Grenfell Tower: Fifth Anniversary

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I can only agree with the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) about the complacency that infused the entire safety system and the emergency planning. I hope that the Moore-Bick inquiry will address that point in the fullness of time, although it is taking so long, which is what I want to address today. If my comments today have a theme—I appreciate that this is possibly controversial—it is about learning, not necessarily blaming. There may be people to blame, but we need to learn.

It is terrible for survivors and for victims’ families and friends that we are here five years on, but there is still no closure or resolution for them. As every hon. Member knows, people come to see us after a terrible accident or mistake with the words—echoed by the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), who so capably opened the debate, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan)—“I just want to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.” The living victims of Grenfell still feel as far as ever from that confidence, and I dedicate my speech to them.

I will set out the two main recommendations made in the submission to the Grenfell inquiry that I co-authored with the right hon. Nick Raynsford, former MP for Greenwich and Woolwich and a former Minister for housing and for fire and rescue services, who is now chair of CICAIR, the Construction Industry Council Approved Inspectors Register; Kevin Savage, a leading figure in the building control profession; and Keith Conradi, current chief investigator of the health services safety investigations body, which arose from a recommendation from the Public Administration Committee, which I chaired, and previously chief investigator of the air accident investigation branch of the Department for Transport, who therefore brings a wealth of expertise to the panel of drafters of our submission on the question of safety systems and safety management, and accident investigation. The inquiry has not yet published our submission, but has given me permission to place copies in the Library. I hope right hon. and hon. Members will find it helpful.

Our submission is addressed not to who should be blamed but to some of what should be learned. The remit of the inquiry includes “the scope and adequacy” of the relevant regulations, legislation and guidance. The Building Safety Act reflects in large part the recommendations of the review commissioned by the Government from Dame Judith Hackitt, called “Building a Safer Future”. I thank her and Peter Baker, the chief inspector of buildings, who leads the new building safety regulator; they have both been extremely helpful with our submission, although they may not agree with all of it. We have presented our submission to Ministers, but they are, naturally, awaiting the outcome of the Grenfell inquiry before responding formally.

The Building Safety Act establishes the new building safety regulator based in the Health and Safety Executive. It is responsible for a wide range of activities, including overseeing the safety and performance of all buildings and taking responsibility for control and approval of higher-risk buildings—currently defined as buildings of a height of 18 metres or more, or comprising more than six storeys. It also deals with residents’ complaints, oversees a new competence regime for people working on buildings, advises on the need for changes to building regulations, and oversees and reports on the performance of building control bodies.

We looked carefully at the Hackitt review recommendations and how they have been interpreted by the Government. We recommend, first, that there should be a new, independent building safety investigation body. The interim Hackitt review did not consider how future fires should be investigated, and this seems to me to be a gap in the thinking so far. Under the new regime, investigations will still be carried out by the Health and Safety Executive or by new public inquiries. The length of time that the Grenfell inquiry is taking is yet another example of how public inquiries are likely to leave survivors and their families feeling betrayed for far too long, even though I am certain that, in the end, the Moore-Bick inquiry will be of great value.

There is also a problem that we discovered after Ladbroke Grove: investigations conducted by the regulator can turn out to be conflicted, because the cause of the failure might be a failure of Health and Safety Executive oversight and its regulation. That is not a criticism of the Health and Safety Executive; it is a criticism of the system. The Health and Safety Executive, of which the new building safety regulator is a part, should be precluded from any possibility of having to investigate itself, because it is inherently conflicted. Many, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), feel that the inquiry into the Buncefield fire was conflicted for exactly that reason, with the result that the inquiry was less authoritative than an independent investigation would have been.

Our proposal for an independent building safety investigator is based on the Rail Accident Investigation Branch of the Department for Transport, which in turn is based on the AAIB—the air accident body. That is what the Cullen inquiry recommended following the Ladbroke Grove rail crash. In rail and other sectors, including aviation, this approach is much quicker, much less costly and more effective than public inquiries, because these bodies acquire a permanent body of expertise and experience.

