Labour’s plans to fund our NHS and give children in London free school meals are going to change lives.
After bragging about being voted as the most boring MP in parliament by his colleagues, Barry went on to explain the policies that build Labour’s vision and will make a real difference to people’s lives.
If the Tory government won't nationalise Thames Water, then it is going to have to be radical to avert a disaster - Barry Gardiner
On the 3rd of April 2024 Barry Gardiner published an article in the House Magazine outlining how Thames Water go to where it is today - on the verge of collapse. He then exaplins the “radical” solution.
Read the full piece here.
On Thursday the 14th of March 2024 Barry appeared on The Rundown, a PoliticsHome podcast to dsicuss 3 scandals that aren’t getting enough attention.
Barry joins host Alain Tolhurst alongside fellow guests Nazek Ramadan, director of Migrant Voice, Alice Hardy, a lawyer for Bindmans, who work on behalf of the TOEIC overseas students, falsely accused of cheating on their English language tests, as well as Blanche Zaph from the Loan Charge Action Group, which campaigns on behalf of those pursued by HMRC over a tax arrangement.
On the 13th of March 2024 Barry spoke to journalist Hannah Fearn on the Bunker podcast abotu Labour’s plans to end leasehold.
Problems with leaseholds have ruined lives across the UK. Labour has vowed to end the system, but how? Barry has been campaigning against leasehold for decades and recently fronted a documentary exploring its major issues.
On the 5th of March 2024 Barry went on the New Statesman Podcast hosted by Anoosh Chakelian and Rachel Cunliffe - both current or former leaseholders themselves - to discuss what the government must do on leasehold.
"Crook" landlords are cheating the UK housing system to scam leasehold homeowners out of extortionate rent and service charges, says Barry.
After a chaotic end to a day in parliament which intended to be about discussing the path to a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza, Barry felt “soiled by the whole thing”. Barry went on LBC Cross questions hosted by Iain Dale. The panel discussed a ceasefire, the chaos around the speaker, defence spending, police numbers and female genital mutiliation (FGM).
The panel featured Matthew Warman - Conservative MP for Boston and Skegness, and former Minister of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Sir Trevor Phillips – writer, broadcaster and former Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Nimco Ali – Chief Executive of The Five Foundation.
Today, on Wednesday the 21st of February 2024 Barry will vote to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
He went on LBC News, hosted by Simon Conway, to explain why.
On the 20th of February 2024 Barry appeared on BBC Newsnight opposite Leader of the SNP in the House of Commons, Stephen Flynn, to explain why he will be voting for an immediate ceasefire.
All the aid aegencies in Gaza say “they have never seen anything like this in 25 years”.
It is “morally wrong” what is happening in Gaza and it must end.
Today, Wednesday the 21st of February 2024, Barry will vote for an immediate ceasefire.
On the 8th of February 2023 Labour announced that it would water down its flagship £28bn spending pledge on green policies.
“Economically Illiterate. Environmentally Irresponsible. Politically Naïve. This is the sad truth about the £28bn U-turn The USA has shown a Green Prosperity Plan is the way to grow the economy, reduce the share of debt to GDP. And get people excited about a cleaner safer future” - Barry Gardiner
On Wednesday the 7th of February BBC London reported on the Elm Road fire, which resident Marianne says “could have been another grenfell”
"Safety of the Residents was not [Octavia’s] number one consideration” said Barry.
David Talbot, an Octavia Housing resident who lived with his wife Jacqueline in a block connected to the one that caught fire, added that flammable cladding on the flats looked “like a matchbox waiting to go up”.
Barry Gardiner has stated his belief that Octavia had “chosen to engage in a protracted dispute” with Vistry, the developer of the block, rather than remove the cladding itself, despite being aware for years that “Grenfell-style” combustible cladding was on the building.
The Labour MP also accused the London landlord of “sitting on their hands” after he repeatedly raised concerns about the building’s safety defects months before a fire engulfed the block in flames.
Read the full article in Inside Housing here.
On the 6th of February ITV did a report on the Elm Road fire, where 70 resident were evacuated.
The report speaks to Samantha, a resident on Elm Court Road and Barr y Gardiner MP. Samantha said she will “never feel safe again”.
Octavia “needs to step in” and cover the cost of all the possessions people lost, either in the fire or from subsequent water damage - Barry Gardiner
Barry Gardiner claimed that the incident showed the “lessons of Grenfell” have not been learned.
He said he had written to the block’s owners, Octavia Housing, “repeatedly” and met with the CEO last November after constituents complained of fire safety flaws.
Mr Gardiner told the Standard: “I think what is so shocking is that we know that the cladding on this building is similar to the cladding at Grenfell. They’ve known for three years now that this was the case.
"And they have not got it sorted. I’ve been writing letters, emails repeatedly. It is just an atrocious example that shows the lessons from Grenfell have not been learned.”
