Grenfell Tower Fire Inquiry

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[The First Secretary of State and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Damian Green)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Grenfell Tower fire inquiry.

I begin by expressing my deep sympathy to all those who lost family members and other loved ones in this terrible tragedy. Their suffering is beyond imagining. Our thoughts also go out to all those who lost their homes and possessions in the fire. Since that terrible event of 14 June—a month ago—we have all been deeply affected by that unprecedented tragedy, and words feel inadequate.

I pay tribute to the men and women of our emergency services, many of whom risked life and limb in their efforts to tackle the fire and showed extraordinary courage in their determination to save lives. Equally important, I pay tribute to the many volunteers and charities that have given their time and much, much more to help the bereaved and those who have lost their home.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the chair of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, is currently consulting on the scope of the inquiry’s terms of reference, so this debate provides an opportunity for Parliament to express its views on the inquiry before the terms of reference are set. Of course, it is most important that the chair listens to the views of those most affected by the tragedy and takes account of those views when considering the scope of his inquiry’s terms of reference, but I am sure Sir Martin will want to reflect on the views expressed in this House today—we should all be conscious that the survivors of this terrible tragedy will also be listening.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way so early. Does he agree that it will be important to have an interim report? If there are recommendations that address crucial safety issues with high-rise blocks, clearly they need to be attended to as soon as possible.

[Damian Green]

My right hon. and learned Friend is correct, and he may be aware that there is an intention to produce an interim report as soon as is practical. I am conscious that one of the great wishes of many survivors, and of the groups representing them, is for as many of the questions as possible to be resolved as quickly as possible.

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[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I agree with the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) on one aspect: this accident should not have happened in a country such as ours. He is also right to argue for a national and clear approach that does not just concentrate on one issue but considers all the issues involved.

Slightly uncharacteristically, the right hon. Gentleman was not prepared to accept—at least he seemed not to—that, over the years, both main parties have made mistakes in this area when in government. If he thinks back to 2005-06, when the enforcement regime was weakened and the building regulations changed, he might wonder whether that tackled the problem. The previous Labour Government also had a deplorable record on building houses. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman can be holier than thou in this debate, as he was tempted to be.

I should like to pay tribute to the local community for all it has done at the Westway centre. People were generous and warm-hearted; they put their arms around the victims’ families. Our thoughts are, correctly, with the victims and families, but I pay tribute to the communities of Latimer Road and the Westway, who come out of this very strongly.

It is time that fires that claim lives in high-rise buildings were a thing of the past. In February 2005, there was a fire in Stevenage in my constituency, at Harrow Court, a high-rise, 17-storey block of flats. Two firemen lost their lives, including my constituent Jeff Wornham; a member of the public died as well. Jeff came from a family who are very committed to public service. He was extremely brave in the fire and saved lives. His loss was felt in my constituency and by his family, friends and the fire service in Hertfordshire more widely.

The incident led to a fire investigation by Hertfordshire fire and rescue service—a very good service with a lot of experience of dealing with hazardous materials. It fought the Buncefield fire as well as that could have been fought. It is generally a highly respected fire and rescue service, and one of its recommendations was that the UK fire service should explore options for high-rise buildings to have provision for sprinklers. I felt at the time that that was an important matter, and we had a Westminster Hall debate about Hertfordshire firefighters’ safety. The then fire Minister, Sadiq Khan, met Jeff’s father, Robert Wornham, and fire safety experts to discuss the case for sprinklers being retrofitted to all high-rise blocks; sprinkler experts also went to the meeting. That retrofitting has not happened, but Robert Wornham still believes that it is an important way of helping to ensure fire safety in such blocks. He contacted me recently to say that he hoped that the issue can get back on the agenda.

After 2007, the rules were changed for new buildings more than 30 metres high, which are now required to be fitted with sprinkler systems. Some local authorities have gone ahead and retrofitted sprinklers to some of their blocks. As the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne mentioned, coroners have recommended retrofitting sprinklers on two occasions. But that has not been the general rule. We need a national approach—something clear.