Like a public inquiry, an accident investigation body establishes the causes of a major incident, but these independent bodies seek not to find who to blame, but to learn from failure for the future. In the case of Grenfell, there may well still be people to blame and to prosecute, but people who make mistakes are very often blameless because they are part of a defective system or failing safety culture. There are many instances of aviation accidents where pilot error has been a contributory factor but the pilot is not blamed for that failure. We have all watched the wonderful film “Sully” about such a failure. These independent bodies make safety recommendations to regulators and to the Government, who are accountable for ensuring that they are implemented.

The hon. Member for Leeds East complained about delayed prosecutions having to defer to the judicial inquiry. Unlike with a public inquiry, the regulator may still conduct a parallel investigation to the safety investigator’s to establish responsibility and, if necessary, to prosecute those at fault, as the Civil Aviation Authority prosecuted the pilot in the Shoreham air crash. The crucial point is that the regulator cannot force the accident investigation branch to reveal witness statements except by High Court intervention. That is essential in accident investigation, because it creates a safe space for those giving their account in which they can talk freely and be completely candid, whether or not they think they are to blame. That speeds the whole process of investigation and engages survivors and their families and the bereaved. There is no safe space for candour under the Building Safety Act, and this must change.

Our second principal proposal concerns building control. We propose a new regulatory system for building control. We propose that approved inspectors, who are the private sector, and local authority building control, which is the public sector, should both be regulated on an equal basis, as in any other safety-critical profession. There is currently no licence regime or register for local authority building control and no dedicated independent scrutiny or regulation of its service, yet the failure of local authority building control appears to be one of the factors that led to the Grenfell disaster. Ironically, the proposals that have been brought forward seem to treat the private sector with more suspicion than the public sector, even though it seems that the public sector is what failed in the case of Grenfell.

Building control bodies are responsible for checking building work to verify that it complies with building regulations. Building control work can be carried out either by private firms, known as approved inspectors, or by local authority in-house building control bodies, which have a statutory duty to provide building control services in their area. To be approved to provide building control services in the private sector, authorised inspectors, unlike local authorities, must be licensed by CICAIR. Approved inspectors are subject to a code of conduct, regular auditing and a complaints and disciplinary regime leading to suspension of their licence if they are acting improperly or seriously underperforming. Local authorities opposed being subject to the same oversight and inspection regime. There is no credible case for accepting that.

Those are the two recommendations that we submitted to the inquiry. I have not spoken to the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), who is in his place on the Treasury Bench, so I do not expect him to respond in detail to these proposals. I thought it would be helpful to the House if I laid them out. I repeat that the full text of our submission is now in the House of Commons Library. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will take an interest in it.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

When I think of Grenfell, which I often do, I think first of the people who died; not just that they died—72 people, including 18 children—but how they died. I forced myself to read the accounts of what happened—the phone calls made that night, the people waiting for rescue that never came. It is harrowing. They are well documented, partly through the inquiry and partly through what the families themselves have done. I cannot look at the pictures of the building in flames, but nevertheless I cannot get them out of my head because they were everywhere when the fire happened.

Next, I think of all the thousands of people whose lives were changed by the fire: the survivors and their families, and the wider community. It was a very mixed community in Grenfell, with many people of middle eastern and north African descent, often second and third generation, who had settled in the area and had wider families not only across Kensington but in my constituency of Hammersmith and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who spoke so well earlier. These are big, close communities and this has had an effect on the whole area, and indeed the whole of London and beyond.

I also think of the scandal of the negligence that has been revealed, in its infinite complexity, leading up to this one event. The breadth and depth of the mistakes that were made and the things that went wrong are affecting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people across this country. Too many people have insulted all these groups of people by the way in which they have responded over the last five years. That includes the Government, the building industry and other industries involved, local authorities and other social landlords, and private landlords. Everybody has failed on a catastrophic level by causing the problems that now have to be dealt with, but the Government bear a particular responsibility, not only because they created the climate that enabled much of this negligence to happen but because they have not stepped up to the plate in tackling it.

