Joe Powell

I know that this is one of the biggest teams that the Met police have in operation, and of course it is right that they keep the funding in place until their work comes to fruition. I also agree with my hon. Friend that we must make sure that taxpayers’ money is no longer going to those companies. I hope the Minister can give us some reassurance on that timeline, and that he can reassure us that, under the new system of construction product regulation, the same mistakes will not be made again. Real change is hard. I have always believed, as Martin Luther King said, that while “the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice.” For that, we need to act now in a way that will protect people in the future. As I mentioned earlier, the introduction of the Hillsborough law, the national oversight mechanism, and the Government’s own reporting on inquiry recommendations and how they will be implemented, will all give people reassurance that this cannot happen again. Grenfell was the most devastating residential fire since the world war two and the pain can never be erased, but I want to give the final word to one of the young people in our community who gives me hope. Noha Chentouf is 16 and is the new youth mayor for Kensington and Chelsea. I attended an event with her and other young leaders at Tate Britain last night. These were part of her words: “They trimmed the budget, not the risk then signed its safety with the flick of a wrist but it was fine, they saved a few grand who needs an alarm when profit was the main plan we’re supposed to give our trust to people who don’t care about our well being no matter how many complaints they’re gonna fail seeing exactly what the residents were foreseeing and they sit in a meeting full of complaints but they’re disagreeing ended in disaster with many fleeing but 72 couldn’t make being alive a life lost is a light lost but that doesn’t mean the fight’s lost.”