Joe Powell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Jun 2025 · Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government · Hansard source

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  I am sorry; I do not have much time left. That means including housing costs when analysing deprivation, ensuring that the daytime population is included, and ensuring that the huge pressure on temporary accommodation is factored in. We all want to reduce the need for temporary accommodation, but in the short term, we must not balance the temporary accommodation budget on the back of the everyday services on which our constituents rely; that would be another false choice. The package is a huge step forward, and I congratulate all Ministers on securing it; now is the time to deliver.

• 24 Jun 2025 · Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), the Chair of the Select Committee, for securing the debate. It is such a relief that we now have a Government who acknowledge the scale of the housing challenge, and are prepared to put serious investment and policy change behind it. In my constituency, there are 3,000 families on the social housing waiting list, and more than 2,000 people in temporary accommodation. It is those people I think of when we look at these numbers. There are no quick fixes, and we should be honest about that. However, the package in this spending review—the biggest investment in social and genuinely affordable homes for 50 years—is hugely welcome; there is the £39 billion for the affordable homes programme, which has been mentioned, the 10-year rent deal, and the new low-interest loans. There is also something that I have been advocating for: equal access to the building safety fund for housing associations, so that money can go towards improving homes, not just remediating buildings. I strongly believe that the legacy of Grenfell cannot be that it is harder for people to get a safe and healthy home. I have been clear to the housing associations in my constituency that we expect radical improvements in their services—on repairs, on damp and mould, and on communications. My message to them was that this Government will get them the support that they need to get on a sounder financial footing, but that must be accompanied by a commitment to addressing those failings. We have kept our side of the bargain, so can the Minister outline his expectation that housing associations will invest in their homes following the spending review? Can he also give an update on opening up access to the building safety fund? On building safety, I hope that the Government will take seriously the need to support the Building Safety Regulator in doing its job effectively, and the need to avoid a false choice between building safety and achieving the 1.5 million homes target. The local government funding formula will have a major impact on our ability to secure safe and healthy homes. The consultation has just opened. I absolutely support the objective of tackling regional inequality in Britain, so I urge the Minister to ensure that any decisions made use accurate, up-to-date data that fairly reflects the reality.

• 17 Jun 2025 · NHS Buildings: Maintenance Backlogs · Hansard source

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  The Imperial College healthcare NHS trust has the largest high-risk repair backlog in the country. The support from the Government estates safety fund is very welcome, but to solve this problem we ultimately need a new St Mary’s hospital. Will the Secretary of State join me in praising the work of the new three-year St Mary’s taskforce, which aims to get to full planning consent and explore different financing models so that we can finally get this hospital built?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Spending Review 2025 · Hansard source

