00:00This morning, Sir Martin Morbick published the final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry.
00:07I'm sure the whole House will join me in thanking him, the members of the inquiry and
00:12the whole team for their dedicated work.
00:16Mr Speaker, I want to speak directly to the buried families, the survivors and those in
00:23the immediate Grenfell community, some of whom are with us in the gallery today.
00:30Sir Martin concluded this morning, and I'm afraid there's no way of repeating this that
00:37won't be painful.
00:40He said the simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable, and that
00:46those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of
00:51different ways, by, as the report lays out in full, just about every institution responsible
00:59for ensuring their safety.
01:02Mr Speaker, in the face of an injustice so painful, so deserving of anger, words can
01:09begin to lose their meaning.
01:12Seven years still waiting for the justice that you deserve.
01:17I want to say very clearly on behalf of the country, you've been let down so badly, before,
01:25during and in the aftermath of this tragedy.
01:31And while Sir Martin sets out a catalogue of appalling industry failures, for which
01:36there must now be full accountability, he also finds, and I quote, decades of failure
01:44by central government.
01:47He concludes that, in the years between the fire at Knowsley Heights in 1991 and the fire
01:54at Grenfell Tower in 2017, there were many opportunities for the government to identify
02:00the risks posed by the use of combustible cladding panels and insulation.
02:07And he concludes, and I quote, by 2016, the department was well aware of those risks but
02:14failed to act on what they knew.
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