John Healey
Main Page: John Healey (Labour - Rawmarsh and Conisbrough)
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement, and for what he has told the House. As he has said, the shock from this truly terrible, tragic fire at Grenfell Tower has not subsided, and neither has the fear. As the Prime Minister said in her statement last week, the Government’s response, both national and local, was not good enough in the early days. Nationally, it is still not good enough. Hundreds of residents of Grenfell Tower and their relatives are still struggling to keep their lives going in the face of this gravest loss, and hundreds of thousands of residents in 4,000 other tower blocks across the country are still wondering whether their homes are safe, worried about sleeping at night and want to know what the Government are doing to ensure their safety.
Trust is so low in the local community around Grenfell Tower that I welcome the local Gold Command leadership. I welcome the key workers who are in place to provide each household with support and advice, and I welcome the £1 million paid so far in immediate assistance payments. However, the Secretary of State has made a promise to rehouse all Grenfell Tower residents in the local area within three weeks. It is now nearly a fortnight since the fire. How many people are covered by that pledge? Two weeks on, is it correct that 370 households are still in emergency accommodation? How many have so far been found permanent new homes, or even the “good-quality temporary” homes mentioned by the Secretary of State? By what date will all residents affected by the fire be in a permanent new home? Finally, as those residents move, will the Government guarantee that the children will still be eligible to attend their same schools?
More widely, Ministers talk too loosely about the buildings that have been tested so far. The Prime Minister said last week:
“We can test more than 100 buildings a day”.—[Official Report, 22 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 169.]
Will the Secretary of State make it clear to the House that the Government’s “testing” is only of cladding samples sent in by councils and housing associations? The Government say that more than 600 tower blocks with cladding need safety checks, so why, five days into the programme, have only 75 tests been done so far? Why have all failed? Importantly, will he confirm that cladding is just not the whole story? We know this from both coroners’ reports in 2013, into the Lakanal House and Shirley Towers fires. We may well find that from investigations into Grenfell Tower, as the fire there broke into almost every floor of the building.
We need from Ministers a much more thorough review of fire safety in all the country’s residential tower blocks, a total commitment to action to deal with any problems, and a guarantee that the Government will help to fund the costs. That also applies to other public buildings such as schools and hospitals, over which similar doubts may hang.
The issue of costs is crucial because some significant work and alterations have to be done, and quickly. Will the Secretary of State make funding available up front—not after the event through the Bellwin scheme—for any council or housing association that needs it for recladding or the installation of sprinklers and other fire prevention measures, starting with the highest-risk high-rise blocks and those with sheltered accommodation? Will he lift the central cap that he currently places on local authorities’ housing so that they can borrow and invest to ensure that their residents are safe?
I welcome the independent expert advisory panel, but frankly the Secretary of State is wrong to say that many experts would claim that our buildings regulation and fire safety system serves us well. Many experts have said exactly the opposite, especially since the two coroners’ reports four years ago into previous tower block fires. Will he now act on the recommendations in those reports?
There really should be a triple fire safety lock around buildings and works on them. First, the materials must be fit for purpose and meet safety specifications. Secondly, fire safety systems must be in place and fire risk assessments done regularly. Thirdly, building regulation and control must make sure that design, construction and any further works are fully safe. Instead, the update that the Secretary of State has given us this afternoon suggests a collapse of the fire safety control and check system. It is not working and it must change.
Finally, what is the Secretary of State doing to make sure that when the Prime Minister said that we simply had not given enough attention to social housing in this country, those were not merely empty words? What is he doing to make sure that this terrible tragedy at Grenfell Tower means a profound change of course on housing in this country?
Sajid Javid
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments—in particular, his support for Gold Command and the relief effort on the ground in Kensington.