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  Under the Conservatives, London’s housing crisis escalated to dangerous levels, with one child in every classroom in temporary accommodation. I warmly welcome not only the £39 billion for the affordable homes programme, but the 10-year rent deal, the new low interest loans, and something that I have been pushing for—I can see that the Minister for Building Safety and Fire has just entered the Chamber—which is equal access to the building safety fund for housing associations, so that money can go towards improving conditions of homes and not to remediation. Can the Chancellor outline how this package will tackle London’s housing crisis, including in my constituency, which is one of the most unequal parts, not only of London, but of the country.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Grenfell Tower Fire: Eighth Anniversary · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I do applaud the many steps the Government are taking on this issue—for example, on professionalising the housing sector and implementing Awaab’s law on damp and mould. As she states, the truth is that without real change, all of us in this House know that a tragic case such as that of Awaab Ishak could easily happen again. In my constituency, that means that the purpose of the RBKC, Notting Hill Genesis, Peabody, Octavia and others should be to serve the residents, not to make their lives a misery, as too often ends up happening. We have launched a local campaign on safe and healthy homes to try to address the systemic failure in the community around Grenfell. There will be no justice until the painfully slow process of remediating unsafe buildings across the country is complete.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Grenfell Tower Fire: Eighth Anniversary · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for making that very valid point. It is good news that the Government have accepted all of Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s recommendations, and I applaud them for taking the time to come back in detail rather than rushing a response. However, it is absolutely vital that timelines are met. The example of the slow pace of change on remediation is a warning to us all that this matter has to be gripped from the centre if we want to see systemic change. In another example, shared ownership leaseholders in my constituency at Shaftesbury Place—a property managed by Notting Hill Genesis—saw their building insurance soar by more than 2,000% after a fire safety inspection. That is an increase of £5,000 a year in individual service charges. Those residents contest the report and the recommendations, and I hope that Notting Hill Genesis will work out a reasonable solution, but that is an example of what has to be fixed. The building insurance market may require Government intervention, as we did with flooding. I know the Minister agrees that we must quicken the pace of remediation, and I urge him to consider what more the Government can do to underwrite the major works now, so that people do not have to wait. The best example of such action would be to widen access to the building safety fund to social housing providers so that they can put more capital into maintaining the condition of their current homes and into building new homes. I know the Government are also focused on giving the Building Safety Regulator the resources it needs so that we can rightly enforce higher standards post Grenfell, as well as accelerating house building and avoiding unnecessary delays.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Grenfell Tower Fire: Eighth Anniversary · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee for her intervention. I completely agree with her, and the legacy must be the systemic change that I talked about. Many of the people who lost their lives in Grenfell were disabled, so I welcome the Government’s commitment to laying regulations that will mandate personal emergency evacuation plans for disabled people, which is a crucial step forward. I know that the Minister has recently taken fire safety into his brief and will look closely at the resources to make sure that such plans are implemented and available for disabled people.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Grenfell Tower Fire: Eighth Anniversary · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. I applaud the Prime Minister’s personal commitment to bring in the Hillsborough law. At the party conference in September last year, he said that the law is “for the sub-postmasters in the Horizon scandal. The victims of infected blood. Windrush. Grenfell Tower. And all the countless injustices over the years, suffered by working people at the hands of those who were supposed to serve them.” Those are the Prime Minister’s words. I agree that we should see that law introduced before we return to Liverpool later this year, and see it accompanied by a national oversight mechanism, so that victims can be independently reassured that inquiry recommendations deliver meaningful change. The sad truth is that we know that if the lessons from the Lakanal House fire in 2009 had been learned, as the coroner intended, it is very likely that the Grenfell tragedy could have been prevented. We cannot allow that to happen again. For the community of North Kensington, Grenfell will always be in our hearts, and I welcome the hard work of the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission to select a fitting permanent tribute to the memory of the 72, but our community needs continued support today. I thank the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for building safety, the Mayor of London and the many other elected officials for their regular visits to North Kensington and their engagement with the community. They will know that, as the tower is brought down, it is vital that community health services, including mental health services, are maintained, and I hope our local NHS leadership, working with the Government, can make sure that those services remain at least for the period of deconstruction. It is also essential that survivors have the monitoring they need to spot and address long-term health conditions that may arise. For the residents around the tower, change has also been too long in coming. I regularly meet the residents of the Lancaster West estate, the Silchester estate and many others. On the Lancaster West estate, there is now the prospect of an £85 million gap in the budget to complete the major works that were promised by local and central Government after the fire. Clearly, no project of this scale should be overrunning so dramatically, but that promise to residents must be kept. I call on the Minister to do all he can, working with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, to find a solution. The challenge goes much wider than Lancaster West. Since being elected, I have dealt with thousands of housing cases relating to poor-quality repairs, damp and mould, and a culture of disrespect, especially for social housing tenants.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Grenfell Tower Fire: Eighth Anniversary · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree—it is staggering that hundreds of thousands of people are still living in buildings like the one he describes, with major fire defects. Members across the House from up and down the country will have constituents affected, with people trapped in unsellable properties, leaseholders on the hook for non-cladding defects, and social housing providers sinking funds into remediation that could be spent on building the new social homes our country desperately needs.

• 12 May 2025 · Education, Employment and Training: Kensington and Bayswater · Hansard source

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  I recently visited the North Kensington jobcentre to learn about its support for young people and discuss the potential for working more closely with our brilliant local college, the North Kensington Centre for Skills, so that people can access opportunities in industries such as trades and housing. Will the Minister outline what more the Department is doing to bring together colleges and jobcentres for young people?

