Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 Report

Statement

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement on the Grenfell Tower inquiry made in another place last Wednesday by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows:

“Sir Martin Moore-Bick has now published the final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry. I am sure the whole House will join me in thanking him, the members of the inquiry and his whole team for their dedicated work.

I want to speak directly to the bereaved families, the survivors and those in the immediate Grenfell community, some of whom are with us in the Gallery today. Sir Martin concluded—I am afraid there is no way of repeating this that will not be painful—that

‘the simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable and that those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways’

by, as the report lays out in full, just about every institution responsible for ensuring their safety. In the face of an injustice so painful and so deserving of anger, words begin to lose their meaning, after seven years still waiting for the justice that you deserve. I want to say very clearly, on behalf of the country, that you have been let down so badly before, during and in the aftermath of this tragedy.

While Sir Martin sets out a catalogue of appalling industry failures, for which there must be full accountability, he also finds

‘decades of failure by central government’.

He concludes:

‘In the years between the fire at Knowsley Heights in 1991 and the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017 there were many opportunities for the government to identify the risks posed by the use of combustible cladding panels and insulation’.

He concludes that,

‘by 2016, the department was well aware of those risks, but failed to act on what it knew’.

Further, he finds:

‘The department itself was poorly run’

and

‘the government’s deregulatory agenda … dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded’.

So I want to start with an apology on behalf of the British state to each and every one of you and, indeed, to all the families affected by this tragedy. It should never have happened. The country failed to discharge its most fundamental duty to protect you and your loved ones—the people we are here to serve—and I am deeply sorry. I also want to express my admiration for the strength it must have taken to relive these events when giving your evidence to the inquiry, and indeed to see written down today the circumstances that led to the deaths of your loved ones.

After all that you have been through, you may feel that you are always one step away from another betrayal. I get that, and I know that I cannot change that with just words today. But what I can say is that I listened carefully to one of the members of the inquiry, Ali Akbor, who said this this morning:

‘What is needed is for those with responsibility for building safety to reflect and to treat Grenfell as a touchstone in all that they do in the future’.

I consider myself someone with responsibility for building safety, and that is exactly what I will do and what I will demand of this Government.

Today is a long-awaited day of truth. It must now lead to a day of justice—justice for the victims and the families of Grenfell—but also a moment to reflect on the state of social justice in our country and a chance for this Government of service to turn the page. That is because this tragedy poses fundamental questions about the kind of country we are: a country where the voices of working-class people and those of colour have been repeatedly ignored and dismissed; and a country where tenants of a social housing block in one of the richest parts of the land are treated like second-class citizens, shamefully dismissed as, in the words of one survivor,

‘people with needs and problems’,

and not respected as citizens—as people who contribute to Britain, who are part of Britain and who belong in Britain. Unbelievably, that continued even after the tragedy. Sir Martin highlights:

‘Certain aspects of the response demonstrated a marked lack of respect for human decency and dignity and left many of those immediately affected feeling abandoned by authority and utterly helpless’.

That alone should make anyone who feels any affinity towards justice bristle with anger.

Sir Martin continues that he finds

‘systematic dishonesty on the part of those who made and sold the rainscreen cladding panels and insulation products’.

He goes on to say:

‘They engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market’.

Sir Martin also cites

‘a complete failure on the part of the Local Authority Building Control … over a number of years to take basic steps to ensure that the certificates it issued … were technically accurate’.

He finds that the work of the Building Research Establishment

‘was marred by unprofessional conduct, inadequate practices, a lack of effective oversight, poor reporting and a lack of scientific rigour’,

and that the tenant management organisation

‘must also bear a share of the blame’.

Its only fire safety assessor

‘had misrepresented his experience and qualifications (some of which he had invented) and was ill-qualified to carry out fire risk assessments on buildings of the size and complexity of Grenfell Tower’.

He also finds

‘a chronic lack of effective management and leadership’

on behalf of the London Fire Brigade, with tragic consequences on the night of the fire.

In the light of such findings, it is imperative that there is full accountability, including through the criminal justice process, and that this happens as swiftly as possible. I can tell the House today that this Government will write to all companies found by the inquiry to have been part of these horrific failings, as the first step to stopping them being awarded government contracts. We will, of course, support the Met Police and the CPS as they complete their investigations. But it is vital that, as we respond to this report today, we do not do or say anything that could compromise any future prosecution, because the greatest injustice of all would be for the victims and all those affected not to get the justice that they deserve.

There must also be more radical action to stop something like this from ever happening again. One of the most extraordinary qualities of the Grenfell community is their determination to look forward. They are fighting not only for justice for themselves but to ensure that no other community suffers as they have done.

