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Labour to force cladding scandal vote in parliament on Monday
The Labour Party will bring forward a vote on Monday that will call for leaseholders to be protected from the costs of remediating their blocks with dangerous cladding and other fire safety issues, its leader confirmed today.
Speaking on LBC this morning, Labour leader Keir Starmer said his party will force a vote in parliament on the cladding scandal on Monday. It will try and get the government to commit to three things including protecting leaseholders from costs and paying for works upfront.
The Labour leader also said the vote will try and commit the government to pulling together figures on the numbers of buildings currently embroiled in the cladding scandal.
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Mr Starmer was responding to a question by a leaseholder in Manchester over what Labour’s position on the government’s plan to introduce a system that would see leaseholders offered long-term loans to pay for remediation costs.
He said: “This is complete unacceptable; it has come up a number of times. Three and a half years after Grenfell, we still have people living in accommodation which has cladding that needs to be removed.
“What we are going to do is push on Monday and force a vote on this. Every now and again, the opposition get a chance to make an argument to be voted on.
“We are going to say to the government, you have got three things, you need to work out the extent of the problem.
“Three and a half years after Grenfell and the numbers are not sorted. [You need] upfront funding to deal with it and remedy it and to protect leaseholders from bearing the cost.”
The Labour leader also said he hopes the government will support the vote and added that if it came up with a more workable solution that would remedy the current situation, Labour would support that.
This is the first intervention put forward by the Labour Party and comes following a number of amendments led by Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs currently going through parliament. The most significant one, Stephen McPartland and Royston Smith’s Fire Safety Bill amendment, has received cross-party support of more than 40 MPs from the Conservatives, Labour and Green Party.
In November it emerged that Michael Wade, an advisor to the Cabinet Office, had devised a plan to provide long-term loans to the companies which own affected buildings, which would then be repaid by leaseholders through their service charges.
However, this proposal has been attacked by campaigners who have described it as a “grave injustice” and said it would show the industry “that it will not be made to pay for its failures”.
Labour’s announcement this morning comes after Boris Johnson said that the government would be coming up with a plan to sort the cladding crisis “very shortly” during Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday.
A spokesperson for the End Our Cladding Scandal Campaign said: “We support any development that will ensure our residents are protected from remediation costs.
“It is clear that work to make our homes safe can only happen at pace if the government commits to provide the up-front funding that is required.
“A comprehensive and holistic building remediation plan is long overdue. It is now down to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak to show that they have the political will to finally resolve this building safety crisis.”
Update: at 17.03pm 28/01/21
A comment from the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign was added to the story