When I say that people have been insulted, I mean, for example, why did we not have a full-day debate in Government time on the anniversary? I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) for securing this debate, but it is a Backbench Business debate on a Thursday afternoon, and I think that a full-day debate on the anniversary is the very least that could have been done. People have also been insulted by the response in terms of rehousing—or failure to rehouse—people from Grenfell and the surrounding damaged properties. People have been waiting for years in temporary accommodation or hotels. Other examples include the lack of a proper memorial and the pace at which the inquiry has gone. None of this shows respect, in my view, and at the end of it, people have not been held to account.

Also, we have not what I would call a permissive response from the Government, and that is what I want to spend most of my speech talking about. The Government have been asking experts to tell them the full extent of the problems, and then responding. Every step of the way, everything has had to be dragged out, whether it is money, concessions or legislation, in order to get only a very little distance down the road to where we need to be. Let me just run through some of those issues on which we are failing.

We know a lot about cladding and insulation, but determining the types of cladding that have been banned—whether they have been banned in the sense of being removed from existing buildings or not being allowed to be put on to new buildings—and what types of buildings are affected has been done in a very slow and erratic manner, and the most recent changes are pretty de minimis, frankly. The Government have now decided that hotels, hostels and boarding houses over 18 metres should be included in the ban, but what about residential and other buildings that are under 18 metres—and indeed, under 11 metres? What about other buildings that might be at risk, possibly because of their function or because of the people who live in them or go to school in them, such as hospitals or hotels? There is no comprehensive response.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The hon. Gentleman is completely right in what he is saying. The 18-metre limit is a completely arbitrary distinction. Far more people die in fires in low-rise buildings, especially houses of multiple occupation, than in high-rise buildings. The 18-metre limit is a media-driven preoccupation, and I could even say that the preoccupation with cladding is a media-driven preoccupation. This whole process has been driven by public pressure, not real risk assessment, which is what we need. That is why we are proposing the reform of building control.

[Andy Slaughter]

I very much thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; he has put it very clearly and succinctly. I started with cladding and insulation—I have quite a long list—because that is where we have seen some activity. As I said, it is not the correct activity and it has not been done quickly, comprehensively or logically enough, but there has been a focus on cladding, then on cladding and insulation, and then on other matters that relate to cladding. It has spread out very gradually and slowly from there, but I just make the point that when we drill down, we find that there is still a long way to go, and it is impossible not to conclude that the reasons for that are partly financial and partly that the Government are overwhelmed and do not have the support they need.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I guarantee that owing to the panic to designate certain buildings unsafe because of their cladding, a vast amount of cladding has been removed, at vast expense, that it was probably not necessary to remove, perhaps because it was installed differently or it did not have an air gap or it was associated with flammable windows. There are all kinds of reasons that have not been taken into account because there was a blanket categorisation of cladding and height. That was understandable very early in the crisis, but it is not understandable five years on.

[Andy Slaughter]

Again, I entirely agree. Every month, more comes to light. That is true in my constituency, as I am sure it is in other Members’ constituencies. I am dealing with one case at the moment where the cladding is not flammable but there are no fire breaks behind it. That cladding still has to come down, at huge cost. These things are interrelated. The solutions that have been suggested are really inadequate. We are an outlier—in a bad way—in terms of international practice, because the standards that we were enforcing and those that we are now enforcing are not of the best.

Another example is the design of buildings. It is only in the last few weeks or months that the issue of single staircases in new build high-rise blocks has really taken hold, and planning authorities have begun to look at that. Directly abutting Grenfell Tower and the Lancaster West estate in Kensington and Chelsea are my constituency and two major opportunity areas: the White City opportunity area and the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation. I mention that because high-rise buildings are mushrooming across that area. How high are they? In the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation area, which is just outside my constituency to the west, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), there is one 55-storey block already being built and three more in planning at the moment. So four buildings over 50 storeys high with a single staircase are being planned.

In my constituency, there were similar applications for 46-storey blocks, and I am pleased to say that some of those developers are now lowering the heights, perhaps by 10 storeys, and putting in additional staircases. But this has involved catching things in the nick of time, and some single staircase blocks are still being built now. Why is this important? It is important because of the failure of the stay-put policy. It is not just a question of design and how the buildings are constructed. Almost every high-rise residential building in the UK in recent decades has been built on the basis of the stay-put policy.

