Grenfell Tower Inquiry Report

Baroness Sanderson of Welton Excerpts

Friday 22nd November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Government for tabling this debate. I make particular mention of the Minister, for whom I have the greatest respect. He has always closely followed the issues relating to Grenfell, and I know he will continue to do so in his new role.

It is important that we mark the end of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, that we address the contents of Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report and that we commit ourselves to doing all we can to deliver his recommendations—the bereaved survivors and residents deserve nothing less. I declare my interest as set out in the register. It has been my privilege to work with the Grenfell community for many years now—I am sure they would say too many years, and they would be right. But, such was the scale of the failure that led to Grenfell, I am afraid there was never going to be a quick fix.

No one comes out of this report well. Central government does not: it made successive mistakes, going back decades, and failed to act on the risks posed by the use of combustible cladding panels and insulation on high-rise buildings. The council—the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea—does not: it turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the repeated legitimate complaints of its residents. The companies involved in the refurbishment—Studio E, Rydon and Harley—do not: they

“failed to identify their own responsibilities for important aspects of the design and in each case assumed that someone else was responsible for matters affecting fire safety”.

The corporates that supplied the materials—Celotex, Kingspan and Arconic—also do not: again in the words of Sir Martin, they were systematically dishonest and

“engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market”.

The certification bodies and the risk assessors do not, and neither does the fire brigade, despite the individual bravery of its men and women.

As Sir Martin said:

“It is not possible to identify any single cause of the tragedy. Many different acts and omissions combined to bring about the Grenfell Tower fire”.


It is, however, possible to pick out a common theme, and that is one of staggering indifference. No one, in any link of the chain that led to this catastrophe, seemed to care that they were engaged in the business of health and safety—that the decisions they took, or did not take, could have a very real impact on people’s lives.

The final inquiry report stands at 1,700 pages. Throughout, with the notable exception of the current RBKC leadership, it is startling how few people are willing to stand up and take responsibility. Instead, at difficult moments during the inquiry hearings, we heard respondents say, time and again, “I don’t recall. I can’t remember”. There were so many lapses of memory, so convenient for all those questioned and so lacking in respect to the families and friends who deserved better. Yet despite this opacity, Sir Martin and his team have produced a devastating report. They have turned over every rock and stone, and left all those involved with nowhere to hide. His final recommendations are precise, considered and, most importantly, achievable. My noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook will go through many of the individual recommendations, so I will limit myself to more general remarks about overall delivery and the infrastructure of government.

There is a peculiarity to our system, as outlined in the recent report by the House of Lords Select Committee into the Inquiries Act 2005, of which I was a member. It is the fact that, when something has gone very badly wrong we rightly spend an awful lot of time and money on public inquiries to address that injustice, to work out how and why it happened so we may learn the lessons to ensure it never happens again, as the Minister said. Yet there is no formal monitoring of the implementation of inquiry recommendations. At best, this leads to frustration for those involved; at worst, it means that chances to stop future disasters occurring are missed.

The issue goes more widely than public inquiries. As Sir Martin makes clear in the case of Grenfell, in the years between the fire at Knowsley Heights in 1991 and the Grenfell fire in 2017, important recommendations affecting fire safety were ignored. In particular, the Government of the time failed to implement the recommendations made by the environment and transport Select Committee in 1999, which warned that it should not take a serious fire, in which people were killed, before steps were taken to minimise the risks posed by some external cladding systems. Following the fire at Lakanal House in 2009, the subsequent Government failed to review the guidance on fire safety, particularly Approved Document B, as recommended by the coroner.

These were serious omissions with serious consequences, which is why Sir Martin recommended that it be made a legal requirement for the Government to maintain a publicly accessible record of recommendations made by Select Committees, coroners and public inquiries, together with a description of the steps taken in response. As I say, others have identified the problem. The Lords Select Committee recommended a new Joint Select Committee of Parliament to deliver a similar outcome. The charity Inquest is calling for a national oversight mechanism, which would entail the establishment of a new independent public body to undertake this work. Will the Government look seriously at this recommendation, and at potential ways of delivering it? Today we are rightly concerned with Grenfell, but this could have far-reaching benefits beyond this particular inquiry.

