MPs have for the fifth time rejected an attempt to protect hundreds of thousands of leaseholders from crippling fire safety bills of up to £100,000 each. The government opposed an amendment to the fire safety bill intended to protect leaseholders living in unsellable and potentially dangerous high-rise homes from financial ruin. Despite 32 Conservative rebels, the Commons voted 322 to 256 to reject a House of Lords amendment aimed at protecting leaseholders from costs to make their homes safe in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire. MPs have calculated that the total bill could reach £15bn, but so far the government has pledged only £5bn to fund cladding repairs on buildings over 18 metres tall. It has offered loans on repairs on shorter properties, which it argues are less of a risk. Labour supported the amendment. The shadow police and fire services minister Sarah Jones told parliament: “The government should pay and then go after the building companies and developers responsible.” But she said the chancellor and the prime minister “don’t care enough to act” and suggested they were swayed by property industry donors. “Fourteen separate companies and individuals with links to construction companies using the potentially lethal ACM [aluminium composite material] cladding on buildings have donated nearly £4m to the Conservatives since 2006,” she said. “The prime minister must have his new curtains. So they turn away from the screams for help from the people who face extraordinary bills of forty, fifty, sixty thousand pounds.” The housing minister, Chris Pincher, said the proposed protection for leaseholders was too widely drawn and even exempted them from the cost of repairing damage they caused themselves. The amendments “will reignite uncertainty in the market” and make it harder for lenders to value properties, he said. The Tory backbencher and former defence secretary Liam Fox abstained after saying he wanted to see the principle of “polluter pays”, while Bob Neill, who voted against the government, said the bill caused “collateral damage to innocent leaseholders and flies in the face of undertakings the government has regularly given”. In February, Boris Johnson told parliament: “No leaseholder should have to pay for the unaffordable costs of fixing safety defects that they didn’t cause and are no fault of their own.” The bill is likely to return to the Commons with a further attempted amendment as the government seeks to pass the legislation before parliament rises on Thursday. Meanwhile, the Commons housing select committee has urged the government to abandon a plan to loan homeowners the money to fix fire safety risks on buildings below 18 metres. Instead it urged ministers to establish a new, larger fund “that addresses the true scale of fire safety issues”. “While the extra funding for cladding removal is welcome, it will be swamped by the sheer scale of fire safety issues in multi-occupancy buildings,” said the committee chair, Clive Betts. “£5bn in funding is significant, but just cannot match the ongoing legacy of these fire safety failings.” It urged the government to properly measure the scale of the problem, as it affects all buildings above 11 metres, and to tax developers to help fund the cost of repairs. And amid reports of widespread mental health problems among affected residents it called on the government to do more to work with local authorities “to ensure [they] have access to the physical and mental health support they need”.