Grenfell Tower Fire: Eighth Anniversary

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Joe Powell]

I absolutely agree. I applaud the Prime Minister’s personal commitment to bring in the Hillsborough law. At the party conference in September last year, he said that the law is

“for the sub-postmasters in the Horizon scandal. The victims of infected blood. Windrush. Grenfell Tower. And all the countless injustices over the years, suffered by working people at the hands of those who were supposed to serve them.”

Those are the Prime Minister’s words. I agree that we should see that law introduced before we return to Liverpool later this year, and see it accompanied by a national oversight mechanism, so that victims can be independently reassured that inquiry recommendations deliver meaningful change. The sad truth is that we know that if the lessons from the Lakanal House fire in 2009 had been learned, as the coroner intended, it is very likely that the Grenfell tragedy could have been prevented. We cannot allow that to happen again.

For the community of North Kensington, Grenfell will always be in our hearts, and I welcome the hard work of the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission to select a fitting permanent tribute to the memory of the 72, but our community needs continued support today. I thank the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for building safety, the Mayor of London and the many other elected officials for their regular visits to North Kensington and their engagement with the community. They will know that, as the tower is brought down, it is vital that community health services, including mental health services, are maintained, and I hope our local NHS leadership, working with the Government, can make sure that those services remain at least for the period of deconstruction. It is also essential that survivors have the monitoring they need to spot and address long-term health conditions that may arise.

For the residents around the tower, change has also been too long in coming. I regularly meet the residents of the Lancaster West estate, the Silchester estate and many others. On the Lancaster West estate, there is now the prospect of an £85 million gap in the budget to complete the major works that were promised by local and central Government after the fire. Clearly, no project of this scale should be overrunning so dramatically, but that promise to residents must be kept. I call on the Minister to do all he can, working with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, to find a solution.

The challenge goes much wider than Lancaster West. Since being elected, I have dealt with thousands of housing cases relating to poor-quality repairs, damp and mould, and a culture of disrespect, especially for social housing tenants.

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Eight years on, we remember the deep sorrow, and stand with the survivors and families. Grenfell really did expose failures in building safety and massive social inequality. At the time, I was a teacher, and the deaths of those children were tragic. Now I am an MP, I think it is upon us to do all we can in this place not only to bring those people social justice and the justice they deserve, but to make sure it does not happen again.

[Joe Powell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I do applaud the many steps the Government are taking on this issue—for example, on professionalising the housing sector and implementing Awaab’s law on damp and mould. As she states, the truth is that without real change, all of us in this House know that a tragic case such as that of Awaab Ishak could easily happen again. In my constituency, that means that the purpose of the RBKC, Notting Hill Genesis, Peabody, Octavia and others should be to serve the residents, not to make their lives a misery, as too often ends up happening. We have launched a local campaign on safe and healthy homes to try to address the systemic failure in the community around Grenfell.

There will be no justice until the painfully slow process of remediating unsafe buildings across the country is complete.