The British Automatic Fire Sprinkler Association estimates that the cost of fitting a system in Grenfell Tower would have been about £200,000. We need to establish the truth of what happened in Grenfell Tower and make sure it does not happen again. I hope that the retrofitting of sprinkler systems can be firmly and urgently considered, because that may be long overdue.

I turn to the investigations that have been ordered. There is a police investigation, which will look at criminal wrongdoing, but it is good that a judicial public inquiry has been announced by the Prime Minister. The two types of investigation have different purposes. Public inquiries investigate issues of serious public concern, scrutinising decisions and events. The Inquiries Act 2005 ensures that witnesses can be compelled and documents brought forward without any difficulties—something that did not happen with other forms of inquiry.

Public inquiries are different from criminal investigations, but the parallel criminal investigation into the fire that is being carried out by the Metropolitan police will be informed by the public inquiry. Facts are given and recommendations made in a public inquiry, and if the inquiry comes across criminal activity during its investigation, it will obviously pass that information to the police. That is its duty.

There has been some discussion nationally about the choice of chair for the public inquiry. People from all over the world come to our country to have their legal issues resolved. They come here because we have independent-minded judges who do not mind telling the Government where to get off when they are wrong. Our judges are of the highest quality and there is a transparent system that people trust. That is why the English legal system has been copied all over the world, and why people respect it so much. Our common-law system is excellent.

The choice of chair for the public inquiry is a senior judge. Think of the Hillsborough case, over which a senior judge presided. Nobody would argue that such judges are not capable of dealing with a complex case and getting right to the heart of the issues. The Lord Chancellor asked the Lord Chief Justice for a recommendation of a judge who would be best suited to leading a public inquiry of this sort. The Lord Chief Justice recommended Sir Martin Moore-Bick. Sir Martin is one of our most respected judges, with extensive experience of trying complex cases, including the investigation of disasters. He was vice-president of the civil division of the Court of Appeal—one of our most senior judges—until he retired in December. He will be thorough and get to the heart of the issues.

Members in all parts of the House are determined that there will be justice for victims of the tragedy and for their families. I believe that the combination of a judge-led inquiry and a police investigation will achieve that. We can judge how well a judge will run an inquiry by how speedily he gets on with the matter in hand. By immediately consulting—he opened the consultation on 5 July—to establish the terms of reference, Sir Martin has shown that he is seeking a wide range of views. That bodes well for the inquiry. He wants to hear from those directly affected by the fire and from others who have a contribution to make. He is having a series of meetings to listen to victims’ families, survivors and others affected, and to take their views.

It is welcome that the chair has been so open to ideas, and that he said he wants to establish the terms of reference as soon as possible, so that the inquiry can begin making sure that we know what happened and how to stop it from ever happening again. I am personally a strong supporter of a judge-led inquiry, and I hope it will be possible to have a relatively early interim report that will deal with some of the key issues, such as sprinkler systems and cladding, so that we have the national, clear approach mentioned by the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne. I am a strong supporter of the inquiry, and I would like sprinklers to be strongly on the agenda.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

The Scottish National party welcomes the Government’s announcement of a full public inquiry into this terrible tragedy. But we are clear that, as others have already said, no stone should be left unturned in ascertaining not just the immediate cause of the fire but the wider causes of what happened and what went wrong in order to ensure that the appropriate lessons are learned and to get justice for those affected.

Our thoughts and sympathies are very much with those affected by this terrible tragedy, and it goes without saying that we pay tribute to the bravery and professionalism of the first responders and the emergency services who dealt with the matter. I want to address, though, the scope and nature of the inquiry. I am glad to say that the days when inquiries in the United Kingdom were establishment whitewashes are long over. Our modern society could not tolerate the sort of cover-up we saw in the now notorious Widgery tribunal after the Bloody Sunday massacre, or the delay that occurred before the Hillsborough families found justice. However, we should always be mindful that the history of inquiries has seen many examples of justice being delayed and being denied altogether.

