Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Joe Powell Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)]

It is now more than seven and a half years since 72 people lost their lives at Grenfell Tower in my constituency in north Kensington. It was a greater loss of life than any terrorist attack in London’s history. That is seven and a half years of no justice, and seven and a half years of no meaningful change. It was a tragedy that was entirely preventable, and entirely foreseen. To our shame as a country, and as the recent fire in Dagenham showed, it could happen again today.

As the Grenfell inquiry sets out, the fire occurred because individuals and organisations were systematically dishonest, put profit before lives and were part of a system and culture that too often denies agency and power to those living in social housing in this country. I pay tribute to the next of kin, bereaved, survivors and our community, many of whom have joined us here today, for their resilience and strength in continuing to fight for truth, justice and change. I know that with each hearing, each story, each Government announcement and each new promise of change, they are forced to relive the horrific events of that night, and I know that today will be painful, too. Their voices must remain at the heart of this Government’s response and of all future decisions about Grenfell. I hope I speak for the whole House when I say to them that justice will only truly be served when there are criminal prosecutions and those responsible pay the price.

I welcome the Prime Minister’s apology on 4 September on behalf of the British state, and I thank Sir Martin Moore-Bick and the whole inquiry team. The report is an important step in uncovering the truth of what happened that night, who was responsible and what must be done to ensure that such a tragedy is never repeated, but the path to justice is long and we are far from the end. In recent meetings with the then Minister for Courts and Legal Services, my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon South (Heidi Alexander) and the Metropolitan police, I have been clear that our community is watching and waiting. I urge all involved to remain focused on expediting the process as much as possible.

I fully understand the frustration that it has taken this long. On 24 June 2017, then Ministers Alok Sharma and Nick Hurd wrote to bereaved families. They said:

“The inquiry will not delay the conclusion of the Police inquiry…If criminal proceedings result from these investigations…we would not expect them to be delayed by the establishment of the public inquiry.”

That has clearly not come to pass. Justice has been delayed, but it must not be denied. While we wait for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to complete their work, there are actions that must be taken now. Companies identified in the report, such as Arconic, Rydon, Kingspan and Celotex, must be excluded from public contracts while criminal investigations are ongoing. I thank the Secretary of State for her commitment to that, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) that local authorities across the country should be encouraged to follow suit.

Justice is about more than contracts and criminal charges, and it goes beyond Grenfell. Across the country, up to a million people are still stuck in unsafe buildings. They are victims of the building safety crisis. The National Audit Office has just reported that, on current trends, it will take until at least 2037 before the last unsafe building is remediated, at a cost of £16.6 billion. I therefore welcome the Government’s announcement today that they will speed up the remediation work, that developers will be forced to double the pace of fixing the crisis and that building owners who sit on their hands will be subject to severe penalties. That is right, because while residents wait, they also pay the costs.

In a block of flats in Earl’s Court, just two miles south of Grenfell, a recent fire inspection found flammable rendering. The insurance premium has gone up from £15,000 a year to £375,000 a year, meaning an extra £400 a month in service charges for leaseholders. While leaseholders face this increasing cost of living crisis, and the fear of living in buildings that are unsafe, the insurance industry has so far failed to tackle the problem. The Association of British Insurers committed to bringing down costs, but the experience of my constituents shows that it is not working. I am delighted that the Government have committed to working with insurers to consider urgently how bills can be reduced during remediation programmes. That cannot come soon enough. I know that Members from across the House will have their own horror stories of leaseholders who cannot sell and cannot move on with their lives, who are caught in the middle between freeholders, developers, managing agents and all levels of government. My test of this Government’s plan and whether it will be deemed a success is whether it brings this merry-go-round of buck-passing to an end.

I know that the Government are also considering their formal response to the inquiry, including ending the chaotic and fragmented regulatory system. Accountability for building regulations should be streamlined under a single Secretary of State. We need one regulator—a high-quality, well-resourced public body reporting directly to that Secretary of State—and we need robust product regulation. Currently, only a third of construction products are regulated. Instead, all construction products should be subject to regulations to ensure safety and public trust.

