Councils will be initially asked to fund fire safety improvements to tower blocks in the wake of the Grenfell Tower blaze, the government has said, prompting concerns from Labour that this could delay vital work.
Giving a statement to the Commons at the start of a debate on the possible remit of the inquiry into the fire, Damian Green was asked whether central government would routinely pay for fire safety works.
Responding to the intervention by Jack Dromey from Labour, Green, the first secretary of state, said he would expect councils to do so when they could.
“If the fire service recommends that something needs to be done for safety reasons, obviously it will go to the local authority, who will be the first port of call to pay for that,” Green said.
“And I’m sure all local authorities will want to follow the fire service recommendations on this. If the local authority can show that it can’t afford it, then obviously central government will step in.
“But that’s a matter for local authorities and the fire service in the first instance, which clearly is the sensible way to proceed.”
Responding for Labour, the shadow housing minister, John Healey, said he was concerned this response would mean councils “will hold back or potentially cut corners because they know they cannot afford to do the work that is required, either to remove or replace cladding or to make the insides fully fire-safety compliant”.
Healey said: “They will do so because they cannot get a straight answer from this government. A clear commitment to upfront funding where it’s needed, to make sure that this essential work is done.
“This leaves hundreds of thousands of residents in tower blocks around the country uncertain still whether or not their blocks are safe.”
Speaking four weeks after the deadly blaze at the block in North Kensington killed about 80 people, Green said the judge chosen to head the inquiry, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, was still consulting with families and others over the likely scope.
The deadline for submissions on this had been extended to 28 July, Green said, assuring MPs that an interim report would be published “as soon as is practical” to recommend on urgent safety measures.
In his address, Healey castigated ministers for what he said was an overly slow response, which had left the bereaved and survivors disillusioned. “So many feel that they can’t trust those in authority to listen to them and to do what they promised .” he said.
Healey said only four of the 158 households made homeless had moved from hotels into temporary accommodation, and that the programme to test suspect cladding on tower blocks had so far only tested 224 samples, whereas more than twice that number of blocks were believed to have used it.
“This is the measure of the government’s response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy – too slow to act, too slow to grasp the gravity and the complexity of the problems, one step off the pace at every stage,” Healey said.
Of the testing, Healey said: “It’s too slow, it’s too narrow, it’s too confused. This is a testing programme in chaos.”
Healey said Labour would recommend a panel-type inquiry based on the Macpherson report in the wake of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, involving people with “deep experience in community relations to help overcome this serious gulf in trust”.
In response, Green said 159 households had been offered accommodation but that many were still considering it. “They have to decide how they can try and cope with this,” he said.
Also during the debate the Liberal Democrat MP Ed Davey, a junior business minister in the coalition government, said that while he was in office the Conservatives tried to get rid of several fire-related regulations.
Davey said: “I was asked by people from No 10 and the Cabinet Office whether we should get rid of the fire safety regulations in respect to girls’ and ladies’ nightdresses, whether we should get rid of the fire regulations relating to furniture. I said no. We did not get rid of them, and nor should we. He’s absolutely right. We have to change the culture.”
