Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Janet Daby Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

If hon. Members will allow me to complete my points, I think they will hear the answers to their questions.

More widely, we plan to accept in principle all the recommendations that Sir Martin makes for central Government. We will set out how we plan to do so as quickly as possible, but I can assure the House and all those affected by the Grenfell tragedy that where action is called for action will follow.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for giving way and for his tone in delivering his response to the report. On the night of Grenfell, it took 38 minutes for a high-reaching aerial appliance to arrive. By that time, the building’s cladding had already caught fire. Will the Prime Minister consider his own actions in removing aerial appliances from London Fire Brigade’s engines and in the cuts made to the fire service when he was Mayor of London?

[The Prime Minister]

Sir Martin makes no recommendation on that point to the best of my knowledge.

For the survivors, the bereaved and the local community, the report will prove particularly harrowing, yet I hope it will strengthen their faith in Sir Martin’s desire to determine the facts of the fire and this Government’s commitment to airing those facts in public, no matter how difficult they may be, and to acting on them. That commitment is absolute—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He lost a dearly loved friend in that fire and he has done great work in supporting the Grenfell community, and I thank him for that. I ask the Government also to listen carefully to the remarks he has just made. Remembering people who lost their lives in a wholly preventable fire has to be met with a political response, which is what we are trying to do; with a procedural response, which is about the fire service and fire training and which I will come to in a moment; and of course with building regulations. But this also has to be about justice, because of those people who have knowingly—perhaps or perhaps not; that is what a court must find out—clad buildings with materials that they knew to be dangerous. That is where the corporate manslaughter issues arise. I hope that neither the Government nor anybody else will put any obstruction in the way of that process. The Prime Minister talks about the whole truth and that clearly is not with us yet.

In the light of the particular focus on actions of the London Fire Brigade in phase 1 of the inquiry report, we urge that the recommendations made of the London Fire Brigade are given the full response they require. At the same time, I want to pay tribute to the heroic actions of firefighters in our country every day, including on the night of the Grenfell fire. A lot of the time they stand in fire stations waiting for something to happen, but then they have to go and deal with it. They do not know what they are going to deal with before they get there. Our natural instinct whenever we see a thing of danger is to put ourselves in a place of safety—to run away, to avoid, to do whatever—but firefighters do not do that. They cannot do that. They have to run into a burning building while the residents are trying to escape from it. Firefighters know that is in their job and they know it is their responsibility, and they do it day after day. We should understand the bravery of those who sacrificed so much that night. Despite being told, when they came out of the fire, exhausted and dehydrated, that they must not go back in, as it was against fire service regulations, they said, “No, we might manage to save a life” and so they went back into that fire. That is what they do.

Matt Wrack is the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union and a man who has been a firefighter. His union is composed of firefighters and he is a strong man who fights for his members. He spoke that summer at the Durham miners’ gala. I had never before known 200,000 people in absolute silence, as there were while he described what his members—his firefighters—had done at Grenfell. We should pay tribute to all firefighters and of course to the work done by the FBU, which helps to make us all safe.

[Janet Daby]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the great tribute he is paying to our fire brigade service. Does he agree that between 2010 and 2016, the Government cut central funding by 28% in real terms, leading to 11,000 fewer firefighters? The then Mayor of London, now our Prime Minister, was at the forefront of cuts to the fire service, cutting 27 fire appliances, 55 firefighters and 324 support workers, and closing 10 fire stations. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Prime Minister should apologise for removing aerial appliances from the London Fire Brigade fire engines when he was Mayor of London?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Like other colleagues who have intervened, she represents a constituency in which many residents live in tower blocks. I do not suppose too many Members of Parliament live in high-rise, council-owned tower blocks, but we should all understand the stress and strain that people go through with worry about what would happen in a fire.

The Government’s response to Grenfell has been too slow and not strong enough, on every front, from rehousing survivors to dealing with Grenfell-style ACM cladding on hundreds of other blocks across this country.