MPs said it is ‘completely unacceptable’ that survivors and bereaved families of the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster ‘are still awaiting justice for that terrible day’
Ministers must not be “left marking their own homework” over the Grenfell Tower tragedy, MPs have warned.
The Commons’ housing committee has written to Housing Secretary and Deputy PM Angela Rayner calling for an independent body to be introduced to oversee the Government’s response to public inquiries.
In their letter, MPs said it is “completely unacceptable” that survivors and bereaved families of the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster “are still awaiting justice for that terrible day”.
They welcomed the Government’s decision to accept the recommendations from the Grenfell Inquiry’s final report but said there must be an independent mechanism to hold it to account for implementing them. It warned there are “significant risks of these recommendations not being implemented effectively if independent oversight is lacking”.
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The committee called for a national oversight mechanism to be included in the upcoming Hillsborough Bill. It demanded a new system be in place before the tenth anniversary of the deadly Grenfell Tower fire on June 14, 2027.
The letter said an oversight mechanism will “reduce the risk future governments repeating the catastrophic mistakes which have historically led to state-related deaths, from Hillsborough, to the infected blood scandal, to the Grenfell Tower fire itself”.
Campaigners on a range of scandals, including the Grenfell fire and infected blood victims, have previously called for a national oversight mechanism – an independent public body – to be put in place, responsible for collating, analysing and following up on recommendations from public inquiries.
They have argued that, without such a body in place, governments can delay the implementation of, or even ignore entirely, recommendations from public inquiries.
Elsewhere, the letter raised fire safety concerns in care homes after London’s Fire Commissioner Andy Roe told the committee earlier this year that it “keeps me awake at night”. MPs called on the Government to “urgently review” its decision to mandate sprinklers in new care homes, but not existing ones.
Florence Eshalomi, the committee’s chair, said: “How can the loved ones of the Grenfell victims be asked to trust the Government to mark their own homework when they have spent nearly eight years fighting for answers as to why people were denied the most basic level of safety?”
She continued: “The Grenfell fire highlighted the toxic stigma too often faced by those living in social housing, where resident concerns were cruelly dismissed, neglected and ignored.
“As a Committee, we are determined to shine a light on this issue and to hold the Government to account for their role in addressing the systematic failings in building safety, product standards and testing, and fire safety exposed by the tragedy at Grenfell. Never again must people be left without such basic levels of safety in their own home.”
A Government spokesperson said: “The Grenfell Tower tragedy claimed 72 innocent lives in a disaster that should never have happened. We are acting on all of the Inquiry’s findings, working closely with industry, local authorities and the bereaved, survivors and residents, and have committed to updating on progress regularly.
“We have also committed to introducing a more robust system to improve the transparency, accessibility and scrutiny of inquiry recommendations received by government.”
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