John Healey: I do indeed. The Government published statistics yesterday that, in a sense, show the very scale of the point my hon. Friend rightly makes. When I stood on the other side of the Chamber as Labour’s last Housing Minister in 2009, 120,000 more social rented homes were let in that year than last year. That is an indicator of how short social housing is and how chronic the crisis that we face is.
John Healey: I am going to make some progress now because so many hon. Members on both sides want to speak. Our homelessness crisis now, as it was in the 1990s, is the direct result of decisions taken by Conservative Ministers over the previous decade. There have been 13 separate cuts to housing benefit, including the hated bedroom tax, and the breaking of the link between the level of housing benefit and...
John Healey: I have bad news for my hon. Friend. I hope she was not listening to Ministers recently when they said that they are ending the benefits freeze and that housing benefit will rise again. In April, housing benefit will rise at the level of the consumer prices index, which is 1.7%. In my hon. Friend’s constituency, many people, both in work and out, who rely on housing benefit in the private...
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate has made of the (a) number of new buildings each year that will be required to fit sprinklers in the event that the height threshold for sprinklers is reduced to 11 metres and (b) cost to developers of that work.
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to his oral statement of 20 January 2020, how many additional buildings will be affected by the statement that ACM cladding with an unmodified polyethylene core should not be used on buildings at any height.
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to his oral statement of 20 January 2020 in relation to the commissioning of a matrix of risk that will (a) replace the existing system and (b) underpin future regulatory regimes, who he plans to commission to undertake that work; if he will publish the terms of reference for that work; and what the...
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how much additional funding his Department plans to allocate to the Health and Safety Executive for the establishment of the new Building Safety Regulator.
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the number of buildings that are operating (a) waking watch and (b) other interim fire safety measures; and what the average cost is of the operation of those measures.
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, when he plans to publish the Building Safety Bill.
John Healey: This is a grave and important debate. I welcome the Government time for it, but I regret that the Prime Minister is not here to lead it. The public inquiry into Grenfell reports to him; it is the Prime Minister’s responsibility. A national disaster on the scale of the dreadful Grenfell tower fire demands a national response, on a similar scale. That has not happened, and that too is the...
John Healey: I do indeed welcome the ban, which we argued for for some time. It was something the Hackitt report did not recommend, but Ministers wisely decided that they would not follow that recommendation. It is a no-brainer that we should not be putting combustible cladding on the sides of buildings in that way. I welcome some of the action that has been taken. I know that the Secretary of State is...
John Healey: My right hon. Friend anticipates the argument I was going to move on to. For such leaseholders, the situation he outlines assumes that they can sell in the first place and that the wannabe buyer can get a mortgage. Many are finding now that they are trapped in these blocks. Some of the steps the Secretary of State is now taking may help with this, but, fundamentally, there is a serious flaw...
John Healey: That is precisely why new legislation is required to enable action where it is needed. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman grimaces, but I take the argument and the principle from a recommendation of the Select Committee of which he was a member, which said in a unanimous report that for privately owned residential homes, if a landlord ultimately will not keep the properties up to scratch, a...
John Healey: I will not give way anymore; I am going to end my speech because a lot of people wish to speak in the debate. Post election, the Government and the Prime Minister have a majority, but with that mandate comes responsibility. We in the Labour party will continue to hold the Government hard to account for their continued failings following Grenfell. More widely, I say in particular to the...
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to his oral contribution of 5 September 2019, Official Report, col 373, how many owners of buildings with dangerous ACM cladding have been named and shamed.
John Healey: I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of his statement this afternoon. The Secretary of State will remember, as we all do, the shocking disbelief and grief in the immediate aftermath of the dreadful Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, and he will remember, as I do, the solemn undertakings from all parts of this House to make sure that such a fire could never happen again. I never...
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, by what date the Government will publish a draft bill on leasehold reform.
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will maintain targeted affordability funding for local housing allowance from April 2020.
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Written Statement of 13 January 2020, Welfare Update, what estimate he has made of the proportion of properties in each broad rental market area that will be affordable to local housing allowance claimants from April 2020.
John Healey: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, when he plans to publish proposals on energy efficiency standards for work carried out in existing dwellings.