• 7 Apr 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  More than half my constituency casework consists of substandard repairs, poor quality communications from social landlords, and damp and mould. That is why this week I am launching a new safe and healthy homes campaign in Kensington and Bayswater. Will the Minister outline how the Government will work with councils and housing associations, ahead of changes in the law and policy frameworks such as Awaab’s law, to improve standards for social tenants, including in my constituency?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for that point. The housing target for London is 88,000. She will know well that the previous target was never remotely close to being hit under the previous Government. With targets not being hit, we are interested in net new dwellings: affordable and social housing for the people I am most concerned about in my constituency. That is what the Bill will help to achieve. I am delighted that we finally have a Government who have the ambition to tackle the problem. On energy, I am pleased that the Bill will deliver faster and more certain planning consent for critical infrastructure, including upgrading our electricity networks and maximising new clean energy sources. The Bill will move us on decisively from the era of the onshore wind ban, plummeting investment, and reliance on Putin and his fossil fuel oligarchs. If we are serious about speeding up delivery, however, we must address the capacity crisis in planning departments, so it is welcome that the Government have committed to 300 new planners. What assessment has been made of the total need for planners across the country to get to the level of approvals we need to meet our housing targets? Can the planning fee reform in the Bill support that recruitment through full cost recovery? We know that planning reform must be matched by the people and resources needed to make it work.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that local people will still have a role in developing local plans and in many of the more complicated planning applications? Some of what we have heard today around local input has been scaremongering.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Nothing symbolises the drift and decline of the past 14 years more than the appalling state of planning and infrastructure in Britain: a housing crisis that has forced children to live in overcrowded and unsafe homes; an energy crisis that has left us dangerously exposed to shocks in the global energy market; and a litany of infrastructure failures. It is not just the reservoirs or the £120 million spent on the Tory bat tunnel for HS2, but the promised 40 new hospitals by 2030—a claim now exposed as fiction with funds not allocated, many schemes not new hospitals, and a tiny fraction due to complete on time. I can see in my constituency the direct impact that that failure, especially on housing, has on my residents. I admire the commitment of the shadow Minister, who has just left his place, to the spreadsheet that he has been quoting from throughout the debate. He seems to have missed the line in the spreadsheet that states the number of times the previous Government hit their housing target—precisely zero. There are nearly 3,000 people on the waiting list for social housing in the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and more than 2,000 in temporary accommodation. Behind those numbers are stories of daily struggle, like Sansha and her five children who live next to Grenfell Tower. Her son is in a wheelchair and awaiting open-heart surgery for his life-limiting condition. They live on the top floor, and the lift frequently breaks. There is no heating, no reliable hot water and just one working bathroom. They have been waiting more than three years for a move to a suitable property. Then there is Lacey, whose six-year-old daughter has autism—and has tried to jump out of a window twice. Despite repeated safeguarding warnings, the family remains in overcrowded and unsafe housing. Then there is another resident I met recently who spent more than 15 years out of the borough with her children before moving back. There are more than 164,000 children living in temporary accommodation in England, the highest number on record. Instead of tackling the root causes, as the Bill seeks to do, we poured money into managing the problem.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I could not agree more. That is why the devolution of fee setting is so important. It should enable an improvement in the capacity of planning departments and the training for councillors on planning committees to make those decisions effectively. I also thank all the resident associations in my constituency who put time and effort into engaging in the planning system and who are passionate about making it work for our community. Their role will continue in the local plan and in applications that rise to the planning committee, contrary to some of the scaremongering we have heard in the debate. The Bill sits alongside other crucial housing measures that the Government are taking, including the biggest investment in social and affordable housing in a generation, leasehold reform, stronger protection for renters, a new decent homes standard and the implementation of Awaab’s law. If we are serious about tackling the housing crisis, this ambition must also be reflected in the comprehensive spending review—this is not just day-to-day spending, but long-term public investment. That is exactly why the Chancellor took the bold decisions in the Budget to increase the capital available for investment and reverse more than a decade of under-investment and short-termism. I would therefore welcome any clarification from the Minister on the total investment in the CSR needed to meet our housing targets, in particular on the affordable and social component. Advancing the Bill alongside new investment in the CSR could be transformative. We owe it to the constituents I mentioned earlier—to Sansha, Lacey and the thousands of children trapped in unsuitable and unsafe housing—to get this right. It will be a landmark legacy of this Labour Government to finally get Britain building again.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan · Hansard source

