Grenfell Tower Fire Inquiry

Debate between John Healey and Ruth Cadbury

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is right. Her council, like Oxford, is in the dark on this—it simply does not know what the Government’s guidance and advice will be. If it takes off the cladding, what does it replace that with, because the council must be certain that it is safe?

The First Secretary of State rightly made great play of the panel of independent experts in his speech. The panel is there to advise Ministers on the urgent lessons that need to be learned and the action that needs to be taken, and that is very welcome. I hope that the panel can help the Government to get back on track and deal with some of the following concerns, which Ministers will hear about from colleagues right across the country. What advice will the Government give to landlords—and what reassurance will they give to residents—if cladding systems pass the new second round of tests despite the fact that they failed the narrow first test? If cladding fails the Government’s tests, must it be taken off tower blocks in all circumstances, and will the Government cover the costs of taking it down and replacing it? When will councils and housing associations be able to get other cladding or insulation tested? How will the Government make sure that all internal fire safety works that are now being carried out inside tower blocks meet the highest safety standards? Will the Government launch an immediate review into the approved inspectors responsible for building control checks, as well as who hires them, who pays them and who approves their qualifications, starting with all those responsible for signing off the systems that are being failed by the Government’s tests?

Four weeks on, Ministers must widen their testing programme and reassure all high-rise tenants that their buildings are safe, or commit to fund the urgent work necessary to make them safe. The clearest warnings that the system of fire safety checks and building controls was failing came more than four years ago following the inquest into fatal tower block fires at Lakanal House and Shirley Towers. Both coroners wrote formal rule 43 letters to Ministers with recommendations to improve fire safety in high-rise buildings. Such letters are written by coroners only when the Government can prevent further loss of life—that is their importance. Some of the recommendations were simply rejected, such as making internal cable supports fire resistant and providing onsite information about a tower block to firefighters arriving to fight a blaze.

Ministers said that they would act on other recommendations, but they have not. The Government passed all responsibility for retrofitting sprinkler systems on to landlords. In 2014, one Minister even said:

“We believe that it is the responsibility of the fire industry, rather than the Government.”

On overhauling building regulations, the Government promised a review but it did not happen. The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), has just told me that

“this work will now need to be informed by any recommendations that the independent inquiry into Grenfell Tower fire makes.”

Rather than waiting months or years to start this work, Ministers must put this right now. They must start installing sprinkler systems in the highest-risk high-rise blocks and start the overhaul of building regulations, into which any findings from the fire investigations or the public inquiry can be incorporated.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Has my right hon. Friend picked up on the rumour about the review of building regulations in the Department for Communities and Local Government? I have heard that the review was paused because the civil servants who were leading on it were put on to other work related to Brexit. If that is true, how many other pieces of essential, urgent and safety-related work are on pause in government right now?

[John Healey]

I had not heard that rumour—I prefer to deal with the facts in front of us—but my hon. Friend is dead right that there is a serious question of capacity in DCLG. There is an even greater question over leadership, which I shall come on to in a moment.

Finally, I want to turn to the “fundamental issues”, as the Prime Minister described them, that were raised by the Grenfell Tower fire. When a country as decent and well-off as ours fails to provide something as basic as a safe home for its citizens, things must change. Let me mention two areas, the first of which is regulation. Surely Members in all parts of the House would agree that all markets, organisations and consumers require regulation to guarantee quality and safety, to ensure fair practice and to stop abuse, yet that is not the current Government’s mindset. Never again can we have a Government Minister who, when challenged on fire safety measures after the fire in Camberwell, said that they were not the Government’s responsibility, justifying that with the “one in, two out” approach to regulation. If the Prime Minister and First Secretary of State are serious about change, they should start by confirming that that approach came to an end with the Cameron-Osborne era of Conservative government.