Some important reforms have taken place in the last seven years—which we supported in opposition—including banning combustible cladding, new oversight of building control, a new safety regime for all residential blocks over 18 metres, new legal requirements on social landlords, and making sure that fire and rescue services are trained and equipped to handle large-scale incidents, including moving from ‘stay put’ to ‘get out’ when needed. We are now addressing the recommendation from Sir Martin’s first report to introduce a new residential personal emergency evacuation plan policy for anyone whose ability to evacuate could be compromised, with funding for those renting in social housing.

We will look at all 58 of Sir Martin’s recommendations in detail. There will be a debate on the Floor of this House. We will respond in full to the inquiry’s recommendations within six months, and we will update Parliament annually on our progress against every commitment we make.

But there are some things I can say right now. There are still buildings today with unsafe cladding. The speed at which this is being addressed is far, far too slow. We only have to look at the fire in Dagenham last week—a building that was still in the process of having its cladding removed. This must be a moment of change. We will take the necessary steps to speed this up. We will be willing to force freeholders to assess their buildings and enter remediation schemes within set timescales, with a legal requirement to force action if that is what it takes. We will set out further steps on remediation this autumn.

We will also reform the construction products industry that made this fatal cladding so that homes are made of safe materials and those who compromise that safety will face the consequences. We will ensure that tenants and their leaseholders can never again be ignored, and that social landlords are held to account for the decency and safety of their homes.

As the Government tackle the most acute housing crisis in living memory, building 1.5 million new homes across the country, we will ensure that those homes are safe, secure and built to the highest standards—places of security, health and well-being that serve the needs of residents and their wider communities. A safe and decent home is a human right and a basic expectation, and the provision of that right should never be undermined by the reckless pursuit of greed. One of the tragedies of Grenfell is that this is a community who nurtured so much of what we want from housing: people who had made the tower their home and were entitled to a place of safety and security, not a deathtrap. Yet time and again they were ignored.

Two weeks ago I made a private visit to Grenfell Tower. I laid a wreath at the memorial wall and affirmed the Government’s commitment to the work of the memorial commission to deliver a permanent memorial on the site through a process led by the Grenfell community. As I walked down the narrow staircase from the 23rd floor and looked at walls burned by 1,000-degree heat, I got just a sense of how utterly terrifying it must have been. As I saw examples of the cladding on the outside of the building and listened to descriptions of the catastrophic and completely avoidable failures of that fatal refurbishment, I felt a sense of the anger that now rises through that building. It left me with a profound and personal determination to make the legacy of Grenfell Tower one of the defining changes to our country that I want to make as Prime Minister.

To the families, the survivors and the immediate community, I say that we will support you now and always, especially those who were children. In the memory of your loved ones, we will deliver a generational shift in the safety and quality of housing for everyone in this country. In the memory of Grenfell, we will change our country—not just a change in policy and regulation, although that must take place, but a profound shift in culture and behaviour, a rebalancing of power that gives voice and respect to every citizen, whoever they are and wherever they live. We will bring the full power of government to bear on this task because that is the responsibility of service and the duty that we owe to the memory of every one of the 72. In that spirit, I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for repeating this important Statement. Like her, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and survivors, their friends and families and all the lives that have been irreversibly affected by this terrible tragedy. We will never forget the 72 people who lost their lives that night and, as the report makes clear, need never have lost them.

The publication of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 2 Report is a damning indictment of over 30 years of successive state failures—the failure to appreciate, to understand and to act—and we must all take our share of responsibility for that. In this comprehensive report Sir Martin, whose appointment was not universally acclaimed, and his team should be commended. It raises many points that I am confident that all parties and both Houses will agree on. This will be a difficult time for the Grenfell community and a difficult report to process and come to terms with. Will the Government ensure that those affected will get all the support that they need at this time?

When this party was in government, we put an extensive remediation regime in place, financed by central government funding and developer contributions. That work to remediate and identify at-risk buildings must continue in order to prevent another tragedy, and I welcome that assurance. A £600 million fund was put in place to replace unsafe aluminium composite material—the cladding type used on Grenfell Tower. A further £5.1 billion followed through the building safety fund and the cladding safety scheme to pay for remediation beyond ACM cladding.

I am delighted to hear that the new Government will continue supporting leaseholders and tenants to get their buildings fixed as quickly and as safely as possible, and indeed intensify those efforts. Can the noble Baroness the Leader tell the House what the Government’s targets are for remediation work being completed?

My Lords, the central conclusion of this long-awaited report is blunt and devastating. Sir Martin finds that building safety has failed for decades in central government, local government and the construction industry. He says that every single death was avoidable. From these Benches, we say a heartfelt sorry to the victims, their families and their friends.