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  On Friday, I visited a major National Grid upgrade project in my constituency, which will connect to a huge new data centre in north-west London. The Secretary of State has talked about the additional energy infrastructure needed, but how will he work to speed up the planning system, including taking on those who seek to block this critical new infrastructure, so that we can harness the benefits?

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  I welcome the statement and especially welcome what the Minister said about affordable homes, given the dismal numbers that were provided under the Conservatives. Those 1.3 million people on the waiting list deserve a voice in our planning system too, and I only wish the Opposition would recognise that. What approach will the Minister take when there are multiple local plans, for example the London plan and the London borough plans? How will the targets be worked out between those different plans?

• 2 Dec 2024 · Grenfell Tower Inquiry · Hansard source

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  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.

• 9 Oct 2024 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a great privilege to follow that excellent speech. The Renters’ Reform Bill is potentially transformative for Kensington and Bayswater, as it is for the whole country. Nearly 45% of my constituents are now private renters—a huge increase in the last decade and now the biggest tenure type by some distance. Those renters pay the highest rents in the country: an average rent of £1,600 per person. A rental property in my constituency now averages £3,400 a month. Yet despite the fact that those renters pay an increasing proportion of their take-home pay each month in rent, I have been inundated since the general election with cases of constituents facing the major challenges that colleagues have already highlighted—section 21 evictions, damp and mould, slow repairs, unaffordable rent hikes, bidding wars and a feeling of insecurity and lack of power that never leaves a person under the current rules. I think of my former constituents Jean and Jack Franco, who lived with their mum in a rental flat in north Kensington. After eight years of never missing a rent payment, they were served a section 21 notice by an anonymous overseas landlord and given just weeks to leave. All their attempts to challenge the decision and engage the landlord failed. Their request for just a few more weeks to find a new home was denied. The council were unable to help them, so Jack and Jean had to leave with their mum for a new part of London as rents in my constituency are so unaffordable. The letting agent told the Francos that the owner wanted to sell the property, but today that property is still being rented out, but at twice the rent that the previous family were paying—a back-door eviction by an anonymous landlord that this Bill would have stopped. I also think of the constituents who I met, along with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister, around the table in north Kensington; they could not even bring themselves to report the challenges with the condition of their flats for fear of a section 21 notice that could leave them on the streets, sofa surfing or scrambling for temporary accommodation. This renters’ Bill is also for them. I want to focus on one critical area of implementation, the landlord register, which is a huge opportunity to give renters, landlords and local authorities the information they need to ensure that standards are upheld and new rights can be enforced. I note here my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, because I have worked on a number of new government registers in recent years, including the public register of beneficial ownership and the register of overseas entities. It is crucial to design them in a way that is as transparent as possible and does not create loopholes. I ask the Secretary of State and the Minister to look at the detail of what will be in that register, including landlord and agent contact details, details of past enforcement action, eviction notices, safety information, information about accessibility and the rent being charged. If we include all those things, we will have a genuinely useful register that will promote accountability and genuinely drive up standards. This game-changing Bill should also not be seen in isolation. The most exciting thing about today is the Government’s commitment to attacking our housing crisis from multiple angles: planning reform to build 1.5 million new homes, including the biggest increase in social housing in a generation; learning from Grenfell, and speeding up the remedial work up and down the country; accelerated implementation of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, including Awaab’s law; a new decent homes standard for social and private housing; a crackdown on dirty money in luxury property; and an end to the feudal leasehold system. This is a comprehensive—