It seems that this most often happens when those affected by death and disaster come from among the ranks of those who do not have wealth, power or influence in our society. I am thinking about the fleeing unarmed Catholic civilians who were shot dead by the Army on Bloody Sunday while protesting for their basic civil rights, and the innocent Liverpool football fans who were unlawfully killed at Hillsborough while going about their lawful business and then wrongfully blamed for so many years for being the cause of their own deaths. Those two incidents are very different from the Grenfell Tower inquiry, but I was struck by the words of one Grenfell survivor that were recently brought to my attention by the Scottish journalist and commentator Lesley Riddoch. The man’s name was Mehed Egal, and he told the BBC:

“We are not poor people, we are working-class people. We are leaseholders. We are homeowners. We pay tax. We pay council tax. We make the economy turn while the rich put us in hazardous positions. I’m not going to hold back—we have been neglected from the get-go and we are neglected still.”

Those words may be uncomfortable for some to hear, but they cannot and should not be ignored as they come from a survivor and someone who lived in the tower block.

Underlying this tragedy is the stark contrast in our society between those who have wealth, power and influence, and those who do not. What I mean by that is that it seems unthinkable—to me, at least—that those with power, wealth and influence would have been condemned to live in accommodation that seems to have been such a death trap. The tragedy raises real questions about the inequalities in our society and the inadequate provision of social housing in cities such as London. There is real issue as to whether the inquiry will be of adequate scope to address not just the immediate causes of the fire and its rapid spread, but systemic issues underlying the tragedy. The terms of reference are vital. It is also vital that the participants have confidence in the chair, and that all participants have adequate funding to ensure representation and equality of arms. I will take each of those issues in turn.

The Stephen Lawrence inquiry is often considered an exemplar of what an inquiry should do. It is worth remembering that that inquiry’s terms of reference were simply,

“matters arising from the death of Stephen Lawrence.”

In the Grenfell case, the survivors are concerned about some comments made by the judge chosen to chair the inquiry that suggested, at an earlier stage, that the inquiry will be restricted to issues relating to how the fire started, rather than examining wider issues about Grenfell Tower, the council, central Government, and the management and funding of social housing.

I note that the Communities Secretary last week told the House that the Government expect the inquiry to be as broad and wide-ranging as possible, and the First Secretary has today addressed the way in which there can be input into the framing of the terms of reference. What is not clear is whether this House will be able to scrutinise or have any input into the final framing of those terms of reference. In my view, a way should be found to enable that to happen because the Grenfell fire raises issues that concern the public and our constituents all across the UK.

Constituents have written to me, concerned about the extent of the death toll and its composition, which seems to include the poor, immigrants, the elderly, disabled people and undocumented people—people who are sometimes forgotten in society. Members of the public are concerned that the fact seems to be that a refurbishment budget for the block was spent with an emphasis on cladding that was pleasing to the eye, rather than fire-safe, and about the suggestion that not enough was spent on fire safety measures. They are also concerned about the adequacy of the response to the fire. People have asked, “Where was the publicly funded infrastructure dealing with relief? Where was the plan for the aftermath?” We need to ensure that the inquiry’s terms of reference encompass those matters, while ensuring that the interim report deals with the immediate fire safety issues.

We should never forget that the decades of failure to investigate properly what happened at Hillsborough began with the controversial decision by the coroner in the inquest to close off certain questions from proper investigation, so we must be very careful not to close off from proper investigation certain questions arising from how the fire came about.

Turning to the chair, the problems with the historical child abuse inquiry show that it is vital to have a chair who commands the confidence of the victims. As a lawyer, I will not cast any aspersions on Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s ability to chair the inquiry, but the residents’ concerns about his ability must be respected and listened to. Doubt surrounding public confidence in his suitability cannot be ignored because it will undermine the efficacy of the inquiry.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

The hon. and learned Lady knows as well as I do that we are talking about a judge who has dealt with the most complex matters and disasters. How can she say that somebody of that sort of ability, who has been hand-picked to do the job by the Lord Chief Justice, is not the right sort of person to run a judicial inquiry?

