Grenfell Tower

David Lammy Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to have a few minutes to speak in this debate, and because it is only a few minutes I want to focus on Khadija Saye, who died on the 20th floor. My interest in this is not wholly impartial, because Khadija worked for my wife as an intern. She was a beautiful 24-year-old woman with her life before her. She was really going to emerge as a fantastic artist and had already done some formidable work that was on show at the Venice Biennale.

Even though Khadija lived on the 20th floor, she died on the ninth floor of Grenfell Tower. I think that her mother was found further up, on the 16th or 17th floor. Khadija died, frankly, because the state failed her. The state told her to stay put and she stayed put. When she did leave, even though obviously she got spilt up from her mother, she did not quite make it out. Had she set about leaving earlier, she would probably be with us today. It is that business of state failure that I ask the new Secretary of State to reflect on.

When we have a Prime Minister who says that people will be housed within three weeks, that compounds state failure. When we have a community that ask for representation on an inquiry that speaks to them and their experience, and it takes so long to get that, that is state failure. When there are other people living in social housing and big tower housing blocks fully aware that the vast majority of Members of Parliament have not experienced living in a tower block, have not experienced social housing, and do not have families who have experienced it, and it takes this long to get a commitment to help fund the replacement cladding, that is also state failure.

I implore the Secretary of State to reflect hard on what “social” means. In the economy around us, “social” clearly has to mean something. That is why there is now so much emphasis on social housing and not just affordable housing. Affordable housing has come to mean something that might speak to a political class because they find it affordable—just—but certainly does not speak to many ordinary people. Let us put back in the “social” if we are to rebuild trust and make a commitment to Khadija and her mother Mary who died, and all those others who lost their lives, but also to the people who witnessed this most awful atrocity.