One of the most shocking threads running through the report is that there has been no sense of responsibility and a lack of questioning inside various government departments, including by Ministers. The report says that the machinery of government and its agencies failed the victims, especially as a result of a lack of interdepartmental working. Fragmentation and a lack of curiosity resulted in inaction, delay and obfuscation, and this cost lives. This criticism also came up in the Infected Blood Inquiry, the Hillsborough report, and the Post Office Horizon report. That is why, from these Benches, we have long advocated for a duty of candour, and we are pleased that the Government have committed to introducing it. Can the Minister say when this legislation will appear?

In the meantime, what changes have been made to ensure that civil servants and public agencies ensure that Ministers are always told the truth, however uncomfortable it may be? Specifically on building safety, can the Minister say what steps the Government are taking to ensure that everyone across government knows who is in charge, and how the current culture can be changed to ensure that no more tragedies like Grenfell can happen again?

The failures of the construction sector—whether regulators, manufacturing companies, builders, maintenance or management agents—are also shocking. The 2018 Hackitt report, with 50 reforms for the sector, was accepted by both Sir Martin and the last Government, in 2019. The key was to strengthen the golden thread of safety running throughout the sector, from manufacturing to regulation and training. When will there be an update to Parliament on the implementations of the Hackitt recommendations? In particular, can the Minister say when she expects the Government to appoint a cladding safety tsar, as proposed by Dame Judith?

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their comments. I think the House is united, first, in an apology and, secondly, in determination and a sense of anger. As I read the inquiry report and felt that disappointment and sadness about it, the further I read, the angrier I got. It is quite hard to sustain anger, but by the end I was more than just bristling with anger, and I think anybody who read it felt exactly the same. So I am grateful for all the comments.

I will take the last point first. Yes, we commit to a debate in the House. This addresses points made by both noble Lords. The Prime Minister has committed to an update, within six months, on where we have got to, but there are things that can be done sooner and, where they can, they will be implemented sooner, with an annual update to the House. So there will be a regular update, and there will be an early debate, although I will not attempt to identify when; I leave that to the Chief Whip, who will come back.

The noble Lord will know that the height of buildings referred to in the report is currently 18 metres, but we have to see whether that is the appropriate level.

On when secondary legislation will come forward, it is being drafted now and there will be measures in the renters reform Bill to bring that forward. The police and the CPS will have the resources they need to do this job. Justice has been denied for far too long, and this should move on apace. Anyone who read the interviews with police officers involved in the investigations would have sensed their determination and commitment. Anybody who has spoken to the families or anyone affected will be nothing but moved and determined to support and help them. I went to one of the hearings in Church House. There is always a sense of guilt: when you hear something and are deeply moved by it, you realise what it must have been like to be there at the time, even though all you are doing is hearing it and being deeply moved at that point. So there is an absolute determination that resources will not prevent proper investigations and prosecutions.

The Leader of the House will recognise that the Building Safety Act does not cover all buildings at risk or all leaseholders, and it does not cover all safety defects. She recognised that they may need to look again at the buildings under 18 metres, which get no help at all. I shall press her on something that the Prime Minister said last Wednesday:

“We cannot suggest for a minute that the existing legislation, guidance and policy is sufficient. We need more powers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/9/24; col. 326.]

He was right. Will we get that new legislation in this Session?

The first stage is to look at what can be done with existing legislation or under the legislation that has been brought forward already, and then examine whether new legislation is required. If it is, the Government will do their best to bring it forward as quickly as possible. This is not something that we want to leave and see a further tragedy. We have seen too many tragedies; this is not the first case. I am not going to give a commitment as to when it will be brought forward, but I shall say that it will be as quickly as it can be.

My Lords, I declare an interest as a Member of your Lordships’ committee looking into the operation of statutory inquiries at the moment. I thank my noble friend the Leader for the clarity, compassion and, indeed, righteous anger of the Statement, and I thank the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Newby, for the tone of their responses.

How can we ensure that deregulatory zeal and the desire to cut so-called red tape never again becomes the basis for compromising human decency, dignity and protection?

On the time that it takes to investigate and prosecute, I agree with my noble friend that independent investigations and prosecutions, and indeed trials, should not be compromised. But given the fabulous way in which the Government responded over the summer to the racist riots by ensuring that the authorities had the resources they needed to accelerate the process, are the Government confident that they can ensure that the police, prosecutors and so on have the resources, including specialist resources, that they need to bring matters quickly to a conclusion?

