Grenfell report highlights need for ‘cultural shift’ to ensure social tenants treated with more respect, Rayner says – UK politics live
Good morning. Angela Rayner, the housing secretary and deputy prime minister, has been doing an interview round this morning. She has a lot in her portfolio but, understandably, most of the questions were about the Grenfell Tower fire report out yesterday. Here are some of the main lines.
Rayner said the report highlighted the “disgraceful” treatment of social tenants. She told the Today programme she wanted to see a “cultural shift to empowering people”. She went on:
I think the people of Grenfell were dismissed and not listened to and were not empowered as tenants.
And I think that we’ve got to make sure that greed and profit is not put above safety …
There is a total imbalance for tenants at the moment, and social tenants in particular have a stigma attached to them.
And as someone who was a social tenant all of my childhood and into my adulthood, I completely appreciate that there is a culture in this country where they’re considered lesser people, and that’s disgraceful.
She said she wanted to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service as “as quickly as possible” to bring people to justice over the fire, but she said it was an “incredibly complex investigation”.
She said that money was available to remove dangerous cladding still on tower blocks and that there was “no excuse” for building owners not acting. She told BBC Breakfast:
At the moment, there’s £5bn that’s available for remediation, so I don’t accept that the money’s not there. And these companies, the people that own these buildings, have financial resources as well. I don’t accept that there is not the money to do this remediation … There’s no excuse to not do this work now.
She suggested she would pass a new law to speed up the removal of dangerous cladding. She told Times Radio:
I am determined to make sure that our remediation acceleration plan comes forward with, if we need changes to legislation, which I believe we will, especially in light of the report findings that we have got now which we will have to go through and to ensure that we do everything we possibly can to speed this up.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Nusrat Ghani, the deputy speaker, reads out the names of the MPs who have won the right to bring forward a private member’s bill in the private members’s ballot. Twenty MPs get selected, but only the top half dozen or so have a realistic chance of being given enough time to get a bill into law.
10.30am: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, gives a speech on the government’s plans to crack down on the water industry. He is also publishing the water (special measures) bill.
After 10.30am: Lucy Powell, the leader of the Commons, takes questions in the Commons about next week’s business.
11.30am: No 10 holds a lobby briefing.
After 11.30am: MPs debate the second reading of the Great British Energy bill.
Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.
Lunchtime: The Cabinet Office publishes its House of Lords (hereditary peers) bill, that will remove the right of the 92 hereditary peers still in the Lords to be there.
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