Text of James full speech in the Fire Safety Bill Second Reading:
Mr Speaker, in January of this year, I was privileged to attend the Graduation Ceremony for On Call Firefighters at the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service. This prestigious event was held at Easthampstead Park in Bracknell and involved 24 impressive young men and women rightly celebrating their hard work and success. As anyone in this place will know, we depend upon our emergency services to keep us safe so I would like to pay tribute to everyone in uniform, particularly at this time, for the outstanding work they do on the front-line. One can only imagine the challenging experiences that they face on a daily basis and I know that we should never take this support for granted.
But the graduation ceremony got me thinking. Our fantastic Fire Services across the UK are ultimately employed as an insurance policy. While they play a vital role to advise, plan and prevent, they also serve as a last resort to deploy to incidents when something has gone wrong, to protect life and property and to pick up the pieces when the human cost of not doing so becomes unacceptable. So we as policy makers do not just have a moral obligation to protect those members of the public who rightly expect the best regulatory framework to stay safe. We also have a responsibility to those who we always call upon in unforeseen circumstances to perform their selfless duty and to ensure that they too do not fall victim to tragic circumstances.
No-one here needs any reminder that fire is a killer. I can vividly recall watching those awful pictures of Grenfell Tower on the news and subsequently seeing its charred shell whilst driving into London for work. One can only shudder at the unimaginable horror of those so gravely affected, not least those 72 men, women and children who lost their lives. And as a young teenager in 1985, I can also recall those terrible scenes of the Bradford Fire Disaster playing out on television, with another 56 lives lost to what was ultimately an avoidable tragedy. As a football fan, it is clear to me that no-one at any big sporting, recreational or social event should unwittingly place themselves in harm’s way and nor indeed should anyone in any public or private building, at their place of work or residing at home feel vulnerable.
And this Mr Speaker is why I welcome the Fire Safety Bill. As a much-needed piece of legislation, it fulfils many objective purposes. As we know, it will amend the Fire Safety Order of 2005 to clarify that the responsible person or duty-holder for multi-occupied residential buildings must manage and reduce the risk of fire for both the structure and external walls of the building, including cladding, balconies and windows; and for entrance doors to individual flats that open into common parts. Having informally consulted this week with the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service, I can confirm that my local authority welcomes that all services across England and Wales will be empowered to take enforcement action and hold building owners to account if they are not compliant. Indeed, this will enable the authority to build on the proactive work it has already undertaken on high rise residential buildings with unsafe cladding and to ensure that Berkshire residents are safe in their homes. It is also prudent that the Secretary of State will be given the power to amend the list of qualifying premises, that the legislation will enable rapid progress in the design of buildings and that suitable provisions will allow requirements to be brought in over time, thereby providing a pragmatic schedule too.
But what of the future beyond this bill? Whilst I look forward to seeing the detail of the secondary legislation to ensure that the recommendations from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase One report are implemented, there are two areas in particular that I hope the Secretary of State will take away:
Firstly, the organisation ‘Electrical Safety First’ has long advocated that regular electrical safety checks should be obligatory in all tower blocks and for building management companies to hold a register of white goods operating in these properties. Electricity causes more than 14,000 domestic fires a year, resulting in many deaths and injuries, so it is reasonable to suggest that electrical safety should be included in any subsequent legislation. Sprinkler systems and secondary staircases in all large buildings should also be considered.
Secondly, to enable authorities such as the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service to deliver for its residents using the new powers, it is imperative that fair and sustainable funding is provided. Aside from the additional resources needed to identify who owns specific buildings and who should be held to account, reasonable initiatives for council tax could be considered. To provide an example, Berkshire has been a historically prudent authority, with the average householder in my constituency paying just £67.60 per year for their Fire Service. This amount is in the lower quartile of all fire authorities in the UK, whilst delivering an upper quartile quality fire service as awarded by its 2019 Inspection Report. May I therefore re-commend the ‘Fiver for Fire’ initiative to the Secretary of State, which will provide fire authorities with the flexibility to ensure the right resources are in place. A few years ago, this was an additional allowance that fire services could put as an extra charge on the fire council tax. A recent local survey has shown that a majority of Berkshire residents would be more than happy to pay an extra £5 per year for their fire and rescue service, which at 10 pence a week, would be a small price to pay.
Mr Speaker, it is time to wrap up so I would like to conclude that I welcome the Fire Safety Bill and congratulate the Government for its good work to date in bringing multiple strands together for public benefit. If I may, the technical term for such a bill is ‘no-brainer’ and I therefore commend it to the House.
