The housing secretary Michael Gove has argued that developers should “pay the price” for the cladding scandal, as he set out the government’s plans to fix the crisis in the House of Commons this afternoon.

Gove told the Commons “it is morally wrong that they [leaseholders] should be the ones asked to pay the price.”

Gove’s predecessor as housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, had proposed offering tens of thousands of pounds in loans to leaseholders to fund the repairs.

The housing secretary has now given developers a March deadline to agree a plan to pay the estimated £4 billion cost of remediating unsafe cladding on 11-18 metre high buildings

Shadow housing secretary Lisa Nanday welcomed the government’s plans to protect leaseholders but argued: “there isn’t a plan” to force developers to pay up.