Grenfell Tower

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for what he said about the work carried out by the public sector. I certainly echo his thanks to people from throughout the country who have come to help at Grenfell on a voluntary basis. That shows our country at its very best.

The noble Lord asked about essential work and sprinklers. I think he raised a similar point somewhat earlier in relation to the Hackitt review. As I said then, having set up the review to look at building regulations and fire safety—it will obviously look at sprinklers, and the inquiry will doubtless want to look at that as well—I do not think we should prejudge what it will come up with. If it recommends that something essential be done, clearly, the Government will take that very seriously—I cannot imagine it being otherwise—and that would include points relating to retrofitting.

On the difference with Scotland and the devolution element, I know from a previous life that if you have devolved systems, policies may diverge, sometimes for very good reasons. Therefore, I will not tread on any toes by pontificating on something I am not clear about, except to say that these things are sometimes quite different.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, Newcastle is not the only city or place where in recent years a huge number of newly built multi-storey buildings have been constructed to house students. Do the Government have a view on requiring the builders of those buildings to ensure that they also check issues concerning cladding and sprinklers? In respect of the latter, I endorse the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. I hope the Government decide that it should be a requirement to install sprinklers. If so, I hope they will ensure that they provide appropriate finance, and that this will not simply fall on local council residents.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for that point about Newcastle and more generally on higher education. I can confirm that some higher education and further education blocks—on which I think we have published statistics—also fall foul of these concerns, and they are being looked at in exactly the same way. That is also true of one or two buildings in the health service. It does not extend more widely in other areas of government, at least not in England; separate considerations and reviews are going on in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I reiterate that we have set up the Hackitt review, which is looking at building regulations and fire safety, including sprinklers, for the specific reason that we want it to come up with evidence-based recommendations. We should not anticipate those, but I can confirm that, obviously, whatever it comes up with—this goes for the inquiry as well—will be taken seriously by the Government, and, no doubt, by opposition parties as well.