Fiona Onasanya
Main Page: Fiona Onasanya (Independent - Peterborough)Department Debates - View all Fiona Onasanya's debates with the Home Office
Grenfell Tower Inquiry
Fiona Onasanya Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab)
I absolutely agree with everything my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) has just said. I rise to say that we in this place should be ashamed at the lack of progress that has been made to date. Saying that it can never happen again and saying to the survivors, “We understand and we’re here to support you” cannot just be warm words.
Everything that Grenfell United has had to do to date should make us feel ashamed. The fact that there was a bell-mourning service for Big Ben but not to mourn the lives of people who have died, the fact that it had to ask for a service to be held to remember those who lost their lives, the fact that it had to set up an e-petition to say, “Let’s make this inquiry fair and independent”—all that is absolutely disgusting. We should be ashamed.
We have had promise after promise, so why, 11 months on, are families still not housed? We had a chance to meet and speak to the Grenfell survivors at Speaker’s House, but why did they have to ask whether they could come along and share their experiences—share with us that they had to escape from this and the lives that have been lost? Still we have questions about whether it should be now or phase two. That is completely unacceptable.
I feel that we are elected to this place to be a voice for those we represent. We are elected to speak to those in power and to make change come about for those we are elected to serve. The fact that they have had to fight—fight when they should have time to grieve and to be there with their loved ones, fight for accommodation, fight for their voices to be heard, fight for an inquiry, fight for people to be put on a panel—is completely unacceptable. I rise to say, in this short period of time, that we can do more, we can do better and, if we want this never to happen again, we must implement the recommendations that are made.
If recommendations such as those made after the Lakanal House fire had been implemented, we would not be in this position today and people would not have needlessly lost their lives. I ask—I implore—the Government: you can do something. Do not sit back and say warm words about how this could be different, how you care and how you want this never to happen again. Do something.