This inquiry is just one of many recent high-profile public inquiries into state injustices, whether that is Hillsborough, the Post Office, Windrush, infected blood or LGBT veterans. I welcome the Government’s resolve to righting the wrongs of the past and tackling the injustices that the previous Government largely failed to budget for. Time and again, we have seen a pattern of inaction and too many lifesaving recommendations from public inquiries and inquests ignored by corporate bodies and Departments, and that failure to act has had fatal consequences. Had the coroner’s regulations following the Lakanal House fire, which claimed six lives, been implemented, it is likely that the Grenfell Tower tragedy would have been prevented.

The previous Government dragged their feet on implementing personal emergency evacuation plans for disabled people in phase 1, so I welcome the Government’s announcement today on the next steps to protect disabled tenants. Such examples have convinced me that we must consider an independent oversight body, answerable to Parliament, to track the implementation of inquiry recommendations and prevent avoidable deaths. I welcome the commitment to passing the Hillsborough law duty of candour to ensure that public authorities and officials act in the public interest, with openness, honesty and transparency about their actions, decisions and failings.

Nowhere is the need for candour and oversight more evident than with the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which failed residents in the years leading up to the Grenfell fire, on the night of the tragedy and in its aftermath. The inquiry determined that RBKC bears

“considerable responsibility for the dangerous condition of the building”,

highlighted a

“persistent indifference to fire safety”,

and found that RBKC’s response was

“muddled, slow, indecisive and piecemeal”,

with it

“ill-equipped to deal with a serious emergency”,

exposing a complete failure to protect and serve the community for whom it was entrusted to care. Even today, many north Kensington residents still rely on community groups for essential support and services. In stark contrast to the failures of RBKC, the community acted decisively and heroically on the night of the fire and in its immediate aftermath. I am proud of how our community responded to the fire and continues to support residents across north Kensington.

But this is not just about one council; it is about a culture of neglect and disrespect that impacts millions of people living in social housing across the country. Some 60% of my casework in Kensington and Bayswater relates to slow repairs, damp, mould, overcrowding and poor communication from landlords. On Saturday, I visited a council estate close to Grenfell and spoke to many residents, including a woman who has been in temporary accommodation for 19 years out of the borough and who has had to chase relentlessly to get her move back home, and a resident with an extractor fan that has been broken for years, despite multiple surveyors coming to assess the job.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for making such a powerful speech on behalf of his constituents. What he has described reflects all our inboxes. Does he agree that to address residents’, tenants’ and leaseholders’ concerns in a timely manner with good customer care does not cost any money?

[Joe Powell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The waste of councils’ and housing associations’ precious resources and the waste of people’s time in taking time off work and disrupting their lives to deal with the inefficiency and repairs is something that we have to fix. I am really hopeful that incoming legislation such as Awaab’s law will help with that.

The case study from Saturday is a good example. A constituent is forced to open the windows to prevent mould coming into her home, which means that she has paid thousands extra in energy bills over the past few years while she waits for the council to fix the fan. On the Lancaster West estate, where Grenfell is located, there are concerns that the promise from all levels of government for a modern 21st-century social housing estate will not be fulfilled.

It is essential that RBKC, residents and Ministers agree a plan to complete the refurbishment with transparency and accountability on budgets and timelines, because those residents have been living on a building site for far too long. It is not enough just to talk about change. Until the tenants of RBKC and the housing associations in my constituency are treated with respect and have access to what they are entitled to as a right, they will lack trust in the institutions that are meant to serve them. Just last week, the regulator found one of our major housing associations, Notting Hill Genesis, to be non-compliant after an inspection revealed governance failings and poor health and safety outcomes for tenants.

