Grenfell Tower Fire

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I add my congratulations to those given to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) for her phenomenal leadership on this issue. She represents a constituency where many people feel disenfranchised and voiceless. In this place, she has become their voice and we thank her very much for that.

Days after Grenfell Tower went up in flames and 72 lives were lost, the Prime Minister promised to do everything in her power to keep people safe. That was two years ago and the Government’s record since then has been one of denial, dither and delay, as they failed to act on words that now ring very hollow indeed. Some years before Grenfell, in 2009, there was a fire at Lakanal House in south London that led to the death of six people, including a baby. The inquest reported in 2013 with very clear recommendations. The coroner said that the fire safety regulations and, specifically, part B of the building regulations that cover fire safety, were unclear. That was why unsafe and combustible cladding was being strapped on residential buildings inappropriately. The coroner warned, sadly prophetically, that if the confusion was not put right, more deaths would follow.

The Government were given that warning in 2013, but they did nothing, so three years later, flammable ACM cladding was strapped to the outside of Grenfell Tower. A year after that, it went up in flames and 72 people lost their lives. It could not be more horrific, and I am afraid that Ministers’ responsibility could not be clearer. We are now two years further on and yet the fire safety regulations remain unaltered. The Government could have acted on those regulations after Lakanal House 10 years ago, but they did not. They could have introduced a complete ban on flammable cladding after Grenfell, but they did not. They could have taken immediate action to strip Grenfell-style flammable cladding from every housing block where it existed, but they did not. Why not? Because if they had belatedly acted on the Lakanal House recommendations after the deaths at Grenfell Tower, they would have had to accept that their failure to act earlier had contributed directly to that disaster. Rather than do that, they chose to cover up their earlier inaction with more inaction. If the leaders of a private company had acted in the way that Ministers did, they would find themselves in the dock charged with corporate manslaughter. Ministers should reflect on that.

Last December the Government finally, and belatedly, announced a partial ban on flammable cladding, but a partial ban is not enough. They have proposed a ban on flammable cladding on new buildings over six storeys or 18 metres high, but have excluded hotels and office blocks. I simply cannot understand why. I have written to the Minister asking for the evidence that a hotel or an office block is safer than a block of flats, but he has not provided anything convincing, and I doubt whether he will be able to. Surely people in a hotel where they have never stayed before are less likely to know the fire safety escape routes than they would be at home, in a block of flats with which they are familiar; and if flammable cladding is not safe above six storeys, why would anyone on the fifth or the fourth floor want flammable cladding strapped outside their home?

The Government propose to continue to permit the use of flammable cladding on the majority of schools, care homes and hospitals, because most of them are under 18 metres high. How do the Government think parents will feel, knowing that flammable cladding is still allowed on the outside walls of the school that their child attends every day? No parent I know would tolerate that.

Right now, there are still 60,000 people living in 272 blocks with Grenfell-style cladding. The Government refused all demands to act for nearly two years. They finally performed a welcome U-turn last month and found £200 million to remove and replace flammable ACM cladding on residential blocks, but even that is not enough to pay for the work to be carried out fully. It includes nothing to deal with other types of flammable cladding which could be just as dangerous as ACM, nothing to deal with failing fire safety doors, and nothing to enable sprinklers to be installed in the blocks where they are required. Even after all this time—even after two years—Ministers continue to evade their responsibility to keep people safe.

The best way in which to meet the Lakanal House coroner’s demand for clarity on fire safety rules is to introduce a complete ban on flammable cladding on all buildings where people live or work, and that ban should not only cover new buildings. We must take down flammable cladding wherever it exists, because it is an unacceptable danger to people’s lives. Many European countries have already introduced a complete ban; Scotland is introducing one, and we need one here in England as well.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is completely insane for the Government not to introduce a complete ban? If they are not going to do so, Ministers should guarantee today that there will be no further fatalities. Otherwise they should call for a complete ban, through legislation if necessary.

[Mr Reed]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. It strikes me as incredibly and frighteningly contradictory to say that flammable cladding cannot be allowed on new buildings, but is fine on buildings where it already exists. If I lived in a block like that, I would be living in fear, and I know that thousands of people are living in those circumstances.