I appreciate that delivering on such a recommendation would take time so, in the meantime, could I ask the Minister about the mechanism that the Government are putting in place to deliver on Sir Martin’s recommendations? In response to the phase 1 report, we set up a cross-departmental board, chaired by a Minister, to drive delivery across Whitehall, but an argument could be made, given that this is the final report, for such a board to be chaired by a Secretary of State. The Prime Minister said that, while the Government will respond to the report within six months, there would be certain areas where work could start immediately, so I ask the Minister whether putting in place a suitable delivery framework is one of those areas in which work has begun. If so, can he provide details as to what it looks like?

There were frustrations over the pace of delivery of the phase 1 recommendations, partly because government moves slowly, but partly because of the way in which we communicated what had in fact been done. To this end, the Home Office devised an interactive, very easy to access, tracker, which way surpassed the impenetrable updates given via GOV.UK. I am afraid to say that we did not succeed in getting this up and running, for reasons which, if I am honest, are still completely unclear to me. Could the Minister take this back to the department? It really was an excellent innovation, and it would be a pity not to persevere with its implementation.

While we are addressing the machinery of government, I also raise Sir Martin’s recommendation for bringing the responsibility for fire and safety, currently exercised by MHCLG, the Home Office and the department for business, into one department under a single Secretary of State. As ever, he makes a compelling argument. It would mean that information could be shared more quickly and effectively between teams responsible for all the different aspects of fire safety; it would enable policy to be developed in a coherent way; and it would also ensure better communication between the proposed building safety regulator and the Government. Of all Sir Martin’s recommendations, my personal view is that this would be one of the hardest to implement. Government is not good at overcoming silos, and there is specialist knowledge particular to each department, which is why they each hold certain responsibilities. That said, given the comprehensive way in which the system failed, this would not only address some important practical issues but help to re-establish what should have been a given but which somehow got lost along the years—that fire safety really matters. Let us not forget, as the Minister said, that all 72 deaths were avoidable. Could the Government look at ways in which those recommendations might be achieved?

Finally, I would like to mention the recommendation to review the Civil Contingencies Act, to consider two matters: granting a designated Secretary of State to carry out the functions of a category 1 responder for a limited period of time; and requiring category 1 responders to establish and maintain partnerships with the voluntary community and faith organisations in the areas in which they are responsible for preparing for, and responding to, emergencies. The latter recommendation, which is essentially adding a humanitarian responsibility to the civil contingencies framework, might not have made the headlines, but it is fundamental to how the state interacts not just with those in need but with those it has failed.

We all know how the different local organisations rallied in the days and weeks after the fire. In the years since, I have watched in admiration as the community has supported and sustained itself through its grief and hardship. The state needs to operate differently in such circumstances. Too often it can end up doing further harm, as we saw with infected blood, the Post Office and Hillsborough. When people have been failed as badly as they were in all these instances, and as they were at Grenfell, there is absolutely no trust of the institutions which let them down or the people who work in them—and, frankly, why would there be? It is up to the Government to try to rebuild that relationship, to ensure empathy in the system and to understand that this will always be a work in progress.

The response to Sir Martin’s inquiry will be part of that process, so I ask the Minister to assure us once again, as he has already done, that his Government will look seriously at ways of accepting all Sir Martin’s recommendations, as the previous Governments did for the phase 1 report, and that they will make a firm commitment to continue to support the Grenfell community, not just in terms of the inquiry and recommendations but in the many difficult moments that lie ahead, not least the decision that will have to be taken on the tower itself. As the Minister will know, this is a hugely sensitive issue, and while we need to work towards a fitting memorial can he assure me that the community, and in particular the bereaved, will remain at the heart of that process?

As the Minister said, it is now nearly seven and a half years since that terrible night, but none of us should ever fall into the trap of thinking “Oh, it’s a long time ago” or that it is somehow easier for people now than it was then. It is not. As the chair of Grenfell United said on the day the final report was published, “We paid the price”. The price was their children, their parents, their neighbours and their loved ones. We cannot bring them back, but we can do what is right in memory of them and we on this side of the House stand ready to help the Government in that task.