Today, an Opposition Day in the House of Commons, Labour will bring their Fire Safety Bill Amendment 13 back for debate after support from the previous round in the House of Lords. The process for law-making, sadly, is often watered down in the ping-pong politics between Houses of Parliament. This time, however, things are looking different.

The Fire Safety Bill, one of a raft of measures in response to the post-Grenfell Hackitt Report, seeks to strengthen and clarify fire safety regulation in buildings after decades of deregulation. When last debated, amendments were voted down by the government. Those voting against included the current Tory MP for Kensington, which prompted a howl of outrage and pain on social media from the North Ken community she supposedly represents.

Specific weaknesses that should have been addressed at that stage included the need for the following: plans for evacuation to be shared by building management with residents; personal evacuation plans for people with limited mobility; regular inspection of all fire doors and lifts; ensuring fire assessors are fire qualified; information on building materials and floor plans to be shared with local fire services; a definition of ‘responsible owner’; the all-important leaseholder indemnity, which is a means to prevent leaseholders from being charged for remediation of building defects, both current and historic; and a public register for fire risk assessments. The last is particularly urgent as the government tries to restrict Freedom of Information Requests which would give access to this information.

All these matters seem sensible and logical, but the government caters to irresponsible and profit-driven building managers – one of whom approached me with a terrifying fire risk assessment, and asked me to keep it confidential for several months until they had sorted out legal and cost implications. You can guess my response to this deadly demand.

At present, there is little recognition in the Bill that leaseholders may be living in unsafe buildings for years to come, forced to pay for ‘waking watch’ while legal and financial matters are argued. There is also a shift away from the original government position—that leaseholders should not have to pay for historic safety costs—to new and vague references to ‘unaffordable costs’. And there is no provision for care homes, hospitals, student hostels, or schools – perhaps because the government’s developer friends don’t have fingers in those pies.

These confusing and indeterminate proposals have been called ‘a legal quagmire’ that could leave leaseholders in limbo for years, in worthless, unsellable homes with flammable cladding, as they plough through legal proceedings, facing possible eviction, bankruptcy, and homelessness. More of a legal cesspit, I’d say.

The Bill’s visit to the Lords, however, was more positive. An amendment was agreed to protect leaseholders from all costs of remediation of current and historic defects, including flammable cladding, which would pass to freeholders.

Labour also sought to include in this Bill a government commitment to publish figures on the number of buildings affected by dangerous cladding. This should include not just aluminium composite—the cladding material which became notorious following Grenfell—but high-pressure laminate, too, which was implicated in the Bolton students’ hostel fire, and wood cladding, decking, and balconies – particularly softwood, which is highly flammable, as seen in the terrifying Worcester Park and Barking Riverside fires.

The Labour amendment would also protect leaseholders from the despicable government proposal to offer loans to leaseholders for building remediation. The proposal would have absolved the government of responsibility while passing the costs to residents, who couldn’t dream of adding £45,000 to their debt burden. Many are also facing insurance premium rises of 1000 percent.

A government that has wasted as much as £22 billion on an ineffective Test and Trace system can surely find a measly £2.5 billion extra to cover the cost of keeping desperate leaseholders safe in their beds. A draconian government demand to ban flat owners living in dangerous buildings from speaking to the media without approval has already been overturned after public outrage.

The government’s £30 million Waking Watch Relief Fund, announced in December, is intended to pay for installation of alarms in buildings over 18 metres high. The early response to this is that it is inadequate, both in size and scope, with many leaseholders forced to continue paying waking watch fees even if they are lucky enough to be eligible for the fund. As one put it, ‘I need to be genuinely safe – not to be woken by alarms just before I’m burned to death.’

On 21 January, the government announced a new national construction products regulator to ensure materials are safe, which would include the capacity to test. How long, I wonder, before that regulator is privatised like its predecessor, the Building Research Establishment, which has been so badly exposed in the Public Inquiry?

To add to the chaos and incompetence, we have a government that has presided over a decade of increased shortages of skilled construction workers, relying on EU workers without bothering to train our own. Many EU workers have now gone home. We have a £3 billion Apprenticeship Levy pot, but the application process is so bureaucratic and complex that only 14 percent of this £3 billion is being used – and the government is simply absorbing the unused pot month by month back into its own fund. To complete the sorry picture is a growing shortage of building materials, particularly wood, roofing parts, and steel, which are stuck in ports as importers tackle countless additional Brexit hurdles.

How on earth will we find the skills and materials to remediate dangerous homes – let alone build the new generation of social rented homes we are so desperate for?

You have to wonder at the implacability of Tory MPs and ministers, so many of whom are insulated by personal wealth from the reality of what they hope to impose on those with no financial cushion. These are people who think the answer to a struggling keyworker facing unthinkable bills is ‘just take out a loan for £45k.’

As we hear so often in North Kensington, we do not want their pity. We want justice, for ourselves in the police investigation when it finally comes, and right now, for the 700,000 people trapped in homes they bought in good faith, who have been so comprehensively let down by this government of self-interested millionaires.