There is still an average of one fire a month in buildings with flammable cladding, and it is only a matter of time before one of those fires is not put out. Let us mark the anniversary of the Grenfell Tower disaster next week, and honour the memory of those who died by making sure that what happened at Grenfell can never happen anywhere ever again.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing this important debate. Like others who have spoken, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) for her powerful speech, and for all the work that she has been doing to support her community and, in particular, the victims of the Grenfell fire. I also wish to commemorate the 72 people who needlessly lost their lives, and all those who were injured and traumatised by that terrible fire. The grieving and suffering, the trauma and anguish, have not diminished since that dreadful night, and our thoughts remain with those who are having to live the nightmare again and again—an experience that is worsened by the fact that the Government have still failed to tackle the underlying problems that are leaving people at risk.

Like Hillsborough, the Grenfell Tower fire was an avoidable man-made disaster. It is a story of warnings ignored and official neglect: the stuff of nightmares, which could have been prevented. Shockingly, it has emerged since the disaster that ACM cladding, and similar flammable cladding, are present on hundreds of buildings across the country. Many blocks in my constituency have ACM cladding. In the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell fire, Ministers promised swift action to replace such cladding, but, as we have already heard, that action has not featured the urgency that is so desperately required.

Members on both sides of the House, as well as many campaign groups including Grenfell United, had to fight tooth and nail to secure £400 million for the removal of ACM cladding from social housing blocks. More recently, after much campaigning by, for instance, “Inside Housing” and Members here—especially Opposition Members—the Government finally, grudgingly, agreed to provide £200 million to remove dangerous ACM cladding from private blocks. I am grateful to them for that, but people should not have had to wait a year for the social housing funding and two years for the funding for private blocks—and it is still not enough, because 1,700 high-rise blocks in the UK have non-ACM cladding that is also dangerous.

The Government need to act. We should not have to keep coming back and begging Ministers to address this appalling failure. They should be using their own initiative. If the risk of further deaths is not scary enough for them, what is? How will they be able to live with themselves if the Grenfell fatalities are repeated in the future? I know that they do not wish that to happen, but we need to see cross-Government work to ensure that the necessary resources are available, and we need to see legislation to back up the work that is so urgently required for all buildings that are at risk.

As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed), after Grenfell the Government banned the use of combustible cladding on some high-rise buildings measuring more than 18 metres, but that does not go far enough, because people will remain unsafe in cladded buildings less than 18 metres high. A ban that is limited to hospitals, student accommodation and care homes is also not enough. The ban must be comprehensive, applying to any block with ACM cladding or other forms of dangerous material that needs to be removed.

Dangerous cladding is a risk on all buildings, irrespective of their height or purpose. A fire does not discriminate between buildings of different use: it does not discriminate between student accommodation and an office block, or between a private homeowner and a social housing tenant. It is not acceptable that the Government continue to permit the use of combustible materials of any kind on our buildings, for reasons that Ministers have already heard. It is a dereliction of duty to carry on like this. It is vital for Ministers to take the situation seriously and act, rather than constantly having to face pressure to do so.

As others have pointed out, the Prime Minister said:

“My Government will do whatever it takes…to… keep our people safe.”

The Government have done nothing of the sort. They have taken some action, but it is frankly not acceptable. The Minister is raising an eyebrow; he should try living in one of those blocks, perhaps for a few nights, and see what it feels like. He should experience the insecurity and anguish that families have to live through, with their children, fearing that their homes might burn down and there might be further fatalities. That is why this is so important; that is why action is needed.

The regulatory system has failed to protect our residents. In 2016 I raised in the House concerns about the inability of residents to complain to the local government ombudsman about major disrepair issues which could lead to further fatalities. Grenfell tenants raised some of those issues. They complained about problems they were facing and risks long before the fire. That is well documented in programmes including the “Panorama” documentary. One of the major issues for residents is that under the Localism Act 2011 they have to wait a few weeks and then contact a Member of Parliament to submit their complaints to the ombudsman. Those things delay attention being paid to major issues, particularly around the safety of the blocks people live in.

The Government could improve the regulation to ensure residents have a strong voice. They could ensure that there is better accountability and transparency about the kind of blocks people live in and the kind of safety issues those blocks face, so that people can hold the management of those buildings—whether freeholders, registered social landlords or arm’s length bodies—to account. We must never allow fatalities like those at Grenfell to happen again, and that is why the Government must act quickly.