Grenfell Tower Memorial (Expenditure) Bill

Baroness Nargund Excerpts

2nd reading & Report stage & 3rd reading & Committee negatived
Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nargund (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her introduction and give my strong support to this Bill. I join noble Lords from across the House in thanking my noble friend Lord Roe and his team for their service that night. As others have already said, the Grenfell Tower fire was not only a profound tragedy but an event that exposed deep systemic failures in building safety, governance and the relationship between communities and the state.

The fire, in which 72 individuals lost their lives, was entirely avoidable, as Sir Martin Moore-Bick concluded in the inquiry. It has left a stain on the city of London, which allowed this to happen, and our wider country. It must remain in our national conscience. Recovery from this tragedy has been about more than buildings and regulation. It is about memory, dignity and the recognition of those who were lost and those who continue to live with its consequences.

Grenfell has had a profound impact on me, professionally and personally. I had the privilege—I use that word with great care—of serving as a trustee of the London Emergencies Trust, representing the British Red Cross on its board as a director at that time. I came face to face with Grenfell families when I and some of my colleagues attended a meeting with Grenfell United, which I will never forget. We were confronted not with statistics but with people—families who were grieving, families who were angry and traumatised. They needed to be heard and, most importantly, they needed urgent practical help. Grenfell was a tower, but in the face of that tragedy I could see that the community came together and stood as a tower of strength.

Through the London Emergencies Trust, we distributed £8 million to the bereaved and hospitalised and a further £773,000 to 165 households. We allocated grants for those who had been hospitalised, for pregnant women who suffered due to unimaginable stress, and for families who had lost fathers, mothers and children. Behind every grant application there was a grieving family and a community in huge distress. It was one of the most humbling periods of my life. The British Red Cross provided one of the largest humanitarian responses since World War II, mobilising volunteers from across our country at the start of the fire. It deployed over 630 volunteers, who supported more than 1,700 people. I cannot forget how volunteers arrived from all over the country. It also raised £7.3 million in funds to help those affected by this terrible tragedy. I thank all the volunteers, our psychosocial team for their immediate response at the time, and the senior leadership of the British Red Cross and trustees of the London Emergencies Trust for their service.

As we have heard, the Grenfell tragedy should never have happened. It exposed systemic neglect of the very people the state had a duty to protect. As a doctor I have spent much of my career speaking about health inequalities and helping to tackle them, but Grenfell forced me to confront something even more troubling—an inequality of safety and an inequality of voice in our society. Grenfell Tower stood in one of the most deprived areas in the country, within Kensington and Chelsea, one of the wealthiest boroughs in our country. Around 85% of those who died were from Black, Asian and minority-ethnic backgrounds. These two facts are not incidental. For years, residents had raised concerns about fire safety and were consistently ignored. As Leslie Thomas KC, who represented many of the bereaved families, argued:

“Grenfell is inextricably linked with race”.


It was a working-class community tucked, or forgotten, inside one of the richest boroughs of London. The failure to hear, to act, to protect, fell disproportionately on those who already had least. A permanent memorial is an act not of charity but of civic responsibility.

Grenfell must never become just a chapter in our history; it must remain a call to build a society where safety is not determined by race or postcode. A permanent memorial must carry that truth, not just the grief. The Bill’s provision for expenditure on the Grenfell memorial, including an archive and a sacred resting place for elements of the tower, in line with the recommendations of the commission, is therefore vital. A memorial of this significance must be properly maintained, protected and preserved for future generations, not only for them to remember those who were lost and those who lost but to remind us of our duty to tackle inequality and protect the most vulnerable in our society.

Critically, the Bill does not prescribe the design of the memorial. It enables government expenditure, while ensuring that the community shapes the memorial’s design and purpose. Those most affected must remain at its heart. The Bill is a necessary step in honouring our commitment to that community and to our nation, and I commend it to the House.