Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Chris Vince Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for her speech. I put on record my deepest sympathies to all the families affected by this terrible tragedy and thank Members from across the House for their thoughtful contributions to the debate. In particular, I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) and for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for their emotive and powerful speeches.

Group Commander Rod Wainwright served for 26 years. He had a distinguished career of service in the London Fire Brigade. He said:

“I was not on duty that night, 14 June 2017. The fire brigade did not have the correct team on duty and called me to assist with the incident but never recalled the correct team or number of staff required to be effective from Gloucester. That team should never have been outside of the M25 leaving London unprotected. I was called around 1 am. I spent 15 hours on the scene and was never relieved or given the assistance that was required.

I had counselling from LFB counsellors on three different occasions but it wasn’t effective. I asked for specific PTSD counselling from a specialist and for the brigade to pay. They said ‘no’ and to use the in-house option again. The specialist would have cost around £2,000, but I was told”—

by the director—

“that it wasn’t suitable and sent the wrong message. I was diagnosed with complex PTSD and subsequently medically retired with no recognition, thanks or acknowledgement from senior management.”

As I have told the House before, Rod blames himself for not saving more people that night. However, in my view, he too is a victim of failure. I will say again that people like us in suits in this room are to blame for the tragedy of Grenfell, not heroes like Rod Wainwright. The executive summary to the phase 2 report makes that clear. It makes grim reading to us all. It describes the systematic dishonesty of those who made and sold the rainscreen cladding panels and insulation products. They allowed customers to continue to buy products in the UK despite knowledge gained from fires in Dubai in 2012 and 2013. I repeat: systematic dishonesty.

I apologise to the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) because this was in his constituency, but briefly, in another early MP surgery I was visited by Claire Newman, who told me of the story of her mother Daphne Holloway and her neighbour Ivy Spriggs, who died in their beds during a nursing home fire around the same time as the Grenfell disaster. The nursing home had no sprinkler systems. I welcome the commitment from the Deputy Prime Minister that all new care homes will be given sprinkler systems, but I ask for some consideration, as Claire is asking for, of putting in sprinklers retrospectively. Although care homes do not meet the 18-metre requirement, I also ask that they be included on the higher risk register.

On that terrible morning in 2017, 72 people died in their homes. Families were broken. Lives were destroyed. Let us please learn lessons from that tragedy.