Grenfell Tower Inquiry Report

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Friday 22nd November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness. I echo what she said about who holds the ring in government, because these changes will take time and we need to know who will do so, as government silos are well known and entrenched.

On behalf of these Benches, I pay tribute to Sir Martin Moore-Bick, his team, and the members of Grenfell United and their families and supporters for their relentless search for the truth. It has been a long time coming and I am sure we all regret that too much is still to be done before justice is finally done—if it ever is. The inquiry’s shocking findings place damning blame on companies, the Government, bodies responsible for building regulation and emergency services. It concludes that the victims were “badly failed” by those responsible for their safety and that all the deaths were “avoidable”. Could there be a more succinct, damning and deeply poignant sentence to sum up the Grenfell tragedy?

Sir Martin’s report does not hold back—thank goodness. He has shone a bright light on the cumulative decisions made in dark corners of boardrooms, in Cabinet and council meetings and during the regulation of fire safety and construction methods, and on the interconnectedness of these institutions, which all played a part in what happened on 14 June 2017. “Cumulative” and “interconnectedness” are the two key words that help me begin to understand what is at the root of the report’s reference to failures of government policy and decision-making. It is a simple phrase, but let us try unpacking it.

What shocked me most were the staggering accounts revealing cultures of complacency, denial, lack of scrutiny and accountability, back covering, buck passing, indifference, institutional negligence and even systemic dishonesty by the building contractors and these institutions. All of that created the perfect environment for this tragedy. The report exposes the systemic and entrenched refusal by every one of them to ensure that whistleblowers could speak up without consequence, confident that their concerns would be investigated and taken seriously. Civil servants were found to have ignored, delayed or disregarded concerns. Those who wanted to raise issues were simply too afraid to speak out and those who did were ignored or, worse still, branded as troublemakers. In short, there was a demonstrable endemic culture which led to the lack of importance given to fire safety and social housing tenants, which combined in a perfect storm—only the storm was a horrific fire that claimed 72 lives, including those of 18 children, left scores injured and displaced many families.

To say that the residents of that tower were let down by these institutions is a gross understatement, whether it was a cost-cutting local authority ideologically committed to outsourcing services, a regulation system completely gutted by successive Governments boasting about a bonfire of red tape, the privatisation of building safety testing, a fire service with inadequate controls or a construction industry focused on profits for shareholders and bonuses for senior executives. They were all in part responsible for the deaths that night.

Added to this were decades of underfunding of our public services. We have grown so used to cost cutting that it has become the norm across those services, including local government. We have watched our services be stripped to the bone and some abandoned altogether. There must be consequences from this over time, and we need to acknowledge that this has created a cost-cutting culture across these institutions, with staff under pressure to deliver regardless and discouraged from asking awkward questions.

Those asking such questions are seen as overly negative. They show a “can’t-do” attitude. “You’re not being a team player”. It is chastening to read on the Whistleblowers UK website that 96% of whistleblowers whose cases get to employment tribunals lose. To spell that out, whistleblowers more often than not find themselves on a redundancy list, not for their whistleblowing, of course—there are other ways—but due to “service re-engineering” or similar terms that are difficult to argue against. But some continue to whistleblow and, of the brave souls who do, almost all lose. No wonder they are afraid to come forward if they will lose their job, with the consequences that flow from that. Remember Mid Staffs, where Julie Bailey was forced to close her business and move away and nurse Helene Donnelly was attacked and bullied by colleagues and was too scared to even walk to her car. Do the Government plan to find ways to protect whistleblowers? There are many suggestions as to how this might be accomplished, as surely it is the only way to ensure that failings come to light before another major tragedy happens.

Many staff are stretched in their day jobs as “doing more for less” has been a mantra for years. Within councils, there has been a hollowing out of the role of scrutiny and audit functions, the effective working of which is fundamental to accountability, transparency and resilience. I recall one of the first things I was told as a brand-new councillor by the then Labour leader of Watford Council: “In this job you’ve got to know when you’re being hoodwinked by experts”—only he used more colourful language. I took that lesson with me as mayor and as a peer assessor.

Those on the board of Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation should have heeded it. It transpired that it was easy for employees to withhold information, doctor the findings of critical reports and downplay their urgency. Even outright lying was accomplished with ease. In fact, the fire safety reports were not even done by experts; they appointed someone without the relevant expertise and qualifications. Why? Because he lied and embellished his CV and nobody bothered to check his credentials, ask difficult questions, probe reports, scrutinise actions and timelines or test results. In other words, they failed to do their job. They were little more than nodding dogs. Some might call that a harsh caricature, but it is accurate given the evidence in this inquiry.

The cumulative impact over decades of policies designed to shrink the state, decrease regulation and let the market decide has led in part to their interconnectedness in Grenfell. Sadly, we appear not to have learned the lessons from history and so are doomed to repeat it—think Hillsborough, Windrush, Mid Staffs, infected blood and the Post Office, to name only the high-profile ones. Let us be under no illusion: those most impacted by this relentless trajectory are ordinary working people—the so-called “left behind” or “just about managing”. Whatever label we choose to put on them, they are the most marginalised and vulnerable in our society. I looked again at the photographs and heard the life stories of those who died at Grenfell, and they were all of those things. Most importantly, they were men, women and children with families who loved them. They loved and were loved, trying to live the best way they could.

My question to the Minister is not a simple one. How do we know that such a culture has changed and how to we monitor such things? The regulator and the Government are holding Kensington and Chelsea’s feet to the fire on its recovery programmes, but how is this being done? Can the Minister write to me, as this is an important check and balance in the system and is probably quite detailed for an answer at the end of the debate?

In conclusion, the report is very detailed, and it has many wide-reaching recommendations, which is why I have chosen to concentrate on one bigger issue. There is stuff about emergency planning: they were ill prepared. There is stuff on building control: has competition worked, or should it be taken out of councils’ hands? There is stuff about remediating buildings: why is the amount of money available considerably less for social housing providers than private owners? Is height an inadequate measure of risk? Should the definition of a “high-risk building” be reviewed? But I have chosen just the one overarching major issue, knowing full well that other noble Lords will seek to get answers to those questions and many more. I look forward to their contributions.

I am sure the Minister will agree with my final comment that the report raises fundamental questions about societal attitudes to social housing and its tenants. The report highlights that systematic neglect and a lack of investment in social housing contributed to the tragedy. Residents felt marginalised and their concerns about safety were ignored. This aspect of the disaster underscored broader issues of inequality and neglect in housing policy. How will this Government seek to change that?