Office buildings with more than five storeys are required to have a second staircase, but a 55-storey residential block can be built with a single staircase because we rely on stay-put. Well, stay-put is undoubtedly a cause of the number of fatalities at Grenfell. More pragmatically, people will not stay put any more—I have encountered this with fires in my constituency since Grenfell—and I do not blame them. If we do not have a stay-put policy, we need evacuation plans, we probably need alarm systems and we definitely need a second staircase if we are to evacuate buildings. The excuse for having a single staircase is that everyone will stay in their flat while the fire service deals with the issue. Sometimes that works, but who would now rely on it working?

Personal emergency evacuation plans have been in the news again recently. They simply are not being done, and the Government do not intend to implement them. Yet, as the Mayor of London said in his briefing, 41% of disabled people in Grenfell Tower died in the fire.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

I could not agree more. The truth is that the Government have put it in the “too difficult” column, along with other things. It is not that they have an argument for why they do not need such plans; it is because they are saying, “Well, it will be too difficult, too expensive or take too much time, and we have other things to do.” That is extraordinary. I have long-term concerns about disabled people, or indeed young families, living in high-rise blocks, which are unsuitable accommodation. There is a much wider debate about the type of housing we build in this country, but this issue seems to be glaringly obvious.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The Government can be forgiven for one reason, which is that there is no systemic safety risk management in the building sector that differentiates between different forms of safety mitigation. In the Manchester airport fire, in which an aircraft caught fire on the runway and many people died, the initial reaction was that there had to be better evacuation from burning aircraft, but nothing changed. One or two extra over-wing exits were built into aircraft, but nothing fundamentally changed. The problem was that the probability of a fire was much too high, and that is what had to be addressed. Until we have a totally comprehensive safety management system, which does not yet exist in building control, we will never have the safe buildings we want.

[Andy Slaughter]

I agree that we need safer systems and that we need to plan. There has been a free-for-all for too long in the building industry, where there has been a gold rush to acquire sites and build whatever it can get away with—the envelope has been continually pushed.

I slightly disagree with the hon. Gentleman because a lot can be done. My local authority has done about 1,000 PEEPs. Anyone can ask for one. They are not proactively given but, nevertheless, they are quite effective in assessing people’s needs, providing equipment, linking people with neighbours and making sure they have proper notifications, alarm systems and things of that nature. A lot can be done, and it would save a lot of lives. It just needs to be institutionalised across the board.

I will speed up a little. I have mentioned cladding and insulation, design, construction and the height and use of buildings, but I have a couple of other points. One is the cause of fires, and the predominant cause is electrical safety malfunctions. We see that in everything from lithium batteries to white goods. The Grenfell fire was caused by a fridge-freezer. There is a lack of electrical safety all the way down the line from manufacture to retail.

The Minister will be pleased to hear me speak favourably of his Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, which makes provision for five-yearly electrical checks on social housing in the same way as for private rented housing. That is important, although I am not quite sure what it means. Does it mean checks on appliances, wiring or systems?

Secondly, there seems to be a lacuna because a single block could contain different types of flats. The first flat could be rented out by the local authority, and such flats are not covered at the moment but will be in the future, as I understand it. The second flat could be a private flat rented out by the leaseholder, which is already covered, and the third flat might be owned by a resident leaseholder who does not have any checks at all, as far as I can see. There is inconsistency and a failure to nail down what the problems are.

Regulation has failed. Desktop surveys are another horror we have encountered, but they are still happening. In their most recent announcement, the Government said they will rely on the discredited BS 8414 test, so regulation is still not working properly. Management and maintenance is not working properly, and it certainly did not work in Kensington and Chelsea through either the council or the tenant management organisation. Even simple things such as fitting door closers and making sure fire doors are of an adequate standard are still not being done.

