Labour MP for Kensington and Bayswater Joe Powell has said he will raise concerns with Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood over the court backlog potentially slowing down the criminal investigations into the Grenfell fire tragedy.
Powell, who was elected as the MP on 4 July, told PoliticsHome before the Grenfell Inquiry’s long-awaited final report that the building safety crisis and learning other lessons from Grenfell should be at the “top of the agenda” for the new Labour Government.
The report, published on Wednesday, found that government and the companies involved were aware of the dangers of flammable cladding but “failed to act” to prevent harm to residents.
Speaking to PoliticsHome the day after its publication, Powell said it had outlined “in black and white” what Grenfell survivors and families already knew, but that “ultimately, it’s criminal accountability that will deliver real justice”.
“Unfortunately, by having a public inquiry running parallel to a criminal investigation, which is very unusual, we have ended up with a delay to get to the point where the police decide what files they want to send to the Crown Prosecution Service,” he said.
“So their [the community’s] focus now is very much, can we ensure that we get to that point as swiftly as possible?
“And that’s certainly something that I will be raising in Parliament, because although the police and CPS are going to make their decisions independently on charging, the one thing I don’t want to happen is for the massive backlog in our court system to then mean that they wait an additional long period of time for a trial to take place in what is likely to be a very complex trial.”
Powell said he will be raising this issue with Mahmood in Parliament next week.
The Kensington MP was also fiercely critical of the response from former prime ministers and ministers during the Inquiry and in its aftermath.
The Inquiry explicitly pointed towards former prime minister David Cameron’s deregulatory agenda as a contributing factor to avoidable deaths in the fire – but he has not yet spoken publicly about the Inquiry’s findings.
“We have heard nothing from David Cameron, who not only was prime minister, but also lives in that part of West London,” Powell said.
“And I find that astonishing, given that Sir Martin [the Inquiry’s chair] has a very clear finding on the culture of deregulation and the impact that had on junior officials who were in charge of the relevant documents that governed this particular part of the products that were ended up being used on Grenfell.
“So I’m astounded that he hasn’t said anything yet.”
Powell added that Eric Pickles, who was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government between 2010 and 2015 and is now a life peer in the House of Lords, had given “disrespectful” evidence to the Inquiry. In 2022 when giving evidence, Pickles had advised the Inquiry’s senior counsel to “use your time wisely” as he had an extremely busy day.
Theresa May, who was prime minister at the time of the tragedy, set up the Inquiry in the weeks following the Grenfell Tower fire.
“I read Theresa May’s statement, I think she was good in some areas in terms of recognising the community, but she didn’t talk about the need for criminal prosecutions,” Powell said.
“I don’t think it’s good enough. I don’t want to dwell on the past too much, but it would have been nice to have had a stronger response from those ministers.”
Powell was also critical of Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council and said it was particularly important to him to ensure they would be under “sufficient scrutiny”. The council is currently led by the Conservatives.
“So far from Kensington and Chelsea we’ve heard far too much warm words and not enough action, and that is something I’ve heard very strongly from the community in the last 24 hours,” the Kensington MP said.
“They need to start treating social housing tenants with respect. They need to speed up their timeline for repairs. They need to enforce the law on damp and mould.
“They need to stop passing on service charges in an untransparent and unaccountable way. And they need to get a grip of the housing associations that provide 70 per cent of the social housing in my constituency.
“There are lots of things, and they also need to look at their local procurement.”
In a statement following the report, Powell said he would like to see the Government implement all of the Inquiry’s recommendations – something it has not yet committed to.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the House of Commons on Wednesday that the tragedy “poses fundamental questions about the kind of country we are”, saying that “voices of working class people and those of colour have been repeatedly ignored and dismissed” and social tenants had been “treated like second class citizens”.
The Grenfell Inquiry is only one of many public inquiries which has presented its findings in recent years, including the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, the Covid Inquiry, and the Infected Bloody Inquiry – all contributing towards a sense of public distrust in the Government to keep people safe.
“Absolutely, across all of these public inquiries, we need to learn the lessons and implement the recommendations,” Powell said.
“But it goes beyond that. I know for people in my constituency, their lack of trust and faith in government is partly because they feel like that system has not improved, if anything, in some cases, has got worse. So that’s ultimately how you rebuild trust: you deliver for people, you listen to them, you deliver where you can, and if you can’t, you transparently and clearly communicate about why not. And that’s what we’ve been missing.”
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