E5B6-0DD4-46F0-B28A-2BA9E6A58B18}">What discussions he has had with his European counterparts on the E1 settlement plan in the west bank.</QuestionText> </Question>
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West Bank: Illegal Settlements
I thank the Secretary of State for his responses so far. The E1 scheme is a further terrifying situation for Palestinians, who are vulnerable and have <span id="157" class="column-number" data-column-number="157"></span>no protections. Will he say what sanctions are being put in place at present? What more are the Government doing to ensure that those working on the E1 scheme are sanctioned?
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Electronic Monitoring of Offenders
I thank the Minister for her responses. Does she agree that more needs to be done to prevent reoffending while offenders are actually in prison, so that they do not commit further crimes when they are released and on tags? What is she doing to ensure that there is appropriate education and training across the prison estate?
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
I thank the Secretary of State for the work she has been doing on dangerous cladding remediation. Some constituents of mine have been able to benefit from the remediation work for buildings under 11 metres, but could she say a bit more about when funding will become available? My constituents are still waiting on the release of funding for work that needs to take place.
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
May I press the Secretary of State a little further? In my constituency, there is a block of flats under 11 metres that has already been recognised as a priority, but the challenge is the release of that funding. Will she arrange to meet me or agree to look at that further?
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Developer Contributions (Infrastructure Delivery)
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the use of developer contributions for the delivery of local infrastructure; to make provision about the powers and responsibilities of public authorities and other public bodies in relation to such contributions; and to make further provision in relation to such contributions. Nine billion pounds, Madam Deputy Speaker—that is how much money in developer contributions is currently sitting unspent in local authority bank accounts across this country. This is money collected from house builders and commercial developers to pay for schools, GP surgeries, leisure centres and roads. It is money that has already been paid by developers, which would ideally be being spent, at no extra cost to the taxpayer, in local economies up and down the country today—but it is not. Instead, it is sat in bank accounts, where, year on year, the figure grows. At a time when every community in this country is calling for more investment, it is my view that we cannot afford—either morally or economically—to sit on this amount of money, as inflation devalues the contributions originally made. For me, this is a major problem, and one that all Members should be interested in. I am tabling this ten-minute rule Bill, which will hopefully bring attention to the problem while also suggesting some initial solutions. I asked the internet what I could buy with £9 billion. First, it told me that that was equivalent to roughly £135 for every person in the UK. It then told me that for that money, I could pay for 33,000 homes at £272,000 a piece; nearly four years of school rebuilding funding at £2.4 billion per annum; 18,000 electric buses, assuming £500,000 per bus; or 1.5 million household solar installations at £6,000 per installation. In short, this amount of money is transformational. It is enough money to improve several struggling sectors at the same time. What is more, this money is not theoretical; it exists, it has been paid, and local authorities are currently the custodians of it. For those who have not been involved with local government finance and planning before, let me briefly describe what is happening. When developers build homes or commercial spaces, they are normally required to pay towards the associated infrastructure as part of their planning permission. When new homes are built, the developer therefore contributes to new schools or school places, to GPs and/or local hospitals, to leisure facilities and/or to other local infrastructure. Crucially, the contribution is exactly that: a partial payment that another developer will also need to pay towards in due course to complete the intended project. Each year, the Home Builders Federation publishes data on how much money is unspent, and each year, the figure is going up. It has gone from around £8 billion in total in 2024-25, when I first raised this issue in this place, to almost £9 billion in 2025-26. Within that total, the latest data shows that there is £2 billion waiting to be spent on schools and £700 million for <span id="212" class="column-number" data-column-number="212"></span>affordable housing. It also shows that £3 billion—a third of the money held—has been held for more than five years. In my constituency of Rushcliffe, the situation is particularly acute. Our local council is holding around £40 million in section 106 money and another £8.5 million in community infrastructure levy money. That is money that my constituents desperately want to see spent, often on infrastructure that they were promised when they bought a house, sometimes many years