Hansard

The bill is designed to make buildings and homes safe. I am confident that all parties agree about that and I echo my Scottish Labour colleagues in saying that we will support the bill at decision time.

However, it is also important to highlight, as others have done—including Ariane Burgess on behalf of the local government committee—that the bill still needs work. In addition, as Willie Rennie and others have pointed out, remediation will need concerted efforts to make it work, including effort on planning and on making available housing to which to decant people. It is also important to say that I agree with Homes for Scotland that—as Pam Gosal and others have said—the lack of urgency from the Government has led to unacceptable delays in making progress in this crucial area.

We must remember why we are discussing the bill. As many members have noted—including the minister, Stephanie Callaghan and Marie McNair—the Grenfell disaster showed in stark tragedy the consequences of doing nothing to fix combustible cladding. As Graham Simpson noted, that disaster could and should have been avoided. Many lives were lost as a result of complacency. We owe it to those who lost their lives, to their families and—as Richard Leonard reminded us—to firefighters to ensure that their tragedy drives swift action now. We must all do everything in our power to prevent anything like it from happening again. That is what the debate is about.

However, the lessons of Grenfell have taught us that time is of the essence. That is why I am disappointed that, almost seven years later, the Scottish Government has made painfully slow progress in making buildings safe. It did not have to be that way. As my colleague Mark Griffin noted, in England, in that time, 797 buildings have had remedial works completed to make them safe. In Wales, the number is 37. The fact that only two buildings in Scotland have been fixed is unacceptable. It is our duty as members of Parliament to push the Government to take long-overdue action now, so that our constituents can feel safe in their homes.

I met residents of a building in the Glasgow region that has combustible cladding on it who told me about the stark consequences of the Government’s delay and why what we do next is crucial. In that building alone, 321 families have known from as far back as 2019 that they live in a building that has combustible cladding. That means that, for at least five years, they have spent every day worrying that their building is unsafe. Because of the Government’s delay, it is expected that remediation works will not begin for at least another year. One resident told me that there has been no remediation, only mitigation.

Following the Grenfell disaster, new statutory requirements were introduced to improve fire-alarm systems. However, the fire-alarm system in that building is yet to be brought up to standard. In the meantime, a waking watch has been put in to mitigate risk. That situation has caused residents much concern and the watch remains in place today.

Residents are still unable to sell their homes, as Michelle Thomson and others noted, and they are unable to get insurance for their properties. As Ben Macpherson noted, those are rights that residents should have. That situation means that people cannot move for work or other reasons. They cannot let their buildings, as Alasdair Allan pointed out. It means that they cannot remortgage in a cost of living crisis. It also means that they are spending a fortune on insurance that does not nearly cover the cost of rebuilding, should the worst happen.

The residents’ lives are on hold. They are scared and, as Michael Marra noted, they are sceptical. They are also tired and angry. For those 321 families, time has been wasted time and again. I am afraid to say that the most recent example of that relates to the single building assessment scheme in the bill. Unlike the many residents in buildings that are still awaiting a single building assessment, that group of residents in Glasgow was part of a pilot to develop one. An independent fire engineer completed the SBA and highlighted several high-risk issues. A mitigation plan was initiated to reduce risk and it remains on-going, two years later.

However, the Government has yet to set in motion the action that is needed to make the buildings safe. That is an unacceptable level of delay, and residents will be disappointed to hear that a mere 7 per cent of the funds that are available to the Government to fix the buildings have been used.

However, more concerning is that residents were told last week that all draft single building assessments that were produced as part of the pilot will now be refreshed for the purposes of consistency, and that developers will lead the assessments. As colleagues might imagine, that decision has alarmed the residents to whom I have referred—not least because their single building assessment was completed in December 2022, and it now appears to be the case that it will gather dust as they face the ludicrous situation of another single building assessment being undertaken before remedial works can commence after guidance is released, which, at best, is likely to be in May 2024.

Residents have also told me that they are worried about transparency and conflicts of interests if a new single building assessment is to be drafted without the detail or oversight of an independent fire engineer, and in the absence of clear criteria on what should be included. As my colleague Willie Coffey noted, the committee also raised concerns about that.

As other members have noted, residents have also shared concern about wider fire safety issues not being included. To this day, experts remain highly critical of fire safety in the building to which I have referred, and there have reportedly been confrontations between independent experts and the developers.

Residents are rightly wondering how they can be expected to have faith in a system in which, as they have written to me to say, the process of checks and balances was not followed when the development was constructed, and why they should trust that the process will be followed now. They remain genuinely concerned and unconvinced because there is no mechanism to avoid or to address conflicts of interests in the bill. We cannot afford that when lives are at risk. People must have confidence in the process, so there should be independent oversight of assessments.

Given those concerns and the need for the confidence or peace of mind, as Miles Briggs put it, that having an independent assessor brought to residents, I would welcome the minister’s saying whether consideration has been given to ensuring that, as part of the bill, independent fire engineers can be made part of the single building assessment process, and to how potential challenges can be adequately raised in the new scheme.

We support the bill, but if it is to meet the expectations of residents across the country, it will need to be strengthened at stage 2 by including and putting in place the independent scrutiny that has been outlined; by adding provisions to address broader fire safety risks; by providing detail and context to the concept of “tolerable risk” in the cladding assurance register; and, crucially—as has been done elsewhere in the UK—by including measures to ensure that residents are engaged and informed throughout the process, including while remedial works get under way. I know that residents in Glasgow feel that that is missing so I hope that the Government will consider amendments on that at stage 2.

In closing, I note that I and my party are glad that residents of buildings that have combustible cladding can finally see legislation that could help to ensure that their homes are made safe.

Enough time has been lost; the time to act is now, so I encourage the Government to address the concerns that have been raised across the chamber today, and to pick up the pace and act quickly to get the work done. People have waited long enough. It is now time for their homes to be made safe.