A lot has rightly been said about how non-cladding costs are still falling on leaseholders, but they are also falling on social landlords. The National Housing Federation and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, have made this point time and again, but the Government never respond—perhaps they will today. If we require social landlords to bear the extraordinarily high costs, billions of pounds, of remedying defects in the buildings they own, that money will simply come out of their capital resources, whether borrowing, balances or rents, that would otherwise go towards maintaining their existing properties and building new properties. There is a crisis in the social housing market, as even fewer social homes will be built over the coming years because the money has to be diverted into fire safety.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Slaughter]

I will allow one more intervention. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s speech arrived late, so I am letting him deliver it paragraph by paragraph.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The point I wanted to make is that this is partly a problem of building control. In particular in relation to high-rise buildings, the problem is that the Building Safety Regulator will draw on established building control bodies to carry out its function. The Select Committee pointed out that this creates a new conflict of interest, because the BSR both regulates and then carries out the building control inspections. The danger is that we do too much defensive regulation, which costs a great deal of money and is not of public benefit, and then we do not do the right regulation, which actually mitigates the biggest risks. All that gets lost in the wash in the present system.

[Andy Slaughter]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments, because he is going through the practical steps that need to be taken rather more methodically than I am. I accept his concentration on getting the regulation right, but it is not the only thing we have to get right. As I began my speech by saying, this is a real crisis across the whole industry, government, the regulation and the tone that has been set. I hope that, coming out of things such as the Hackitt review, that will change, but I do not see sufficient change yet. The progress has been glacial on correcting the many, many defects. Nobody says that it is easy; its complexity and extent mean that it will be very difficult. However, I do not see that sense of urgency, because hundreds of thousands of people still live in unsafe buildings.

I pay tribute to the all-party group on fire safety and rescue, of which I am a member. I pay a particular tribute to the late Sir David Amess, its chair for many years. It warned about many of these problems time and again. It is not right to say that the Government have not been warned. Unfortunately, they ignored much of this. There has not been justice for the Grenfell families. We know which companies were responsible—Rydon, Arconic, Celotex, Kingspan and many, many others. These companies continue to manufacture and make great profits, and, as far as I know, they have not paid a penny in compensation. I would like to know what the Government are doing about that and what is happening in terms of civil damages for the people who suffered as a result of Grenfell, and I would like all this to happen a little more quickly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North mentioned Peter Apps and Inside Housing. They have done a fantastic job and, frankly, the Minister could do a lot worse than simply reading through the articles it has published in the past few weeks. The one that sits most firmly in my mind is the one that asks, “Could it happen again?” I know it is well intentioned but, “We must never let this happen again” has become a cliché. I would rather the Minister focused on that article and read it. It is a long article, but it goes through, step by step, all the problems that there are with high-rise buildings, and even not so high-rise buildings, in this country, which mean that Grenfell could happen again, any day. It could happen again and we have to come to terms with that.

I have not done this for some time, because of the covid emergency, but I recently took part in the silent walk, which was an incredibly moving event. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North, the sponsor of the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), the shadow Minister, the shadow Secretary of State and others were there to witness the thousands of people who monthly walk through the streets in absolute silence around Grenfell Tower not only to remember people, but so that the Government know they are not going away. Somebody else who is not going away is the former Member for Kensington, who is in the Gallery and who of course was there with most of the Kensington Labour councillors on Tuesday. I know that she continues to take just as strong and powerful an interest in this as she did when she was the Member of Parliament for the area.

Let me conclude by saying to the Minister that I hope he will come on the silent walk one month. I hope he will talk directly—[Interruption.] I think he should listen. I am happy to wait until he has finished his conversation, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was addressing my comment directly to him. I was saying that I hope he will visit Grenfell and the families. I hope he will come on the silent walk. I hope he will understand not just the absolute thirst for justice, but the fact that what they want to come out of the terrible events that happened to them is that, sooner rather than later, everybody living in a high-rise block in this country, be it social housing, private housing or whatever, can feel safe when they go to sleep at night and feel safe for their children. Is that honestly too much to ask? It is not what we are getting from the Government’s policies at present.

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[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to respond for the Opposition in this important and timely debate. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) for securing it and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. In so doing, they have given the House not only the opportunity to appropriately mark the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire, but a chance for us to properly reflect on its aftermath and what could be, but is not yet its legacy.

