Business of the House

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady raises an important constituency issue. If she wants to write to me about it, I will happily take up that specific case with the relevant Minister on her behalf. This is the sort of issue she should raise at the next Question Time opportunity.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am still waiting for an answer to my question on what caused the Grenfell Tower fire, which I was told was imminent last autumn. Not for the first time, the question has outlasted the Minister of whom it was asked. Can we hear from Ministers in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about fire safety, especially that of domestic appliances? Last Sunday they announced a new Office for Product Safety and Standards, which appears to be just a new name for business as usual.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I say again that we continue to be appalled by what happened at Grenfell. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have been working since then to make sure that people living in high-rise buildings are safe by carrying out a series of checking and testing, which includes identifying ACM—aluminium composite material—cladding and larger-scale tests to establish how different combinations of cladding and insulation materials behave in a fire. The rules on fire safety are being reviewed, and he is right to raise the importance of this issue.