• 12 Sept 2024 · Short-term Lets: Regulation · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) on securing this debate and giving the subject the attention it deserves. We obviously share a border, but we also share an office in this place that, with its high ceilings and windows, comfortable sofas and views of Whitehall, I am sure would fetch a very high price if it were a short-term let. I hope we can agree that we will not be doing that in our period of sharing an office. When I was knocking on doors during the general election campaign, the issue of short-term let regulation united constituents in South Kensington, North Kensington, Bayswater and Lancaster Gate. That was due to the current effective free-for-all with weak rules that are barely enforced, leading to issues that had very real and personal consequences for them and their families. It was not just the antisocial behaviour, noise and associated crime, but the violations of building insurance, mansion block rules and tenancy agreements, which had very real impacts on service charges and their day-to-day living in flats. I therefore agree with many of the speakers in the debate that there must be a middle ground where we can find sensible regulation that allows a destination like Kensington and Bayswater to continue to welcome millions of tourists from around the world, but with a system that can also help tackle our housing crisis. To give hon. Members a sense of the scale of the problem, I share councils—Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster—and it is estimated that more than 5% of properties in both those council areas have been listed as short-term lets. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, the latest estimate in Westminster is 13,000. It is therefore important that any proposed changes related to change of use do not lock in those numbers, and that we sequence the reforms correctly. There are some things that work and I praise the councils that, with limited tools, have been able to take some steps on enforcement, especially in Westminster. Kensington and Chelsea agreed a deal with Airbnb that would share data around some council blocks, so that leaseholders and council tenants in those blocks who might be in breach of their tenancy could be investigated. However, that also struck me as unfair when we have 40% of our residents in the private rental sector, where there is very little regulation. As for solutions, I join others in calling for the Government to consider a licensing scheme, while thinking carefully about some of the lessons already learned. For example, the 90-day rule is totally unenforceable. With multiple platforms listing properties, and very small and limited—even non-existent—resources in local authorities to enforce the rule, we must ensure that fees are paid into the system to help cover the enforcement cost for local authorities, so that the cost is proportionate. We must also ensure that each property—not just each host—is registered, because individual properties have different consequences. This is an important part of tackling our housing crisis. I am delighted with the Renters’ Rights Bill, introduced yesterday, and I believe that if we also brought in a complementary package of reforms, it could make a real difference for constituencies such as mine.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Building Safety and Resilience · Hansard source

