Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 2 Report

Clive Betts Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

Let me expand my invitation: I am sure that the safety Minister would be happy to meet the hon. Lady. We will legislate to make it a mandatory requirement that fire risk assessors are competent to perform their critical role, and are certified against approved standards by a certification body accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service. The Government are supporting an industry-led British standard for fire risk assessors; that standard is currently being drafted, and once it is completed, that will create a single, clear definition of competence against which certification and qualification should be mapped.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Our thoughts today are obviously with the Grenfell survivors, and the family and friends of those who died. I thank my right hon. Friend for her comprehensive response to the inquiry report. I think I agree with everything she said, but I seek one point of clarification, and there is one area in which I will push her to go a little further, if I may.

First, as my right hon. Friend said, it is really important that we respect and value social housing tenants and treat them equally. Will she give social housing tenants access to the building safety fund on equal terms with private leaseholders? Secondly, the testing of products by construction manufacturers has been a disgrace for many years. They have gone from one testing house to another until they have found one that passes their products. Those products could come on the market, having had several failures and one pass. Will my right hon. Friend pick up a cross-party recommendation made by the Select Committee in the last Parliament—the recommendation that the results of every test done on a construction product be made public, whether the result was failure or a pass, so that we can all see the real strength of products, and whether they are fit for purpose, before they are put on buildings?

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments, and I am certainly happy to look at that recommendation. We accepted in full all the recommendations that the phase 2 report came out with; that is an important baseline, but I am happy to look at what more we can do.

Turning to social housing, we will set out plans in the autumn Budget to give councils and housing associations the rent stability that they need in order to borrow and invest in new and existing homes, while also ensuring appropriate protections for existing and future housing tenants. We will bring forward details of future Government investment in the forthcoming spending review, and we will keep that issue under review.