Grenfell Tower

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I would say to the hon. Lady that we set up the independent taskforce and put it in to support and challenge the council to deliver an effective long-term recovery plan with local people at its heart. That was an important intervention that we took, and the taskforce’s valuable work so far has highlighted the need for the council to do more to listen to the local community. We in the Government have been playing our part to make this happen through the important work of my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing, and, of course, that of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Grenfell victims, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service. He has helped to ensure that the voices and views are heard right across Government and are at the centre of decision making about the future of the site.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

People who are familiar with the area will not underestimate the difficulty of rehousing people, because they perhaps understand it better than some in the Government have done—hence the Prime Minister’s three-week target. If I understand the Secretary of State correctly, only a third of those in need have been permanently rehoused. I think he needs to say a bit more, given that there is a finite number of people and that Government and council resources are available, about how he is going to ensure that everyone is satisfactorily and permanently rehoused within a fixed time.

[James Brokenshire]

As I said earlier when I relayed the figures, nine people have not accepted an offer. I know that the council is doing work at pace with its contractors to ensure that the necessary work is undertaken to enable people to move into those homes. I know that that is what the hon. Gentleman would wish to see, and it is also what I would wish to see. That is why I have made the point about working with the council to challenge, to pressure and to see what support can be given to it, if need be, to make that process speedier. This is a question of having the contractors there and doing the practical work to ensure that the necessary improvements and modifications are made to those homes. That is absolutely at the heart of the work that we continue to support the council with.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

There are so many questions that have either not been answered or inadequately answered in the past year that all I can do is go over some of them very briefly and hope that the new Secretary of State will take some heed.

First, with regard to the seat of the fire, yesterday saw the publication of the results of the inquiry by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy into the type of fridge freezer that we have known, almost since the date of the fire, was the cause. All it says is that there was a low risk from these types of fridges continuing to be used. There is no indication of what the fault was, whether it was a manufacturing fault, or how the fire actually started. We now know, as Which? has told me during the debate, that it was a plastic-backed fridge. We know that plastic-backed fridges cause fire to spread incredibly quickly compared with metal-backed fridges, and there is a big campaign now to stop that type of fridge being sold. That needs to be looked at.

Of course we need to look at the issue of fire spread, and not just cladding or what should have retarded the spread of fire but what may have accelerated it. We need to look at things such as sprinklers, the means of escape and, as has just been mentioned, the advice given to residents in this situation. What we need is prescription. That is the message coming from RIBA, the Local Government Association, the National Housing Federation and Shelter, which I met this morning. We need architects, designers and builders to be told how buildings should be built to make them safe—for example, only using non-combustible materials or having more than one means of escape.

I understand that we will return to this tomorrow morning, but all the indications are that Dame Judith Hackitt’s review will not go down that route. Instead, it will go on about safe systems and systematic answers. With respect, that is not sufficient. I want my constituents, as I am sure every other Member here does, to feel safe and know that they are in safe buildings that will not catch fire and that, if the buildings do catch fire, that fire will be easily retarded.

The other main issue, as Members have said, is housing. It is about not just the rehousing of the people from in and around Grenfell, but the replacement—probably not on the Grenfell site—of the social housing that was lost. It is about the wider lessons to learn.

I am glad that there will be a Green Paper on social housing, but I say gently to the Secretary of State that there will have to be a sea change in the way the Conservative party has dealt with social housing over the past 10 to 20 years if it is to really make a difference to the security, safety and decency of social homes. I hope that he will be committed to that. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), I have seen examples of the disposal of good-quality homes, the failure to replace them and the insecure conditions in which people have been made to live. Grenfell has shown that that is the problem, but it is a problem that goes much wider than Grenfell and is one we need to address.