The right hon. Gentleman asked a number of specific questions. I can give him some updated numbers on rehousing the victims of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The commitment that we have rightly made is that every single one of the families whose homes have been destroyed—both at Grenfell Tower and in the neighbouring Grenfell Walk: together, some 144 units—are guaranteed an offer within three weeks of temporary housing in the local neighbourhood; we have defined “the local neighbourhood” as Kensington and Chelsea, but also the neighbouring boroughs.
So far, some 373 hotel rooms are being occupied; that represents 153 households from Grenfell Tower and Grenfell Walk and 220 households from the cordon area. Individual housing assessments have been done for almost all those from Grenfell Tower and Grenfell Walk; the work is led by Westminster City Council, with support from a number of other councils across London. If any have not been done, that has been through choice: people have asked that their assessment be delayed because they are not ready. We are, of course, respecting their wishes. In respect of those whose assessments have been done, there have already been 59 offers of temporary accommodation.
As I am sure hon. Members will understand, we are finding that some families want to take their time to make a decision on the temporary accommodation. In a number of instances, some of the families have quite understandably first asked for something in Kensington as close as possible to where they lived, but when they have been shown the home and seen what is left of the tower they have understandably changed their minds and asked for some other options. We are working with them at their pace. Our commitment is that they will all be made offers within the three weeks, although they will not all necessarily be in the temporary accommodation within that time. We have to respect their choice when they are made offers. If they change their minds, we want to accommodate that.
The other issue is that some families actually doubted us when we said that the initial accommodation is temporary. One family I met in the Westway Centre on Friday said, perfectly understandably, “How do we know temporary is temporary? How do we know that you’re not just going to leave us there and not find us better quality, more suitable and permanent accommodation?” When I probed a bit further, the family said they were told that Grenfell Tower would be temporary accommodation when they first moved in, but they were still there 17 years later, so I absolutely understand their concerns. In that case, I had to make a personal commitment to that family. That worked; they are now in temporary accommodation. We want to work with each family at their pace to get them what they deserve and need as best we can.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the testing facilities. I can confirm that the testing facility operated by the Building Research Establishment is testing the cladding material only. That is so important because, besides the whole building structure, the material itself has to meet minimum combustibility standards. The test tries to achieve that. So far, 75 tests on samples have taken place and all 75 have failed.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s statement that cladding is not the whole story, as it goes much further than that. One example is what has happened in Camden. The result of the cladding test for Camden triggered further investigations by the local fire service and the London fire commissioners. When the commissioners went into those tower blocks in Camden, they found, in their own words, multiple fire safety inspection failures, which, frankly, should not have happened in tower blocks of any type, and certainly not in those tower blocks in Camden. There were problems with gas pipe insulation, some stairways were not accessible and there were breaches of internal walls. Most astonishingly, literally hundreds of fire doors were missing. Camden Council itself estimates that it needs at least 1,000 fire doors because they were missing from those five blocks. That has nothing to do with the cladding. Something has clearly gone drastically wrong there. These issues need to be looked at very carefully to find out why this is happening in this day and age in our country.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about costs. We have been very clear that local authorities and housing associations must not hesitate at all. As soon as they learn about any action and necessary steps that they need to take to ensure public safety in terms of fire risk, they must take that action. If they are not able to pay for that themselves, we will of course work with them and put a financial support package in place with the individual organisation.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about what more we can do now. I am sure that he understands that we can do some things now in this immediate and urgent situation, but that there are also longer-term lessons to learn. Some will come from the public inquiry, but we cannot wait for the final results of that inquiry. Hopefully —it is up to the judge—there will be an interim report, but work can be done much sooner than that. That is one reason that I am putting the independent expert panel in place, and I would be very happy for the right hon. Gentleman to meet and have access to that panel.
The right hon. Gentleman’s final point was about social housing. I absolutely agree that there are very big lessons to learn about the quantity and quality of social housing. There has been massive investment of record amounts in social housing over the past six years. More than 330,000 new units have been created, and more council housing has been built in the past six years than in the 13 years before that. We can do a lot more, but it is much better if we work together.