I do not want just to criticise; I want to help RBKC and our housing associations to find solutions. In the new year, we will be launching a new campaign on social housing quality in Kensington and Bayswater, because I want our community to be a trailblazer on how to implement Awaab’s law on damp and mould, how to enforce the new decent homes standard and how to break people out of the doom cycle of endless emails, phone calls, missed appointments and subcontractors even to get simple repairs done. If we cannot get it right in Kensington and Bayswater given Grenfell, given our amazing community organisations and given that we are on the frontline of the nation’s housing crisis, what hope does the rest of the country have? Central to the campaign will be the voice of tenants. I extend an open invitation to anyone who can help to join our campaign and make a practical difference for the community.

It has been over seven years since the bereaved, the survivors and the local community endured a tragedy that changed their lives forever. I will continue to advocate in this place for truth, justice and lasting change, and for Grenfell bereaved and survivors to be heard. Their dignity and resilience have held up a mirror to us as a nation, forcing us to confront a fundamental question: do we truly give everyone an equal voice in how this country is run?

The opportunity is for the Government—a mission-led Government—to focus on service and give people a real say in decisions that affect them. We cannot afford to continue with nearly a million people sleeping in unsafe buildings. We cannot afford another Grenfell Tower. True justice means criminal charges for those responsible, a complete culture change with respect for every tenant, and every child in the country growing up in a safe and decent home. That must be the legacy of Grenfell.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am not in favour of taking building control away from local authorities, but if we go down the route recommended by the hon. Gentleman, we will not succeed in making buildings safer, not least because of the shortage of capacity in the sector. If it is decided that there cannot be any private sector building control surveyors, there will be even less capacity, and remediating all this will take even longer.

An approach that relies entirely on local government or a state body of building control risks worsening a situation that we are already experiencing. The building control workforce is ageing, and recruitment struggles to keep up with demand. Restricting private sector competition would exacerbate these problems, driving skilled professionals not back into local authorities—because they cannot afford them—but into consultancy roles in which they would be working for the construction companies directly, not inspecting what those companies are doing. Rather than narrowing the pool of inspectors, we should be raising the standards of building control across the board.

Private sector approved inspectors were already subject to a strict licensing regime through the Construction Industry Council approved inspectors register, with a code of conduct, regular auditing and a complaints process. Moreover, the local authority, not the private sector building control sector, was responsible for the problem at Grenfell. Our recommendation suggests a fully integrated building control service involving both local authorities and registered building control approvers working to common standards within a framework designed to promote continuous improvement. That, I think, is the right answer. To deal with high-rise blocks, multidisciplinary teams would be set up to perform the building control function, recruited on the basis of proven skills and experience from both public and private sectors on a level playing field without the choice being biased in favour of the former. That, I submit, should be the Government’s objective.

We welcome the steps taken to require all building inspectors, whether working for local authorities or registered building control approvers, to be individually registered by the BSR, but further steps can and should be taken to drive up standards and to maximise much-needed capacity. However, recommendations 113.37 and 113.38 in the final report of the inquiry could undermine this process. Implicit in recommendation 113.37 is the assumption that it is inappropriate for private sector commercial organisations to be involved in building control work at all, although no evidence is advanced to support that assumption. It is an assumption that many people make, but there is no evidential basis for it. Recommendation 113.37 proposes that there should be a panel to consider the matter, which I hope will happen, but if it decided to ban private sector building control, that would seriously aggravate the capacity problem.

[Joe Powell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I will certainly give way, because this is a crucial point.

[Joe Powell]

I simply wanted to ask for a clarification. Surely the issue, which was raised earlier, is that there is a conflict of interests when you are paying to have your product assessed. As we know from Sir Martin’s report, there was a cover-up of testing results. If you accept that, how do you get around the “conflict of interests” issue?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am not going to admonish the hon. Member for using the word “you”, but, Sir Bernard, you have now spoken for longer than both Front Benchers put together, and many other Members wish to get in.