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Building Safety Bill

I will speak briefly to new clauses 15 and 16, which are in my name and which relate to electrical safety. They seek to extend the requirement for five-yearly checks on electrical equipment to resident leaseholders and to social landlords, where these already apply and in fact apply more widely than just to high-rise residential buildings and private landlords.

We have quite rightly spent a lot of time this afternoon talking about the effects on leaseholders, and we have strayed into other territory and exposed other deficiencies in the Bill in relation to the requirements for social landlords and tenants, what types of building are covered and, indeed, as we heard from the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), how certain types of buildings now being constructed are still being constructed with many of those faults.

4.45 pm

What all of those have in common is that they are about the spread of fire, and these new clauses are not about that, but about the cause of fire, which I suggest we should also pay attention to. The Grenfell fire was caused by an electrical fault in a fridge-freezer. Less than a year before Grenfell, in August 2016, there was a very serious fire, less than 1 mile from where Grenfell Tower stands, at Shepherd’s Court—an 18-storey block—in my constituency. That was caused by an unsafe Indesit washer-dryer. Some 5.5 million of that particular type of faulty washer-dryer were manufactured, and hundreds if not thousands of fires across the country, some obviously in high-rise buildings, have been caused by that. The New York fire just a week or so ago was caused by an electrical heater.

Lakanal House, Shirley Towers, New Providence Wharf—almost every one of the notorious recent fires in high-rise blocks have been caused by electrical faults, and they are increasing. In the last year, there were just over 350 fires caused by electrical ignition in high-rise residential blocks, which compares with about 300 five years ago. The fear always used to be of gas—going back to Ronan Point—with a gas explosion or fire, but in fact six times as many fires are caused by electricity as by gas. Indeed, over half—53%—of all accidental dwelling fires are caused by electrical sources of ignition.

It is entirely anomalous that whereas a private landlord quite rightly has to ensure the safety of electrical appliances, a private residential owner or social landlord does not, yet the Government’s own social housing White Paper said that the standards—this is clearly pretty much common sense—should be as good for social housing as they are for private housing in this respect.

I would like to get the Government’s support, as I have had the support—almost total support—of my own Front-Bench spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), on these matters today. He was a little grudging on my second new clause, but I will live with that. I hope that if the Government will not support the new clauses today, and I do not intend to push them to a vote, they will at least positively respond, and go away and think about how we are going to do this. It is entirely anomalous in a single block of flats with different types of tenures for some flats to be subject to greater rigours, and this applies not only to electrical safety but to fitting sprinklers, compartmentalisation and alterations to properties.

If we are going to take seriously the issue of preventing fires, given the devastating consequences that can result from them in high-rise blocks, we will have to make sure there is a level playing field, and that we equally address the problems concerning social housing and leaseholder-owned property as those concerning private rental.