Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Emma Dent Coad Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)]

First, I thank the Petitions Committee for making this debate possible. As the Committee will know, after the initial disappointing response from No. 10 to the request for a debate, I wrote to the Chair saying that I felt that response was inadequate. I am pleased that the Committee agreed and asked No. 10 to review its response. After months of extra work from survivors and the local community, many feel that this moment could be a turning point towards getting the justice they need.

I will lay out some of the concerns that the community and related local groups and representatives have about the public inquiry. I ask the Chamber to bear with me as I run through a few of the many occasions when the community has been badly let down since the fire at Grenfell Tower changed their lives for ever.

On 15 June 2017—the day after the fire and while the tower was still smouldering— the then Communities Secretary stated that, under the Bellwin scheme, immediate financial assistance would be offered to the local authority to support Grenfell-affected people. The former Housing Minister guaranteed, on behalf of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Government, that every family would be rehoused in the local area. That guarantee has not been delivered. On 16 June 2017, the Prime Minister committed to rehousing those who had lost their homes within three weeks at the latest and as close as possible to where they had previously lived. She set the public inquiry in motion, and assured those affected that they would be able to help shape the scope of the inquiry. Those commitments have not been delivered.

On 17 June, the Prime Minister stated that the support on the ground from Kensington and Chelsea Council had not been good enough and ordered immediate action. She then confirmed the deadline of three weeks for everybody affected to be found a home nearby and announced that the inquiry would be open and transparent and that Government and Ministers would co-operate fully—three further commitments that are undelivered. A week later, the Prime Minister again stated that the support on the ground had not been good enough, and that a taskforce had been set up. She reassured people that the fire would not be used as a reason to carry out immigration checks, and that all victims would be able to access the services they need, “irrespective of immigration status”. Those reassurances have not been delivered.

I have in my file a record of all the pledges, commitments and guarantees made by the Government. So many have not been implemented. Since last June—it has been 11 long and very painful months for all those affected—the Government have been criticising the failures of Kensington and Chelsea Council, saying that it is simply not good enough. The taskforce report was unequivocal in its criticisms of the council’s response and gave a number of recommendations that the council has still not implemented. Despite that devastating report, the Government will not listen to the calls of residents’ groups and the Labour councillors who support them for commissioners to be called in to deal with the council’s frankly shocking ongoing failure to rehouse victims.

Last week I had one of my regular meetings with the team in charge of rehousing. They are on their knees. Finger-wagging from the Government will not help; they need outside assistance now. I take this opportunity to repeat our request to the Government to call in commissioners to take control of rehousing, which frankly is in chaos. It is yet another example of how Grenfell-affected people have been badly let down while the Government refuse to take actions that are within their power.

Let us now look at who has and has not been granted core participant status. More than 500 individuals have been granted the status. Quite correctly, those who have been directly affected—the survivors and bereaved family members—have been granted core participant status. While Kensington and Chelsea Council has been granted CP status, the opposition Labour group, bizarrely, has not. It opposed the Conservative council on so many of its social housing policies, including how the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower was carried out and the location of the school at the foot of the tower. The Labour group of councillors has been considered, in some kind of joint enterprise judgment, to be part of the council. Despite two appeals, Labour councillors—including the ward councillors for Notting Dale, where the tower is located—have been refused separate CP status. While supposedly being considered jointly accountable, the Labour group has no access to lawyers and no access to documents that are part of the inquiry.

I personally requested CP status as MP for Kensington, as someone with experience as a board member of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation until 2012—I am well acquainted with the dysfunctional nature of the organisation—and as a member until 2014 of the Housing and Property Scrutiny Committee, which is supposed to scrutinise the TMO. I was also refused by the judge, as apparently I have “nothing to add”. The chair of the Grenfell Tower compact—a kind of residents’ association—was directly involved with the negotiations throughout the period of the refurbishment, and they were also refused.

We have heard about some bereaved family members granted CP status whose visas have expired and who have been forced to return to their home countries. They have been told, despite previous assurances to the contrary, that they are not to be afforded extensions to their visas so they can attend the inquiry, as is their right. Shockingly, they have been told that they can watch proceedings on TV. I give those examples to underline the frustration of those concerned at being excluded from the inquiry, which is so important to their grieving, their peace of mind, and their demand for justice.

Unfortunately, there is a precedent for the frustration at the results and recommendations of a public inquiry. From June 2016 to June 2017, I sat on the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority at the Greater London Assembly, which was charged with London-wide organisation and planning of these services. Much of our time was dedicated to lobbying Government for the implementation of the Lakanal House inquiry recommendations of 2013. Six people had died in a preventable fire that involved external cladding and fire spread. If the Lakanal House recommendations had been implemented, Grenfell Tower would not have burned. If they had been implemented, 72 lives would not have been lost, yet to this day—and despite the then Secretary of State’s insistence that they have been—the Lakanal House inquiry recommendations have still not been implemented.

Whether it is our community or the various industries concerned, there is little confidence that the recommendations of the Hackitt report, due within two weeks, will be implemented either. What do we have to do to ensure the safety of those for whom we have responsibility? Do they not have a right to life? How can the Government state that no stone will be unturned and that everything is being done when so clearly it is not? The Government state they have given the council £72 million towards housing and other necessary services. Meanwhile, a fourth food bank is about to open to serve the immediate Grenfell area. I find that shocking and unacceptable. How can the Government stand by and wag their fingers while Kensington and Chelsea Council is so clearly failing in its statutory duties?

Some Grenfell-affected people tell me that they have had enough of hearing that politicians are honoured and privileged to have met them and heard their stories. They have heard enough about resilience and dignity, as if somehow it is a surprise that people living in social housing have any kind of integrity and discernment. They feel they are being told, in the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy)—in another context—to

“be quiet, be grateful, know your place”,

and that somehow, if they behave appropriately, according to some unwritten rulebook, they will get their dues. Some people feel they are being played, or that there is a “divide and rule” ploy to split the community. If that is so, it is a misjudgment because in this matter the community is united. Let us have no more platitudes, no more lionising those you wish to control, and no more attempts to pacify, neutralise, sideline and mollify people whose genuine and justified concerns are being ignored.

Grenfell-affected people, represented by Grenfell United, Humanity for Grenfell, and other more or less formal groups, are asking for no less than what they are due. They do not want charity—they want reparations and they want justice. They tell us, “Nothing can bring back our family and friends, but we need justice.” They need to have confidence in the inquiry, and to do so they are asking simply for an advisory panel, with diverse experience, expertise and decision-making powers, to sit alongside the judge and to be involved in both phases of the inquiry. They want an undertaking that they can have some input on the selection of panel members. They want agreement that the inquiry will be carried out with diligence from the outset and that panel members will be fully involved. They want an understanding that recommendations on building and fire regulations are implemented without delay so that we do not have another Lakanal House situation where recommendations are ignored.

There has already been criticism about the very narrow remit of the inquiry and the fact that social, economic and political considerations are not to be considered. Survivors and bereaved family members have expressed their concerns, but were not listened to. The announcement on Thursday that only two additional panel members will be appointed to only the second phase of the inquiry is welcome, but we know they can be appointed at any time. Many feel, after so many disappointments and failures, as I have just described, that there will be full confidence in the inquiry only if the additional panel members are appointed without delay. We ask that that is expedited now.