ago. The challenge with spending this money is so extreme that in some cases, developer contributions are at risk of being returned. The village of East Leake, in my constituency, which has grown by 40% since 2001, has needed a new health centre for the past 20 years. Due to delivery and value for money challenges, we are currently in a situation where funds have been held on file for so long that almost £500,000 of developer contributions are due to be returned. To a community that has waited for investment for two decades, this is unconscionable. In nearby East Staffordshire, almost £400,000 was returned to a developer in 2023 after the money was not spent in time, and there are many other cases across the country. In many cases, additional public sector support is ultimately required to close developer funding gaps. This is not the failure of any one council or developer. We all know that costs rise, that land can be lost, that partners do not act quickly, and that councils can at times lack capacity. Yet we still have not put a backstop in place. There is no mechanism by which ringfenced pots of money can be pooled together, no deadline by which councils must make every endeavour to facilitate works, and no power for councils to easily revisit old agreements. In short, there is no obligation on anyone to act. That means that the money does not move. It simply accumulates while residents wait for action and delivery costs increase ahead of bank interest rates. In the current economic climate, I do not think that this situation is good enough, so I propose this Bill to achieve four things. First, it would introduce a backstop. Where contributions have not been spent within a set period, councils should have more powers to reallocate them to related public infrastructure in their area—subject, of course, to democratic oversight. Time and again, we saw that if things are not built quickly, the funding gap grows. We need to develop a system that recognises that and seeks to mitigate it as best as possible. Secondly, the Bill would introduce a duty to plan. Where money is held for education, health or transport, I believe that the body responsible should produce a delivery plan within 12 months of the first developer contribution being agreed. Accountable bodies must be clearer about how they plan to get spades in the ground. Thirdly, the Bill addresses transparency. I believe that all local authorities should produce a standard public infrastructure funding statement showing how much has been collected, what for, and when the money is expected to be spent. There is not currently a standardised way of doing this. Finally, I believe that we need to look at a sensible bridging loan facility for local authorities to close existing or emerging gaps, to be repaid from future contributions as they come in. This would mean that a school or health centre could open as families are arriving, not <span id="213" class="column-number" data-column-number="213"></span>years later. As MPs, we all know that, handled badly, new developments become a source of grievance. Handled well, they become something else: a story of investment. I know that an updated developer contribution system could not guarantee that all promised infrastructure would be built quickly, but I believe that the current situation fails everyone. It fails councils and councillors who want to deliver infrastructure; it fails local supply chains and businesses who want to help build; it fails developers who want to deliver on their promises for multi-purpose sites; and it blatantly fails residents who lack the services they were promised, often for years on end. Ultimately, given that we have an important fiscal event taking place tomorrow, it should be stated on the record that unspent developer contributions fail our economy and our country’s growth strategy. Nine billion pounds in local authority bank accounts is not growth; it is deferred jobs, deferred infrastructure and deferred community benefit. We should not stand for it any longer. Good growth in every postcode requires councils that can build the infrastructure that their communities need. This Bill would give them that power. I believe that a more efficient, outcome-centred approach to spending developer contributions is something that everybody in this place wants to see. It is something we must see. I therefore commend this Bill to the House. <em>Question put and agreed to.</em> <em>Ordered,</em> That James Naish, Alistair Strathern, Dr Allison Gardner, Andrew Cooper, Chris Bloore, Dave Robertson, Leigh Ingham, Maya Ellis, Rachel Taylor and Richard Quigley present the Bill. James Naish accordingly presented the Bill. <em>Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 19 March 2027, and to be printed (Bill 167).</em>
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Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
Exactly 12 months ago, I met the then Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), alongside the mum and brother of Amanda Walker. Amanda sadly took her own life as a result of the cladding scandal, which consumed her completely. Before her death, she gave evidence to the other place, seeking five changes, included closure of the loopholes that leave non-qualifying and enfranchised leaseholders exposed, and an industry-funded remediation scheme. I know the Secretary of State is aware of Amanda’s case. Will she consider Amanda’s asks as the Bill continues through this place?