Grenfell Ex-minister failed to read letter advocating cladding action
AFORMER Bristol MP admitted he did not read a coroner’s letter recommending Government action over cladding in blocks of flats following a fatal fire, years before the Grenfell tragedy.
Stephen Williams, who was the Government minister responsible for building regulations at the time, said he acted on what his officials had incorrectly told him the coroner had said, the Grenfell Tower inquiry heard.
After his evidence to the inquiry last week, Bristol’s Labour group on the city council has called for the former minister to be stripped of his honorary Alderman status.
Mr Williams was the Liberal Democrat MP for Bristol West for ten years, from 2005 to 2015. In the Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition Government of the early 2010s, he served as a junior minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government between October 2013 and May 2015.
In 2009, a fire at a block of council flats called Lakanal House, in south London, killed six people, when the cladding spread the blaze fiercely. It was a foretaste of what happened eight years later at Grenfell Tower in west London.
The latest stage of the inquiry is hearing from former Government ministers responsible for tower block safety, fire safety and housing, dating back to the New Labour government of the late 1990s. Last week, it was Stephen Williams’ turn to give evidence, and he was questioned for five hours during the hearings.
The inquiry heard that the coroner investigating the deaths at Lakanal House identified that something needed to be done about cladding on tower blocks and raised concerns in a letter to the Government, recommending changes. But Mr Williams said he had relied on what the officials in his department had told him about the coroner’s recommendations, rather than reading them himself.
He said his officials told him the coroner had recommended action be taken on the safety of windows in tower blocks, but that wasn’t the case – she had called for changes to the safety of external cladding panels on tower blocks.
The inquiry saw a briefing prepared for Mr Williams on the Government’s actions in response to the coroner’s recommendations in November 2013. Asked if he ever compared this briefing with her actual letter, Mr Williams said: “I honestly don’t think I ever saw it (the letter). And the paper evidence trail shows that it was never shown to me.”
Richard Millett QC, lead counsel to the inquiry, then asked him: “Given that you were involved in progressing the actions in response to the coroner’s letter, Mr Williams, how could you possibly have undertaken that task without reading the coroner’s recommendations?”
Mr Williams replied: “What I’m saying is I never saw a physical copy of the actual letter… but I was advised that the coroner recommended that something be done about window installers, and that was addressed quickly.”
The inquiry has already heard that the coroner in the Lakanal House fire had not made any recommendations involving window installers, but Mr Williams’ department’s officials had done this themselves, bringing in requirements that a competent person scheme be set up to make sure people who installed them knew what they were doing.
“Were you ever made aware that the coroner didn’t actually make any recommendation about the competent person scheme?” asked Mr Millett.
“What you’ve just told me is quite surprising,” replied Mr Williams, adding that he had taken what his officials told him at “face value”. The inquiry’s counsels also asked Mr Williams about letters he received from MPs about fire safety and tower blocks. The all-party parliamentary fire safety and rescue group was chaired by Sir David Amess, the late Essex MP, who had written many times to Mr Williams about the issue.
The group was calling for sprinkler systems to be installed in tower blocks and for the fire safety requirements of cladding to be improved.
When asked whether he had seen and read any of the letters Sir David’s all-party group of MPs had sent him about tower block fire safety, Mr Williams said it was “difficult to say definitively yes or no”. He said he had only generally read his response, which had been written by one of his officials.
At one point, the members of the APPG even warned Mr Williams that his lack of response to their concerns would be made public if there was another serious fire in the tower block – before the Grenfell tragedy. Mr Williams said he thought there was no record of that letter ever arriving at his department.
“Do you accept now, looking at it, that the concerns of this group brought repeatedly to your attention as minister were not exaggerated doomsday warnings, but a genuine vision of mass death based on a deep technical knowledge and wide professional experience held by the members of the APPG?” asked Mr Millett.
“No,” replied Mr Williams. “I don’t think it’s fair for you to say as you just did that the group itself had detailed technical knowledge.”
At the end of his five hours of evidence, Mr Williams was asked if there was anything he would have done differently. He said he did not think “there was ever any critical moment in time when I could have dragged the timetable forward”.
“I don’t think there is anything I could have done to materially make a difference to what happened in July 2017,” he added. The Grenfell Tower fire happened on June 14, 2017.
In Bristol, the city council’s Labour group has called for Mr Williams to be suspended from his title of Alderman at City Hall.
“The tragedy at Grenfell Tower remains one of the darkest stains on our country’s history,” said Labour group leader, Cllr Steve Pearce.
“Stephen Williams’ testimony … was shocking.
“That he remains an honorary Alderman of Bristol, one of our city’s highest civic honours, is a disgrace. Stephen Williams must be suspended from this position – pending the outcome of this judge-led inquiry.”
I don’t think there is anything I could have done to materially make a difference to what happened in July 2017 (the Grenfall fire disaster)
Stephen Williams