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  I would like to put on the record the thanks of my constituents in Kensington and Bayswater, which includes the wider Grenfell community, for the cross-party support last week when the phase 2 report of the Grenfell inquiry was published. We thank the Minister and the Government for making time today and for committing to future time, and we thank the Prime Minister for his statement and heartfelt apology on behalf of the British state for what happened. He spoke for us all, including the Leader of the Opposition. The Grenfell legacy obviously has lots of dimensions, but one of them is building safety. I urge Members to remember the 72 victims of the fire, whose legacy has to be fixing this crisis. After the report was released, there were three immediate actions that the community wanted me to advocate in this place. The first was about criminal prosecutions, which is not a matter for discussion today. However, as the Justice Secretary mentioned in questions yesterday, it is important that we ensure that the court system is prepared for any potential decisions that come through the Metropolitan police and CPS process, and that court backlogs and the complexity of any potential trials do not result in even further delays to justice. Secondly, the accountability of the companies is not just about criminal investigations; it is about their role in public procurement and paying for remedial work. We need to continue to push on that. Finally, we are discussing policy changes today to ensure that this never happens again, but the pace of change has been far too slow. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said, that is partly due to the culture of how tenants—social housing tenants, in particular—are treated and about their agency and power and respect. There are tens of thousands of people up and down the country who are still going to bed in buildings that are unsafe. In my constituency—quite incredibly, given the history of Grenfell—we have one of those buildings that is not yet on the Department’s list. It underwent a fire inspection just a few months ago and flammable rendering was found. This is a good example of what many Members have mentioned. It is a building with approximately 50% social tenants and 50% shared ownership leaseholders, who have scraped together the money to get on the housing ladder and have now been hit with a £400 a month increase in their service charge, primarily driven by the dramatic increase in insurance after the fire inspection took place. I agree with the shadow Minister’s call to look at the insurance market, because in that case there was not a competitive bid for insuring the building. I know there has been a discussion with the Association of British Insurers to see how we can bring down the costs, but I urge the Government to look at this, because in the short term, while we wait for the remedial work to take place, the situation is simply unaffordable for those leaseholders. I certainly think we need to look at the insurance industry. In addition, that building is another example of the merry-go-round of buck passing that we talked about last week between local government, national Government, developers, freeholders and housing associations. We need clear timelines to speed this up, and I really welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment on that. We need incentives in the system—carrots and sticks—to ensure that we do not have these never-ending situations where leaseholders and tenants are unclear about when the work will be done. As the Minister said, the money is there, so this is about knocking heads together and making sure that, at an individual building level, we get the speeding up that we need. I will write to her about the specific building that I have mentioned. Speeding up this work is obviously part of the answer, but the recommendations from phase 1 and phase 2 of the Grenfell inquiry are also relevant. They go beyond cladding, as the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) mentioned. I really welcome the Government’s announcement last week that residential personalised emergency evacuation plans for disabled people will be taken forward. It is a big frustration for many of my constituents that that did not happen under the previous Government. We look forward to more detail on what those PEEPs will look like. I urge the Government in the comprehensive spending review to look at funding, for multiple years, for social landlords to implement that and at a scheme to ensure that developers and freeholders cover the costs for private buildings. We are all still digesting the full phase 2 report, and there will be time to go into it in more detail, but one recommendation that I urge the Government to think about straightaway is the streamlining of accountability in terms of ministerial responsibility and the regulator, so that we do not have a dispersed system between multiple Departments that makes it easy for things to fall through the cracks, as Sir Martin Moore-Bick made clear in his report. I hope we will have time to discuss that in detail. Finally, on the question of who should pay, I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement that he will be writing to the companies and looking at exclusions in the public procurement process to ensure that companies referenced in the Grenfell report will not be able to access public tenders. I also put on the record my thanks to the golfer Shane Lowry, who yesterday—belatedly, but he got there in the end—removed the sponsorship of one of the companies mentioned. I will not mention it by name, just out of caution. More broadly, these developers clearly need to need to pay for the remedial work. The campaigners have done an incredible job, as the Minister said in her opening remarks. Their ask has always been for truth, which we now have from the inquiry; for justice, which we hope will come from the criminal prosecution system; and for change, which it is on all of us in this House to deliver.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 Report · Hansard source

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  As we have heard, it is now more than seven years since 72 people lost their lives in Grenfell Tower in north Kensington. As we have heard again today, the disaster was entirely foreseen and entirely preventable. It was the result of organisations and individuals being systemically dishonest and putting profit before people’s lives. I pay tribute to the next of kin, the bereaved and the survivors, including those who are here today, for their resilience and strength; this is a very painful day for the community. The shameless merry-go-round of buck-passing that has happened for the past seven years must now come to an end, so I thank the Prime Minister for his personal commitment to driving lasting change and holding people accountable. Can he assure me that the Government will now do everything in their power to ensure that criminal prosecutions take place as soon as possible? Can he commit to ensuring that companies identified in the report are excluded from public contracts, are held to account to the full extent of the law, and pay their full weight of the cost of the building safety remedial work that is necessary? Can he also ensure that the phase 2 recommendations for central Government will be a blueprint for real change, and that their implementation will be swift and as comprehensive as possible, so that we can truly say that a tragedy like Grenfell will not happen again?

• 19 Jul 2024 · Covid-19 Inquiry · Hansard source

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  Module 1 of the report finds that pandemic planning did not take pre-existing health inequalities into account. In my constituency, those inequalities are particularly wide, as we saw at Grenfell Tower. I welcome the Minister’s statement that the Grenfell inquiry recommendations will be incorporated into the Government’s response. Does he agree that in that response we must have a far better plan for protecting the most vulnerable in our society, who are often the most disproportionately affected?