It has been an excellent debate, and I thank all those Members who have taken part. We have had a series of incredibly well-informed and powerful contributions. On behalf of those on the Opposition Benches, I put on record once again the admiration we feel for the survivors and the bereaved, and for the wider Grenfell community. In the face of unimaginable loss, their pursuit of justice for their families and neighbours and their dedication to securing wider change command enormous respect.

The events of 14 June 2017 were, as many have said today, horrific. The fear that the residents of Grenfell Tower must have felt on that night is inconceivable. The loss of 72 innocent men, women and children is something we must never forget. The fire is frequently referred to as a tragedy. I personally have never been convinced that is quite the right word to describe the horror of Grenfell, because labelling it as such implies that it happened not only unexpectedly, but entirely by chance, yet we know that what happened could have been avoided. It could have been avoided if shortcuts were not taken when it came to safety, if the countless reckless and unforgivable decisions made by some of those within the product manufacturing and construction industry were not taken, and if repeated warnings, including those expressed, as so many Members have said, by the residents of Grenfell Tower themselves, had not gone unheeded. But they were, and it is the survivors, the bereaved and the community who must forever live with the consequences.

Doing so is made all the more difficult by the knowledge that those guilty of wrongdoing have not yet been punished. Many Members have rightly raised that point in the debate. While we can never fully appreciate the grief that those who were directly affected have experienced, I can understand the fury that they must feel as they watch the Grenfell Tower inquiry continue day after day to relentlessly expose a catalogue of malpractice and negligence. While we recognise the need to await the conclusion of the inquiry before it is determined precisely what steps must be taken, I can understand the frustration that they evidently feel—it was palpable on the silent walk on Tuesday—that the prospect of justice feels more distant than ever.

When it comes to the question of justice, it is our responsibility as Members of this House to recognise that the fire at Grenfell Tower was not simply the result of pernicious industry practice; it was also the product of state failure—the failure of successive Governments in presiding over a deficient regulatory regime and ignoring repeated warnings about the potentially lethal implication of that fact. The Government have a duty to ensure that everyone lives in a safe home. Sadly, while there has undeniably been progress toward that end over the past five years—and a quicker pace of progress over the past nine months, for which I give the Minister and his colleagues due credit—this debate has highlighted the serious concerns that remain.

Time does not permit me to respond to all the pertinent issues that have been raised during this debate, from the failure of the Government to implement all the recommendations from phase 1 of the inquiry, to the ongoing impact of the building safety crisis on blameless leaseholders in privately owned buildings and on social landlords. I therefore want to use the time I have left to pick up two particular issues raised in the debate that are incredibly important for how we go forward: the functioning of the new building safety regime, which was raised in considerable detail by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin); and the extent to which the wider post-Grenfell building safety crisis has been comprehensively resolved.

When it comes to the new building safety arrangements, the Building Safety Act comes into force in 12 days’ time, but the practical implementation of the new arrangements is just as important as what the legislation itself provides for, and in that respect, we have real concerns about whether the new regime will be able to function effectively. In particular, we remain unconvinced that the new Building Safety Regulator, which the Act makes responsible for all aspects of the new framework, has what it needs to perform all the complex tasks assigned to it.

Take the issue of indemnity insurance for approved inspectors. The Minister will be aware that as a consequence of a late Government amendment to the Bill, the current Government-approved scheme comes to an end next month, yet there is no sign of an appropriate alternative arrangement being put in place to protect the public and the public interest. Indemnity insurance may seem like an incredibly technical matter, but it is nevertheless integral to the proper functioning of the new regime, and on this and a number of other pressing issues it simply is not good enough for the Government to pass the buck to the new regulator without providing it with the necessary support, as is clearly the case.

