Grenfell Tower Memorial (Expenditure) Bill

Lord Roe of West Wickham Excerpts

2nd reading & Report stage & 3rd reading & Committee negatived
Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roe of West Wickham (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend the Minister for her words and for the continued commitment, which she is correct to say started with the previous Government. I welcome her comments that this is not a political matter but one of moral duty and the necessity to recognise that a tragedy of this scale speaks to the state of our nation—not just of our politics, of our housing, of people’s class or where they come from, but actually the state of the nation. The sensitivity with which my noble friend the Minister spoke is greatly appreciated, and I hope that those out in the community and the immediate families of those who lost their lives will recognise the intent, as spoken, that they are to be given the power to determine what the physical manifestation of this memorial should be.

In that context, I do not intend to speak to the principle of the memorial that has to exist on that site, because I do not believe it is for anyone in this House to speak to that, nor to define it. It is not our privilege nor is it our right, because we did not lose our loved ones. I hope that those conversations will continue and, as the speakers clearly expressed in those first two opening statements, the way it progresses has to lie in the control and power of those who lost their dearest loved ones. I hope we do not rush that, and I commend my noble friend Lord Boateng, who so ably led the commission with that in mind and charted such difficult waters. I think it is the sole job of this House and the other place to hold the Government of the time to account on that matter, and to demonstrate and evidence that there has indeed been conversation with those families, and that there has indeed been a richness of process that allows for divergence of thought, because grief is personal.

In that sense, I have nothing further to say. I did not have any notes, because I tried to write something, but I could not. Instead, I would like to speak to what I think “memorial” must mean for the state and for society, because I think they are separate things. Sometimes they are conflated, whether in statements around justice or around change, but what we are talking about today, in respect of a physical memorial, is very different from what I think the memorial should be for the rest of the nation, and the reason I say this is because of what I witnessed that night.

Since that night, I have thought long and hard about what my place was in that tragedy and what might motivate me to keep going to, I would hope, drive better change in the spaces where I might have a good effect. What has motivated me was both the profundity of what I saw that night and the courage that was embodied in individuals, both rank-and-file firefighters and those who lost their families. Because I have no notes and I could not think of something suitably strategic to say, I would like to tell the story of the night from the eyes of someone who stood there, having been sent in to try to do something to resolve what was a desperate situation on the ground.

In telling the story of these two men, I hope it might bring home to this House the horror of the night. We use words like “tragedy” and “loss of life”, but I cannot explain the granular horror of the night without telling the story of people, of humans, and the courage embodied in both the family of the young man who lost his life, and who I will describe in a moment, and the rank-and-file firefighter. In doing so, I hope we will understand our privilege and that of those who lead industry and who build and refurbish houses. We have something to aspire to, and we should be led by them and not pretend that we lead them. In the same way that the power in respect of the memorial must be given to the families, we must let them, with their courage, lead us in a continued journey and endeavour, not only to improve the built environment but to restore our reputation as a country, because I saw Grenfell as a statement on where the UK had got to. I will now tell the story.

Having arrived at Grenfell, I was confronted by the absolute failure of the building almost immediately—it was so graphic and profound. It was unbelievable that it had happened in this country; it looked like something you might see in another country. Having realised that we would have to end “stay put” immediately—all the investigation that has followed since has shown the trauma that all of it placed, completely understandably, on families—I wanted to go inside the tower to understand what I was sending firefighters into. I queued to run in—we ran in under the shields of our policing colleagues because of the debris falling. I was standing behind a firefighter I had known for some time; I had served with him earlier in my career. Both of us were scared because of the scale of what we were heading into. Then, due to the ferocity of the fire, and due to the nature of where this poor young man had been trapped, the young man jumped from the building. Having jumped from the building, there was a terrible shout. I will never forget the noise of the impact, nor the shout as it came. He hit my colleague full on. He died in the most terrible way, this poor young man, and I thought my colleague had died, because they were both inert on the ground.

Surrounding me were 100 firefighters waiting to go into the tower, so I asked that the body of the young man be moved with dignity and that the body of the firefighter be moved. I went into the tower. Inside the tower, I was confronted by a situation where there were no real services of any kind to provide protection to firefighters on their way in. We did not have enough water, so we were going to commit them, without water, right into the upper reaches of the building. We were in a situation where multiple members of the public were trying to get out of the tower, desperate to save their lives. Bodies were being carried down the stairs. It was a scene of absolute horror on a scale that I had not witnessed before, and I had seen many awful things in my careers in both the Army and the fire service.

It became clear to me that I could not provide any comfort to my colleagues in terms of what we were ordering them to do. So I came back outside the tower and briefed 200 of them. I basically said to them, “Our radios are failing. We have no water. I’m going to ask you to commit into the building—I can’t order you; you have families and you have places you might want to go home to—but I believe it is in the best traditions of our service. At the end of the day, we’ve got breathing apparatus and we’ve got protective kit; it’s what we have to do and it is in the best traditions of our service to the community”. Not a single one of them stepped back; they were terrified but not a single one of them stepped back—and it was the same throughout the night. We had failed as an institution, but rank-and-file firefighters did not, and their courage to this day has lifted me.

As I walked away from that briefing, I came across the gentleman who had been standing in front of me, who I had believed to be dead. He was sitting on the ground serving his breathing apparatus set, having discharged himself from the back of an ambulance. He pulled his drip out, gathered his breathing apparatus set and committed himself into the building to save lives.

A month after taking over the role of commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, charged with changing the institution that needed desperate change and failed that night—along with government, the industry, the local authority and anyone who should have demonstrated any care—I met the family of the young man who had jumped from the tower. Their courage was shocking. Their courage was as significant as the firefighter who had suffered serious injury and then gone back into the tower. They had clarity about what had gone wrong. They told me what had gone wrong. They explained the failure of my institution to me. They explained the failure of government to me. They told me that they expected justice, and they told me what they wanted. To echo the words of both my colleagues here in the House, we are not there yet. They set clear and straightforward expectations.

I am going to end—I apologise for the time taken—simply by saying that the physical memorial that must be laid in Lancaster West is for the families and those who survived. We have a different job to do. If noble Lords ever doubt the necessity of it, I ask them to think of my colleague, the family of that young man, the desperate situation they found themselves in and the courage with which they have lifted themselves since then.

I thank the Minister for her words, and I hope she will agree that it is the duty of this House, along with the other place, to hold ourselves and wider society to account to make sure that those changes are made real.