Ipswich’s Conservative MP, Tom Hunt, has been urged to be honest with the public after his promised legislation which would’ve eased the misery over the Building Safety Crisis failed to materialise.

In May 2023, Tom Hunt announced that he would be bringing in a Ten Minute Rule Bill to make the Code of Practice on cladding remediation works legally binding. However, despite making a commitment that the Bill would next be debated in November 2023 – and raising the hopes of Ipswich residents who have been impacted by the Building Safety Crisis over many months – Mr Hunt has failed to advance the Bill before the end of the year.

It was purported that the Bill would ‘bring in a legally binding Code of Practice to ensure that what happened at St Francis Tower never happens again and different freeholders and agents that behave appallingly are held to account.’ He added that he didn’t ‘want it to just be a flimsy document that can be ignored, it needs to be something that carries legal weight’ and that he was ‘really keen that it has teeth and that it’s meaningful.’

This week marked the fourth year since Mr Hunt became the MP for Ipswich, and this Bill was the first – and so far only – time he has looked to make changes in this way. A description of Ten Minute Rule Bills on the UK Parliament website says that they are not ‘a serious attempt to get a bill passed’.

In response to Mr Hunt’s Ten Minute Rule Bill in May, Jack Abbott, Labour and Co-operative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Ipswich, had warned that the ‘Ten-Minute Rule Bill [had] next to no chance of becoming law. It is far too little, and far too late, and unfairly gives false hope to people who have had their lives turned upside down.’

Jack Abbott, Labour and Co-operative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Ipswich, said:

“More than six months have passed since Tom Hunt promised to bring in a legally binding Code of Practice through his Ten Minute Rule Bill, yet there has been no progress in that time. This has prolonged the agony for residents across Ipswich who have been suffering from the Building Safety Crisis for months, and in some cases, years.

“At the time, I warned about giving false hope to people who have had their lives turned upside down, yet that appears exactly what he has done. If his Bill is a non-starter, he should be honest about that and apologise to those people who were led to believe that this would start to end their nightmare.”