The Government will have to do more in the months ahead to ensure that the regulator can carry out its functions effectively, not least because the second phase of the Grenfell inquiry will almost certainly produce recommendations that place additional pressures on it. When he responds, can the Minister update the House on what more his Department is prepared to do to assist the regulator to discharge the duties the 2022 Act places on it?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I would go further than the hon. Member. The concept behind the architecture in the Building Safety Act is still not adequate. There are conflicts of interest for building control surveyors, and there is the complete lacuna of independent incident investigation. Would he undertake to allow Nick Raynsford, Keith Conradi and me to come and brief the Opposition Front-Bench team on this matter, so that they understand our submission to the Grenfell inquiry fully?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am more than happy to meet the hon. Member and the other individuals he cites. I agree that there are gaps and deficiencies in the new regime, and I agree in particular that there is a conflict of interest with the Health and Safety Executive being the body that investigates major incidents. If those incidents were in in-scope buildings, it would be investigating the regulator that sits inside it, but there are also conflicts in building control, as he rightly raises.

When it comes to the wider building safety crisis, alongside its impact on blameless leaseholders, the overall pace of remediation is arguably the most pressing concern we face. It is agonisingly slow. In the debate that took place last week on social housing and building safety, the Secretary of State openly admitted what has been patently obvious for some time to any Member dealing with cladding casework, namely that the building safety fund

“has not been discharging funds at the rate, at the pace and in the way that it should”.—[Official Report, 9 June 2022; Vol. 715, c. 974.]

Despite Members from across the House having repeatedly expressed concerns about that fact with Ministers over a considerable time, little has seemingly been done to expedite the processing of applications.

The result is that of the 3,462 non-ACM-clad privately owned buildings over 18 metres that have made applications to the fund, remediation works have begun on only 259 and have been completed on just 30. Can the Minister tell us what is being done to expedite decisions on those applications not yet determined? As one would expect, given that it was established earlier and its scope is far more limited, better progress has been made in remediating ACM-clad buildings via the building safety programme, with 78% having been completed, but five years on from the Grenfell fire, how can it be the case that 55 residential buildings still have deadly Grenfell-style ACM cladding on them, and 16 of those have not even begun to remove or replace it?

Of course, in both those cases, the figures I have cited relate only to high-rise buildings over 18 meters. By its own estimate and published figures, the Department believes that there are likely to be between 6,220 and 8,890 mid-rise residential buildings that require full or partial remediation or mitigation to alleviate life safety fire risks. I suspect that the real numbers are far higher.

The bottom line is that if the Government do not accelerate markedly the pace of remediation across the board, we are likely to find ourselves marking the 10th or even 15th anniversary of the Grenfell fire while still bemoaning the fact that some unsafe buildings require fixing. It is essential that the Government continue to be urged to address those failures and the others that have been raised in the debate, because honouring the lives of the 72 involves not just commemoration, but the building of a fitting legacy, as other hon. Members have said.

As Grenfell United made clear in the statement it released on Tuesday to mark the fifth anniversary, the survivors, the bereaved and the community want those who were lost to be remembered not for what happened, but for what changed. Not enough has changed over the last five years and it is beholden on the Government to go faster and, in many cases, further so that everyone has a secure, decent, affordable and safe home in which to live.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Eddie Hughes)]

I thank right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House for their moving and thought-provoking contributions in today’s debate. I know that I speak for all Members when I say that the 72 men, women and children who senselessly lost their lives at Grenfell will never be forgotten. It is entirely right that the House has met again just two days after the fifth anniversary of that national tragedy to honour their memory and to discuss our collective duty to ensure that such a tragedy is never repeated and that no one ever has to go through what residents of Grenfell Tower were forced to go through on that night or what the bereaved and survivors have had to endure over the last few years.

As a Minister in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, I feel an acute responsibility to do the right thing by the Grenfell community, and I know that feeling is shared on both sides of this House and in the other place. For those directly affected by that national tragedy, life has never been, or ever will be, the same again. The tributes paid this week by the survivors and their families to the victims have brought that fact into the sharpest possible light. As Members have rightly highlighted in their moving tributes today, and in last week’s debate led by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, the community has consistently shown incredible bravery, resilience and courage in the face of unimaginable loss.

Until the Grenfell Tower inquiry concludes and the police investigation finishes, the search for justice will continue. Five years on, the bereaved are still waiting for at least some sense of closure from that terrible night. Sir Martin and his counsels have been working diligently in pursuit of the truth, and they have already laid bare the opportunities missed by the Government and others, as well as exposing cut corners and wrongdoing on the part of several other organisations. We now need to ensure that we take seriously all the inquiry’s recommendations when it concludes.