On the first point that my noble friend raises, there is an issue about deregulation, which should always be seen in the context of what is appropriate; it is not about the numbers of regulations that we have. Most importantly, what struck me when reading this report was that, although deregulation was certainly part of the issue, honesty and dishonesty were an even greater part. Parts of the report refer to deliberately concealing from the market the true extent of the danger, systematic dishonesty, how a company embarked on a dishonest scheme to mislead its customers in the wider markets, as well as a deliberate strategy to continue selling those products in the face of a statement about the fire performance which they knew to be false. The scale and depth of the dishonesty there is extraordinary. So regulation is important, but the point about honesty, misleading information and systematic failures runs so through deeply throughout this that there are multiple threads to the failure.

On resources, the Prime Minister has made it clear that they should be made available to ensure that prosecutions can be brought, if that is the view of the police and the CPS, and that they will have the resources to do so.

My Lords, six people died in the Lakanal House fire. The coroner said in that inquest, published in 2013, that, if Lakanal House had had sprinklers, not one of those six deaths would have happened. While it is good that the Government have accepted the need to review the height of 18 metres, there has been no mention about sprinklers, not just in new buildings but in tall, older buildings. Will the Government reconsider ensuring that sprinklers are retrofitted, particularly in the most high-rise flats? Also, while the Statement recognises the need for residential personal emergency evacuation plans, can the Minister please confirm that work will be done with disabled communities before decisions are made, which did not happen with the previous Government when they created their interim versions earlier this year?

Yes; the noble Baroness is right that we have to engage with those who will be directly affected. Work is ongoing on that now. On the point about sprinklers, it is one of many solutions in terms of reducing the risk of damage from fire. Sometimes it can actually be quite difficult to do. All options are open in looking at how to ensure that buildings are safe.

My Lords, the Leader makes a very good point about anger. If that is how it made us feel, can you imagine how difficult that report must have been for the victims last week? “Systemic dishonesty”, “persistent indifference”, “basic neglect”, “a cavalier attitude”—all terms used by Sir Martin to describe the behaviour of everyone involved, from the manufacturers and contractors to national and local government and the oversight and regulatory bodies.

Sir Martin has made a series of carefully considered recommendations. I mention just one, recommendation 113.4, and declare a similar interest regarding the committee I am on:

“We recommend that it be made a legal requirement for the government to maintain a publicly accessible record of recommendations made by select committees, coroners and public inquiries together with a description of the steps taken in response”.

Progress on recommendations obviously needs to be made, but victims and survivors also need to be able to see that progress is being made. So will this be one of those areas for early work that the Prime Minister outlined last week?

Finally, will the department look at the excellent monitoring system devised by the Home Office in response to the phase 1 recommendations? It is very easy to navigate and far more accessible than the usual GOV.UK updates but, inexplicably, it still has not been put into use.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for her work, commitment and support for the victims of those in Grenfell; I know that she has visited the site and met them. I know how deep her commitment is—led, I think, by the anger that we all feel—and pay tribute to her for that also.

She is absolutely right: as we move forward on this, those who have been involved in supporting Grenfell survivors and those who themselves survived are going to need confidence; the Prime Minister referred to this in his Statement. It takes more than just words to reassure them that action has been taken. We need to look at an appropriate format so that it is easily understood what has been done, what is about to be done and the timescales. He has committed to come back with a full response “within six months”. I know that he and the team are looking now at what can be done within that time so I will take back the noble Baroness’s comments and, if there are examples of how it has been done in the past with open access, that would be a good thing to look at as a model.

My Lords, I want to raise the issue of remediation as it affects social housing. Nothing is more important to housing associations than the safety of their residents. They have been moving quickly to identify buildings with combustible materials and remediate them as quickly as they possibly can so that residents can feel safe in their homes, as they should be able to. They need to do more; they want to do more.

The previous Government took a decision that meant social landlords cannot access the building safety fund and cladding safety scheme in the same way that private building owners can. Private building owners have received 90% of the government funding available for remedial works to buildings 11 metres-plus high. There is almost no public funding available for works to flats where social tenants live. Will the Leader of the House urge the Government to reconsider the previous Government’s decision so that housing associations can ensure their residents’ safety more quickly?

My Lords, I understood that different schemes were in place, but I will take that back, look into it and come back to my noble friend with a response.

My Lords, thousands of leaseholders and tenants are still living in blocks that are unsafe. I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for the commitment she has given to speeding up remediation works. However, some leaseholders are not included in the current scheme, as non-qualifying leaseholders of various sorts. Will the Minister commit to reviewing the qualification of leaseholders for the scheme to get the cladding on their homes removed? They are, as are others, living in places where they fear fire every day.