Theresa May’s Fire Minister was among the MPs who voted against making homes ‘fit for human habitation’
Sat 2:09 pm +00:00, 17 Jun 2017
Picture: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images
June 17, 2017 by Greg Evans
Conservative MP Nick Hurd is the Government’s new Police and Fire Minister.
In 2016, Hurd was among other Tory MP’s who voted against an amendment proposed by Labour that would assure that all private landlords made their properties “fit for human habitation.”
Fire safety was a part of the amendment set out by then Shadow Housing Minister Teresa Pearce. This is what she said at the time.
New clause 53 is about safety and would introduce a requirement for landlords to undertake electrical safety checks. Many organisations from across the sector support the measure, such as the Local Government Association, the London fire brigade, Shelter, the Association of Residential Letting Agents, British Gas, Crisis and the Fire Officers Association. They have all given their support in the past to measures that will see the introduction of mandatory electrical safety checks.
Hurd, the MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, owns a two bedroom flat in Ruislip and a house in London and earns at least £10,000 a year in rental income.
He and 71 other MP’s who are also landlords, were effective in rejecting the motion.
Now, an MP who voted against the ‘fit for human habitation’ bill will now helps spearhead the governments response to the Grenfell tower tragedy in North Kensington.
I will be chairing this pm a cross Govt meeting to ensure that right support is in place for emergency services & residents #GrenfellFire
— Nick Hurd (@NickHurdUK) June 14, 2017
However, as Indy100 has previously explained in great detail, the aforementioned ‘fit for human habitation’ amendment would have only applied to private landlords therefore it would not have effected Grenfell tower.
Although the two are not linked, the rejection of the amendment has been shared widely on social media in the wake of Tuesday’s disaster, bringing the controversial vote back into the public discourse.
These are the 72 MPs that voted against making homes fit for human habitation
Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images
June 15, 2017 by indy100 staff
Just a reminder: last year Tories voted down law requiring homes be fit for habitation #GrenfellTower #LondonFire https://t.co/I6u7TNzIDg
— Kevin Bradshaw (@kevinbradshawuk) June 14, 2017
Despite the fact the two are not linked, people sharing last year’s news does mean that the contentious issue of the rejected amendment has been thrust into the public dialogue once again.
According to Parliament’s register of interests at the time, 72 of the MPs who voted down the amendment on homes being “fit for human habitation” were themselves landlords who derived an income from a property.
The 72 MPs who were registered as deriving income from property of over £10,000 a year and who voted against the law, were as follows:
Nigel Adams
Stuart Andrew
Victoria Atkins
Jake Berry
James Berry
Bob Blackman
Robert Buckland
Alun Cairns
David Cameron
Alex Chalk
James Cleverley
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Therese Coffey
Geoffrey Cox
Mims Davies
Philip Davies
Richard Drax
James Duddridge
Alan Duncan
Philip Dunne
Jane Ellison
George Eustice
Mike Freer
Richard Fuller
John Glen
Robert Goodwill
Chris Grayling
Dominic Grieve
Chris Heaton-Harris
Peter Heaton-Jones
George Hollingberry
Kevin Hollinrake
Philip Hollobone
Nick Hurd
Stewart Jackson
Margot James
Sajid Javid
Joseph Johnson
Simon Kirby (teller)
Greg Knight
Brandon Lewis
Julian Lewis
Craig Mackinlay
Tania Mathias
Karl McCartney
Anne Marie Morris
Sheryll Murray
Robert Neill
Sarah Newton (teller)
Jesse Norman
David Nuttall
Neil Parish
Owen Paterson
Rebecca Pow
Jeremy Quin
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Laurence Robertson
Julian Smith
Royston Smith
Mark Spencer
John Stevenson
Desmond Swayne
Derek Thomas
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Andrew Turner
Shailesh Vara
Theresa Villiers
Ben Wallace
David Warburton
Craig Whittaker
John Whittingdale
Nadhim Zahawi
