Grenfell Tower Inquiry

David Lammy Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I dedicate my contribution today to my friends Khadija Saye and Mary Mende, who lost their lives in Grenfell Tower. This debate does nothing really to convey their lives and their memories. I am sure everybody else whose friends or loved ones were victims will feel that. Nevertheless, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) on her outstanding speech. I associate myself with all of her remarks.

I welcome the decision taken on Friday to appoint two additional panel members to sit alongside Sir Martin Moore-Bick on the inquiry. The decision is testament to the courage and dignity of the survivors and the families of the bereaved, many of whom I have had the privilege of getting to know over the past year. However, I regret that the Prime Minister ignored the calls for a panel for so long. I regret that she ignored the findings of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, in which Sir William Macpherson said that

“the Inquiry would have been infinitely less effective”

without the advisers he had alongside him as chair. I regret that a petition and a debate in Parliament was required for the Prime Minister to finally change her mind. I regret that people who are in grief and suffering so much pain have had to organise and campaign and beg the Government to ensure that their voices are heard. From the start the Prime Minister has failed to recognise who the inquiry is actually for.

Today, almost one year on from the Grenfell Tower fire, and despite all the promises that have been made, 72 Grenfell households are still living in hotel rooms, a further 64 are still in temporary accommodation, and only one third have been housed.

[Ms Buck]

On the subject of meeting unmet housing need, does my right hon. Friend share my shock that London housing associations are still auctioning properties on the open market in areas such as Kensington, Hammersmith, Camden, Brent and Westminster, when there is at least a possibility that some of those properties might be available to meet those needs?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. How can it be that properties are available, and as a country we are unable to bring to bear both the state and the local authority to get those homes and house those people? Why is it that, a year on, my hon. Friend has to make that point as well as she has made it?

We have to ask whether the inquiry for the people who were failed before the fire, and who have been failed after the fire as every promise made to them has been broken. The inquiry is not for the Government, and it is not for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is for the victims. It is for the people who died in the Grenfell fire. It is for all who managed to get out of the tower, but still relive that night every single day. It is for the bereaved families and their broken hearts. It is for everyone who is grieving and carrying the burden of loss around with them, like a scar burned into their soul. It is for the people who saw the burning, saw people jumping to their deaths, and still have to look at that tower every day. It is for the people who are still living in hotel rooms, 11 months on.

This is about more than just a panel of advisers. The people have been badly let down. Of course there is deep mistrust of authority within the community. Of course they have no faith in the state and the establishment. If the Government lose sight of who the inquiry is for, it ceases to be an inquiry. It becomes a talking shop and an exercise in spin. It is up to the inquiry to ask tough questions and interrogate the authorities on behalf of the Grenfell families. That is why it is so important that survivors and families, and their representatives and lawyers, are able to ask uncomfortable truths of those who give evidence to the inquiry.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman makes some very fair points. Does he accept, though, that the Prime Minister has not ruled out including other panel members at a further phase of the inquiry? She has simply said, in the interests of expediency and getting answers as quickly as possible, “Not at this stage.” Phase two of the inquiry may be open to the addition of more panel members.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lammy]

I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. I would simply say that we should have had those panel members right from the beginning. That was the evidence of Macpherson, when John Sentamu and Richard Stone were so important to the community. We should have those panel members now. Quite understandably, the community will want to get into the detail of who those panel members are, and how they can have a say and influence that. If we have an inquiry that fails to represent the people in whose interests it is supposed to act, it has failed before it has even begun. I do not want it to fail. I want it to get to those answers, but trust is important within that.

It is important that we understand the role of the state in this, because if you are middle class in Britain, you only really rely on the state to care for you if you get ill, if you send your children to Church schools, maybe because you use a leisure centre, or to take your rubbish away. However, if you live on the 22nd floor of a tower block, the state literally has your life in its hands. It is the state that you rely on for the roof over your head. It is the state that you rely on to come up the stairwell and save you and your family from a burning building. It is the state that has told you to stay put. It is the state that has approved the combustible cladding around your building. It is the state that sets the rules for the regulations that govern your life. It is the state that has failed to install working fire alarms. If you cannot afford to be in the private sector, you are at the mercy of the state. That is the bottom line. It is the state that has failed, so it is the state that has to work hard to regain the trust of the Grenfell families.

Why does trust matter? Because trust in the inquiry is a precondition of justice. If there is no trust, there will be no justice. A lack of trust will affect participation. If those affected do not fully participate, we cannot and will not get to the truth. If we do not get to the truth, we will not get justice. If we do not get justice, we will get injustice—more injustice.

Representation, which is at the heart of this debate, matters. Look at the Grenfell survivors; look at them clearly. Look at the families of the bereaved and the community of north Kensington protesting outside Parliament today, and sat in the public gallery during the preliminary hearings. Then look at the Cabinet—not just this Cabinet, but Cabinets under the Government that I was part of. We do not have representation. We do not have the experience of living in a tower block estate.

Let recent history serve as a reminder of what happens when we do not have that representation. We get residents associations being ignored time and time again when they raise fire safety concerns with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. We get a local authority that cares more about saving money than the lives of people living in social housing. We get a council leader in a local authority in London—a city with 700 tower blocks of 11 floors or more—who had never even set foot in a tower block before she became leader. We get a local authority that cares much more about how the tower block looks in appearance to the rich folk who live around it than the lives of those inside it. We get two thirds of Grenfell households still living in hotel rooms and temporary accommodation.

When the voices of people living in social housing were ignored and marginalised, what did we get? We got a towering inferno, burning into the sky as a reminder of what happens when the state does not listen to those it purports to serve. We got the senseless and avoidable death of people who burned to death in their homes.

At a memorial service for Hillsborough, Professor Phil Scraton read the poem, “Their Voices Will Be Heard”:

“Shattered by loss but unbroken in spirit

In the face of injustice you never backed down

You forced them to listen, you sacrificed your lives,

You bore witness with dignity on the day of reckoning

And their voices, your voices, have been heard”.

The voices of Grenfell Tower have not been heard yet. Their voices were not heard before the fire, and before the Prime Minister did the U-turn that brings us to this point today. This is a test for the leadership of the Prime Minister. Can the Government regain the trust of the Grenfell family? Theresa May talks about burning injustices, and this injustice burned. If the inquiry fails to gain the trust and confidence of the survivors and the families of those who lost their lives, we will not get justice. I remind the Government of what Neville Lawrence said in 2012, almost 20 years after the loss of his son Stephen:

“The loss itself, together with the lack of justice, have meant that I have not been able to rest all this time.”

That point must hang in the air. How do we regain that trust? How do we demonstrate that we really get what representation means? How do we honour those lives? How do we recognise that it is the state that has failed, and how do we ensure that we are not too establishment to put the state and those who assisted it—the private contractors and others—on trial?

[Several hon. Members rose—]