[Joanna Cherry]

That is not a decision for me. I am bringing to the House’s attention the perfectly valid concern of local people about the judge’s ability to chair the inquiry. I was careful to preface that—[Interruption.] Will the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) let me develop my point?

The right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), who is no longer in his place, said that a properly diverse expert panel is required to sit alongside the inquiry judge to advise on a variety of issues. A local organisation, BME Lawyers 4 Grenfell, has made a number of demands, including that there should be such a properly diverse panel to advise on issues including housing need, and fire and safety construction. I respectfully suggest that doubts about the ability of the judge may be allayed if that suggestion is followed. [Interruption.] Whether Conservative Members like it or not, it is vital that the people affected by the disaster have confidence in the ability of the constitution of the inquiry to bring about a just result. We do not need to look far back in British history to see many examples where that has not happened, and which shame us.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Will the hon. and learned Lady give way?

[Joanna Cherry]

I am going to develop my point. I will give way in a moment.

All that I and others are asking is that the Minister gives serious consideration to the demand that, in addition to the judge, there should be a properly diverse expert panel that has the proper expertise to advise on issues concerning housing need, and fire and safety construction. We lawyers are not necessarily experts on housing need. The point is that we may need a bit of assistance from somebody who is.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

People take cases against the Government to our courts the whole time. Judges are keen to do the cases properly, and they kick back at the Government on numerous occasions, as everybody in the House knows. Is the hon. and learned Lady really saying that one of the most senior judges in our country will not be able to do an independent and objective job of the highest quality? [Interruption.]

[Joanna Cherry]

As has been said by a colleague from a sedentary position, that was not what I said. This is not litigation; it is a public inquiry. All I am saying is that the Government have already accepted that a panel of advisers is required. The point I am making is actually quite simple: the panel of advisers should be of suitable expertise and diversity to inspire confidence.

Another thing we need to do to ensure justice is done is to make sure that not only victims but tenants’ groups are given public funding for independent and separate legal representation sufficient to enable them to have a voice equal to that of local and national Government and the private management company. This is a simple matter of human rights and equality of arms, and I was pleased that, when I asked the Prime Minister about this on 22 June, she said that, although the way in which the inquiry is conducted is ultimately a matter for the chair, for

“those who require legal representation, that will be funded by the Government”

and that she was not going to

“set any limits in relation to the types of body or the individuals for whom”—[Official Report, 22 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 186-87]—

funding would be available. I welcome what she said, because although funding and proper representation are matters for the inquiry, the inquiry can work well only within the constraints imposed on it by the Treasury. If the tenants’ groups are not represented in this inquiry, I fear that justice will not be seen to be done.

Finally, before I say something about the position of the devolved Administrations, which the Minister alluded to, I want to turn briefly to question of the inquiry’s recommendations being properly implemented. It is vital that this House is empowered to make sure that the recommendations are implemented promptly, because important recommendations are not always implemented promptly. We have already heard about the recommendations after the Lakanal House fire. After a tower block fire in Irvine, in Scotland, in 1999—just before devolution—a Select Committee of this House recommended that all cladding on high-rise dwellings should be non-combustible. Subsequent to devolution, that report was taken seriously by Scottish housing authorities, and building regulations in Scotland were duly amended in 2005. All new high-rise domestic buildings in Scotland are therefore fitted with non-combustible cladding, or a cladding system that meets stringent fire tests, and with sprinklers. The same recommendation was seen as optional south of the border, and it appears now that that has had tragic consequences. So it is vital that this House finds a way to make sure that the inquiry’s recommendations are properly implemented.

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[Sir David Amess]

That is an interesting point. All I will say is that people do not lose their lives when sprinklers have been fitted. That is the point.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Does it not speak volumes that in 2007 we said that every new building should have a sprinkler system?

[Sir David Amess]

I will come to that point, but I also want the Minister to hear this, because it is not the responsibility of his Department. It is crazy that it is not mandatory for all new school buildings to have sprinklers fitted. We must address that, as a matter of urgency. Again, I hope that, if the Minister is not given the advice that I certainly want him to be given, he will make a contrary decision and recommend that all new school buildings have sprinklers fitted.