Grenfell Tower Inquiry
Ben Coleman Excerpts(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Ben Coleman (Chelsea and Fulham) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I fully understand the challenge that you face, so I will do my best to keep to four minutes. It is an honour to follow the Deputy Prime Minister and so many hon. Friends and hon. Members, and to have so many people sitting up in the Public Gallery listening patiently to the debate, having suffered so much over the years.
I begin by recalling, as others have, the 15 disabled people who died in the Grenfell Tower fire. There was no plan in advance to ensure that they could be evacuated in a crisis. I am pleased that the Government have announced today, in publishing their response to the consultation, that they will introduce a set of measures on residential personal emergency evacuation plans. However, I agree with Grenfell United that personal emergency evacuation plans for disabled residents must be mandated—that is essential.
Let me turn to other matters that my hon. Friends have set out so well. The report is scathing about the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and its tenant management organisation. What leaps out in page after page of the report is the council’s absolute lack of respect for so many of its residents—how it refused to listen to people living in social housing when again and again they raised concerns about the problems with the Grenfell building that eventually contributed to the terrible fire; how it treated the most dissenting voices as enemies; and how, once the fire had happened, it treated its own residents.
At the time, I was a councillor in the neighbouring borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The day after the fire, our council became aware, purely by chance, that Kensington and Chelsea council had placed Grenfell residents in hotels in our borough, because some of those residents happened to wander down to the local West Kensington and Gibbs Green estate, where they were given food, shelter and clean clothing. They happened to mention that they had been placed at the Holiday Inn Express in Fulham, and our council leader got council officers to go to all the hotels in the borough, which we discovered were full of Grenfell residents. No one from Kensington and Chelsea council had tried to tell us. The report talks about the council’s response being “muddled” and “piecemeal”, but perhaps another word is “cruel”.
Teams from Hammersmith and Fulham council kept a close eye and visited every week to look after the residents as best we could. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) came and sat with Grenfell residents on the grass at the West Ken and Gibbs Green estate. They asked, “Are you really a Member of Parliament? Because no one official from our borough has been to see us at all.” I cannot speak highly enough of how the community responded. I am keenly aware that where Kensington and Chelsea council failed, the community got it right.
The council in Kensington and Chelsea says that it is determined to learn from what it got wrong. That is very welcome, as is the fact that the scope of its review is going to explicitly consider racial as well as social discrimination—I look forward to that being the case. However, I still have serious questions about whether that council really gets it, because thousands of my Chelsea constituents live in social housing, and time and again they say that they do not feel that their voices are being heard, or that the culture has changed.
The Friday before last, I decided to call a meeting on the World’s End estate to talk about some serious crime issues—sadly, a man from another estate had been stabbed in an altercation and had died. I invited all the residents to come and have a conversation with me about it. To my surprise, senior councillors from the Conservative Kensington and Chelsea council tried to dissuade me. They said that they had already engaged with residents and that another meeting would bring no more benefit. In the event, more than 50 residents came. We had a great conversation; not everyone agreed with each other, but everyone had a chance to speak and to be heard. Only one thing really shocked me, which was the number of residents who said at the end of the meeting, or even during the meeting, that they had lived on that estate all their lives or for decades, and that this was the first time they had ever been to a meeting like this on the estate—one where they felt listened to.
To sum up, I hope that residents will be listened to. If I may, I hope that we will have a debate like this every year, so that we can look at the recommendations. I request that Front Benchers enable that to happen. I am grateful for your time, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Ben Coleman Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Angela Rayner
I do not accept that from the hon. Member. We have had scare stories about this before. As I have said, the majority of landlords are doing the right thing. The Bill is about fairness for landlords and tenants, and I think it strikes the right balance. I am acutely aware of the law of unintended consequences. In fairness, the previous Government were batting around these ideas for years, after promising in their manifesto to tackle the issues, but they let down the people who are in these situations, who deserved better from their Government. This Government will do better than the previous Government.
As I set out at the start of my speech, tackling the blight of poor-quality homes is a priority of mine and of this Government. That is why part 3 of the Bill will apply a decent homes standard to the sector for the first time, requiring privately rented homes to be safe, secure and free from hazards.
Ben Coleman (Chelsea and Fulham) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend will be aware that the Darzi report last month highlighted the severe problem of damp and mould, particularly in the private sector, and the bitter impact of that, notably on children’s health. Over a third of my constituents in Chelsea and Fulham live in privately rented homes, and in Fulham the council has had to chase landlords 74 times in the past year alone to address damp and mould. It is tremendous that the Government are tackling this, and I know that my constituents will be delighted. May I ask her to ensure that councils are resourced sufficiently to exercise the stronger investigatory and enforcement powers that the Bill provides?
Angela Rayner
We are extending ring-fenced extra resources to councils, because we recognise the need to do that. I want to pick up on my hon. Friend’s comment on children’s health. This Bill will also make good on our promise to extend Awaab’s law to the private sector. When I met Awaab’s family recently, I made a commitment to putting safety first, and it is an honour to pay tribute to Awaab’s legacy, and to his parents’ resolute campaigning for meaningful change for the many thousands of families living in unfit homes. I hope that no family ever has to endure what that family had to.
Mrs Badenoch
We will find out soon enough.
Perhaps Members on the Government Benches are oblivious to these costs and dynamic effects—listening to their interventions, it appears so. I note that no impact assessment for the Bill is available, an omission that has rightly drawn criticism from the Regulatory Policy Committee. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether an impact assessment has been undertaken? If it exists, where is it? If it does not exist, why did the Government not ask for one? I hope this is not how the Labour Government mean to go on.
When I was in government, I provided impact assessments on all sorts of complex legislation. I know that is difficult and can create arguments, but I also know there is a lot more badly thought out and costly regulation where this came from, and we on the Opposition Benches are worried. I know Members on the Government Benches will want to point to the last Government’s Renters (Reform) Bill—I have heard their interventions—but the fact is, that Bill was flawed. I am quite happy to say that, but at least it recognised the practical effect of its provisions and would not have come into full effect until the courts were ready.
The then Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee warned in 2023 that the equivalent provisions in the Renters (Reform) Bill created
“a real risk that the current systems will be overwhelmed, and there will be a logjam with lengthy delays.”
This Government are pressing ahead with measures that will cause gridlock in our justice system, and pit landlords and tenants against each other in protracted litigation.
Ben Coleman
It is absolutely extraordinary to hear strong opposition to every part of the Bill from the right hon. Lady, or am I mistaken? Is she opposed to the parts of the Bill that will protect children from getting breathing problems and ending up being hospitalised? Is she against the protections the Bill introduces so that people can finally live in decent accommodation? If she does not oppose those things, why is she so relentlessly negative and—forgive me, as a new Member—so relentlessly patronising?
Mrs Badenoch
I do not mean to be patronising, but it is quite difficult when there are very clear issues that have a precedent in Scotland. The question is not why I am being patronising; the question is why the Government are ignoring what has happened when these proposals have been tried in another part of the UK. That is a serious problem. All of us here want the best for children and to see tenants do well. It is very wrong of the hon. Gentleman to ascribe negative motivations when we are pointing out problems with legislation. We on the Opposition Benches are doing our job. We do not think the Bill will work.