Housing and Social Security

Emma Dent Coad Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)]

As the first Labour MP for Kensington, I am walking in the footsteps of giants. Although the boundaries have changed over the years, the charismatic figures of Alan Clark, Michael Portillo, who shares my Spanish heritage, and Malcolm Rifkind have created their own legacy, and I am grateful to my immediate predecessor, Victoria Borwick, for showing the way with her impressive social and organising skills, which I will never emulate.

I was born in Chelsea, went to school in Hammersmith and have lived in North Kensington for half my life; the constituency is in my DNA. As MP for both Harrods and the Notting Hill carnival, I hope to ensure that all my communities are cared for. I know, because I have spoken to many of them, that the good people of South Kensington have had their eyes opened in the past week and are asking the same questions that we are asking in North Kensington. The horror and fear of this man-made catastrophe will be etched in all our hearts forever. The tears may never stop, and I know that from the grief etched on the faces of people in Ladbroke Grove and from the total strangers approaching me for comfort, reassurance, a question, a hug, to share their fears and disbelief that such horror could be visited upon our neighbourhood. The burnt-out carcase of Grenfell Tower and all that it represents, lours over us, and we have the Red Cross managing a relief programme—in Kensington.

It has been said before that tenants of Grenfell, and of other council and housing association properties, have been voicing their very serious and evidenced concerns about poor and diminishing housing standards, and about how appeals, complaints and petitions have been ignored and discredited. I have witnessed over the years the deterioration, and perhaps even the deliberate managed decline, of social housing; the frustration of a minority party councillor is huge. Eleven Labour councillors in Kensington and Chelsea Council listened to the concerns, put them forward and shouted out for their residents, but they are a minority; decisions are made in cabinet, where Labour has no representation. In my 11 years as a councillor in the community where I was born and bred, I have seen housing conditions that are simply shocking: homes growing toxic black mould; five children squeezed on mattresses in one bedroom; homework done in relays; chronic health problems such as asthma, with children being carted off to hospital at night; malnutrition rife; and the simple day-to-day organisation of clean clothes, food and personal cleanliness being carried out in rotas to allow a semblance of respectability. Child poverty in Kensington is just the same as child poverty in Lanark and Hamilton East. It is 25%—in Kensington.

People are proud. I have seen families coming out of disgracefully overcrowded and unhealthy homes who seem organised, clean and in control, however stressed and tired they are. I have had late night emails from one teenager who had been sitting on the stairs to complete her GCSE homework when her family had gone to sleep—this was the only time she could do it. I have visited a proud and ambitious family where four children, including teenagers of opposite genders, shared a bedroom. I have visited a very dear and confused elderly woman who had been living in darkness for weeks as her electricity ring main had blown and she was too afraid of strangers to let repair workers in. All these issues and more occurred in Grenfell Tower, including power surges that blew all the electrical devices, yet the residents’ protestations were ignored, and the so-called “frequent complainers” were blacklisted. By what process of deregulation and the bonfire of red tape was this disaster allowed to happen?

Some people seem to think that social tenants have no right to live in an area such as “desirable” Kensington. Some people demonstrate a total lack of empathy or even respect for those not born to a world where basic human comforts and a good education are givens. Some people think that social tenants should simply move away if they don’t like what they’ve been “given” and that housing people on low incomes in the inner city, which they serve through their labour, is not a public good, but some kind of privilege to which they are not really entitled.

So we have heard, after this disaster, that voluntary groups and charities have “stepped up” to deal with this and that they are wonderful—and indeed they are. But I want to live in a world where charities do not exist, and where volunteers are not needed to fill the yawning gaps where local services have been cut or withdrawn, to be replaced, as they are in Kensington, by prep schools. People of all backgrounds should be safe in their beds, and have food in the fridge and shoes of the right size on their children’s feet; the basic human needs cannot be met in a world of charities, food banks and handouts. In a council with a third of a billion pounds in reserves, I do not understand how this can be.

The burnt carcase of Grenfell Tower speaks for itself and has revealed the true face of Kensington—the mask has dropped. We have poverty, malnutrition, overcrowding, poor maintenance and, underlying this, a lack of care. The people who have been failed want justice and accountability, and an honest and transparent process to achieve it. We all now have to step up to ensure that we live in a world where a terrible and avoidable tragedy such as the fire of Grenfell Tower never happens again. South Kensington has stood with North Kensington, and we will work together to achieve that, as I will, as the first Labour MP for Kensington.