Mr Gardiner held a meeting with residents, London Fire Brigade (LFB) and Octavia Housing staff at the Brent Civic Centre.
He said it had emerged that “fire alarms had failed to go off, police had incorrectly advised residents to ‘stay put’ in their flats and Octavia Housing had failed to repair gas boilers and appliances for over six months”.
Read the full article in the Evening Standard here.
Last week a block of flats on Elm Road in my Brent North constituency caught fire. It took five hours, 125 firefighters and 20 fire engines to bring the fire under control. Thankfully, it was not another Grenfell – all residents were evacuated to safety – but the reason the fire spread so quickly was because, six years on from that tragedy, this building still had Grenfell-style combustible cladding on the outside.
Octavia Housing, who own the block of flats, attended a residents meeting which we held three days later. The acting Chief Executive was keen to assure everyone that Octavia’s “top concern, was residents’ safety”. However, the truth is that for the past three years Octavia have known about the combustible cladding but have instead engaged in a protracted dispute with the original developers, Vistry, rather than get on and remove the cladding themselves and argue about who ought to pay for it, later.
This is the very sort of legal wrangling that Michael Gove’s Building Safety Act was supposed to stop. It hasn’t. In reality, the Act has trapped thousands of residents living in Leasehold apartments with multiple fire safety defects. They are prisoners in their own homes.
Read Barry’s full op-ed in ByLine Times here.
“An End to Feudalism” was the promise our party first made to leaseholders in 1995. It was the title of a pamphlet authored by Nick Raynsford and Frank Dobson, Keir Starmer’s predecessor in Holborn and St Pancras, and it gave hope to millions of leaseholders in advance of the 1997 election.
We failed them. The Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act of 2002 was a weak act that watered down key demands and failed to do away with the corrupt rentier system.
Nearly 30 years later and we are back here again, with a weak Conservative bill too afraid of the property industry and unwilling to give people true ownership over their own homes. Soon it will fall to on an incoming Labour government to remedy this long-standing injustice.
Over five million people now live in leasehold properties in the UK. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill has just concluded its clause by clause scrutiny stage in Parliament.
The Bill makes it slightly easier for existing leaseholders to extend their lease or buy their freehold, but does nothing for millions of leaseholders trapped in properties they can neither afford nor sell.
The government’s bill is 133 pages of tinkering with a fundamentally unjust system. Leasehold needs abolishing, not updating. It’s a relic of a feudal system.
Read the full piece in LabourList here.
Around 125 firefighters tackled the blaze in Elm Road, Wembley, last night (January 29).
The fire damaged half of the exterior of the building and all of its roof.
The London Fire Brigade says initial reports show cladding "was involved", though the cause is not known.
Barry has slammed a housing association that he says was “repeatedly warned” about a fire risk in a block of flats that was engulfed in flames.
You can read the full piece in the Brent and Kilburn Times here.
On the 30th of January 2023 Barry went on BBC News to express his anger and frustration over the major incident on Elm Road.
An investigation has been launched after 125 firefighters spent hours tackling a blaze which engulfed a block of flats on Elm Road.
Families have demanded an investigation after fire tore through their north London block of flats.
Firefighters were still dampening down the block in Elm Road, Wembley, on Tuesday morning, 16 hours after hundreds of people were first evacuated.
Brent North MP Barry Gardiner said the block’s managers were “repeatedly warned” about fire safety risks after learning the building had “unsafe cladding” three years ago.
You can read the full article, published in the Evening Standard here.
Labour MP Barry Gardiner has put forward an amendment to the Leasehold and Freehold Bill to reform service charges and remove another income stream for freeholders, as he continues to campaign for the abolition of the leasehold system.
The MP for Brent North has campaigned to end the leasehold system for more than two decades, and advocates for replacing it with commonhold. Commonhold allows residents in a block of flats or estate to own the freehold of their building, and removes the time limit which people can live in their accommodation for. This system is used in the United States, Australia and across Europe.
Gardiner told PoliticsHome the leasehold system has inflicted human suffering on millions of people, and has trapped many of his constituents in homes they do not want to live in and cannot afford to sell.
“We haven’t begun to talk about the human problems here. About the people who have huge mental health problems, the people who have committed suicide,” he said, referring to the emotional toll he believed leasehold has caused for many.
“Many of them have found that they’re trapped, they can’t move…. We're closing down their abilities to have families. They want to move to a larger property, but nobody will buy the one that they’re in. They can't move. [Leasehold] is a nightmare for people.”
Read the full piece written by Tom Scotson in PoliticsHome, published on the 22nd of January 2024 here.
On the 21st of January 2024, Barry spoke to Camilla Tominey on her GB News show to discuss the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, which is currently going through its committee stage in parliament.
Barry is sitting on the Bill committee hearing evidence from leaseholders who are recounting how the feudal housing system has impacted them.
At the end of January, Barry will be launching a documentary into Leasehold, visit the website here for more information.