I reiterate my humble appreciation of the way in which the bereaved and survivors have stoically campaigned for justice and reform. Their dignity and strength continues to inspire us all. They have been let down. No words and no apology could possibly make up for these failings, but I echo the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in the debate last week when he said that we are sorry. For my part, I am sorry.

We are committed to making things right by fixing the building safety regime that badly failed those at Grenfell on that night through the Building Safety Act, by implementing the toughest and most stringent fire safety standards through the Fire Safety Act, and by putting residents at the heart of a reformed social housing sector through our Social Housing (Regulation) Bill. We are not naive about the scale of the challenges that remain and, as has been rightly pointed out in this debate, we still have a long way to go on several issues.

I do not want to cover the same ground as last week’s debate, but I will mention some of the comments and contributions that were made today. In congratulating the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) on securing this debate, I acknowledge that he and I agree on almost nothing politically, but we are united in our determination to ensure that a tragic event like Grenfell Tower genuinely never happens again. He called for an annual debate, as did the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), and my understanding is that the Secretary of State committed to that during the debate last week.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) asked why the debate did not take place on the anniversary of that terrible event. Clearly, partly, that was because the Grenfell bereaved and survivors could attend the debate last week. They were invited to, and they did—there were two rows of them in the Gallery—and the Secretary of State and I met them before the debate. It would have been inappropriate for us to have it on the same day that they were holding events in other areas to commemorate it.

Touching briefly on the technical point that the hon. Gentleman made with regard to electrical surveys that will be carried out and whether properties of other tenures will be caught up in that, we are going to consult so that we can understand some of the complexities he described where there are multiple tenures in a single building as to what would be the most appropriate position to take.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) for her support—I am incredibly grateful to her. I have recently done a lot of engagement with the Secretary of State. We have held a number of town hall meetings giving the opportunity for people to come in, for several hours if necessary, to speak to me and the Secretary of State to discuss their concerns and make their case.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for putting on record his recommendations, which I am sure will be given serious consideration.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Will my hon. Friend undertake to arrange a meeting between Keith Conradi, Nick Raynsford and me and the Secretary of State? We have not met the current Secretary of State, and we met a Lords Minister who has now changed, so we feel that we need more engagement with Ministers about this. I would be very grateful if he could undertake to arrange that meeting.

[Eddie Hughes]

I would be very happy to speak to the Secretary of State’s diary secretary on my hon. Friend’s behalf.

The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) made an important point about the memorial that may follow on-site. The Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission will ensure that the bereaved, survivors and, indeed, north Kensington residents lead decision making on the long-term future of the site.

Members have mentioned the pace of justice, and I recognise the importance of that to the families seeking justice who have already had to wait so long. The police, the CPS and the inquiry must rightly remain independent from Government. The police are keeping families updated and over the weekend issued a public update on their progress. It is also important that those affected by the tragedy can fully participate in the inquiry. As such, we have made a fund for legal expenses available to witnesses and to the building safety review’s core participants.

Of the 46 recommendations made in phase 1 of the report, 15 were directed to the Government. The majority have been addressed by the laying of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and by the Building Safety Act. The remainder are being considered by a Home Office consultation that runs until 10 August. I urge all Members to contribute to that, not least because it will include reference to PEEPs—personal emergency evacuation plans—and it would be good to get contributions from Members across the House.

With regard to the pace of remediation, the building safety reset announced by the Secretary of State in January is galvanising activity across the board. The industry is gearing up to play its part, and over 45 developers have now pledged to remediate unsafe buildings that they developed. We are working rapidly to turn those pledges into legally binding contracts, and our goal is to get these out of the door before summer recess. In many cases, developers who made a pledge are getting on with it, contacting building owners and leaseholders and lining up surveyors to carry out assessments and prioritise work. For the 11-to-18 metre remediation scheme, in signing the pledge, developers have committed to working at pace with Government to finalise arrangements and commence remediation or mitigation work, as necessary, as soon as possible. We will announce further details of the launch of the 11-to-18 metre remediation fund shortly.