Sir Bernard Jenkin
MP for Harwich and North Essex · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Despite long and historic disagreements between successive UK Governments and Israel, it has remained a steadfast ally in counter-terrorist efforts to keep our people safe in this country. We are now embarked, it seems, on a full diplomatic dispute with Israel and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats.”
“I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government.”
“I am as keen as anybody to get on with discussing the Health Bill, but this topic is too serious an opportunity to miss, given that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) has raised such important issues. I really commend his speech and his initiative. Everybody should read it.”
“The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon.”
“The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries.”
“I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon.”
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“Is she really ruling out that any of these inquiries should be statutory inquiries? Victims have the real freedom to speak out only in this Parliament, as we have just movingly heard, or in a statutory inquiry, where they are legally immune from consequences for anything they say. Why cannot she provide the victims with those protections?”
“The House should be generous towards the Home Secretary, as she has travelled a long way since last week by recognising that there is a requirement for far more inquiries into the towns affected, and we should thank her for that. However, one crucial thing still lacking from her statement today is whether these new inquiries will have the power to summon witnesses and require the production of papers. Only the Home Secretary—or a Secretary of State or Minister—can set up a statutory inquiry. In fact, the Minister specifying an inquiry could set the terms of reference, decide whether it should concentrate on certain towns, set the timeframe and set the budget. She could appoint as many people as she wants to the panel so that different parts of the inquiry could run in different parts of the country concurrently.”
“The National Electricity System Operator issued a warning of a 1,700 MW shortfall at the evening peak. It revised that down to barely more than 1,200, and it was running at one point with only 580 MW of margin. How are the Government so complacent about this? It is astonishing. As someone who has followed the energy debate for the past 30 years or so, I warn the Minister that this is almost unprecedented. For him to say that everything is absolutely fine is incredibly irresponsible, when his own Government’s policies are contributing to the tightness of the generating margin. If the lights go out, will he resign?”
“Having listened very carefully to the right hon. Gentleman’s responses, I believe that he is making a more significant statement than many of his colleagues might realise. By underlining that there will not be any tax or borrowing increases, he is, in effect, saying that austerity is back, because there is no way that the public finances can be remedied by another Budget of wishful thinking that pretends that increased borrowing and spending will produce growth. That is once again being proved by a Labour Government to be a false way of leading the economy.”
“I also thank the Secretary of State for her statement. I think the House is overwhelmingly behind her in dealing with these difficult subjects and implementing the findings of the Jay report. However, I am listening carefully to these exchanges, and the arguments against a further public inquiry—in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), for example—seem rather thin: “Oh, we have already got too much to do,” “Oh, it probably won’t find out anything new,” “Oh, let the council do it on its own.” I just wonder whether this is in fact a matter of public confidence. If the Home Secretary cannot restore public confidence without a further public inquiry, please will she not rule it out?”
“Merry Christmas, Mr Speaker. The St Helena Hospice in Colchester, which serves my constituency and that of the Labour hon. Member for Colchester (Pam Cox), estimates that the national insurance increase will cost it £300,000 in a full year. Can the Minister now give a guarantee that the hospice will be compensated by the Government in full?”
“I add my congratulations to the Government for getting this agreement over the line, but when will we get their defence industrial strategy? So far we have had only a rather lengthy statement of intent. We need to reindustrialise our defence industrial base in order to face modern challenges, and that is particularly essential given the threats we face from the east of Europe at this time. That is very difficult to do in government, because the Treasury hates his stuff, as the Secretary of State may already have discovered, but we will hold him to account on what he described as leading this sector into future growth, and indeed on reindustrialising our steel industrial base and so on, so that we have the self-sufficiency that is vital for the defence of the country.”
“Could we be completely realistic? The outcome of the conflict is likely to be determined by President Trump and what he chooses to do. Therefore, it is essential that the British Government engage as positively as possible with President Trump and resist the temptation that somehow his arrival is an invitation for we Europeans to withdraw into ourselves, with our limited defence capability, our diverse political and foreign policy objectives and varying degrees of willpower to sustain the effort. Can we take the arrival of President Trump as an opportunity to leverage change in whatever field, never underestimating how much the United Kingdom has to offer the United States and how joined up and integrated so many of our defence capabilities are?”
“The Government clearly want to dismantle legacies of empire. Why, then, do we think it is so important to attach the Chagos islands to Mauritius when, in fact, that link was only established when both territories were acquired by the French empire and later by the British empire? Why do we not listen to the Chagossians, instead of imposing the legacy of empire on them?”
“Just a few days ago, the head of MI5 talked about having to make “uncomfortable choices” and paring back counter-terrorism operations in order to deal with the huge rise in state threats. If the Government mean what they say about security being the first priority of Government, will the Minister undertake to ensure that MI5 and the security services as a whole have the resources they need to tackle all the threats? By all means, blame the previous Government for the state we are in, but it will not get him far, because I need him to answer that question.”
“What guarantee can the Minister give that there will be new money from the Treasury to fund the costs of any local government reorganisation in Essex, to avoid the costs of that reorganisation resulting in cuts to public services or increased council taxes?”
“Will the Minister reaffirm the principle of “infrastructure first” in order to get homes built? In Tendring and Colchester, we are planning to build a 9,000-home borders community project, but it can go ahead only if the A1331 is completed, and it has to be funded.”
“This working paper smacks of having been thought up after a request for options to streamline the planning process. What is the evidence that what planning committees decide is the fundamental obstacle in the planning system? There is no evidence to suggest that these decisions are the problem. The problems are far wider. The reason why the Government will not succeed in building 1.5 million homes in England and Wales between now and the general election is a far bigger problem. Will the Government produce a comprehensive assessment of all the things that delay house building in this country? We would then see how significant, or insignificant, this figure is.”
“Will the Leader of the House provide time for a debate about free trade and how best to approach the incoming American Administration to secure a free trade agreement? Will she remind her right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister that we already have a free trade agreement with the European Union, but we do not with the United States, which is our single biggest national trading partner? Such an agreement would be greatly to our advantage, rather than aligning with the EU, which might see the United Kingdom subjected to the American tariffs applied to the EU. That would be very much to our disadvantage.”
“I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I do not think anybody doubts the sincerity of the new Government in wanting to achieve these laudable aims. I remind him, however, of John Lennon’s line: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Notably absent from the priorities are ones such as reducing the national debt or dealing with the demographic challenge or the lack of defence and security that we need to build up to confront global challenges. Are these aims the Government’s only priorities or will we see a bigger list that deals with some of the really existential challenges that threaten the independence and survival of our country?”
“First, may I ask, what is the rush? Why is the Minister in such a hurry to get this done? May I suggest that it would be to the Government’s advantage, if their case is so strong, to allow this House to debate the agreed text in public before it is signed? May I also suggest that it stretches incredulity for him to tell the House that there have been no discussions at all with the incoming American Administration? Can he at least tell the House what informal dialogue there is with the incoming Administration about what their view really is? Can he report that to the House, please?”
“I think she was taken with our recommendations but I think that they fall to the Minister’s Department, so I look forward to meeting him later this week.”
“That is an odd recommendation when we think about it, because the London Fire Brigade was itself very, very severely criticised in the report. That it should be left responsible for marking its own homework and making recommendations about itself underlines that the lacuna in the recommendations is the lack of an investigation body. There were two other paragraphs about building control that I shall come to: paragraphs 113.37 and 113.38. Those were our two urgent priorities to be addressed in our submission. By the way, I am very grateful to the Minister for accepting our request for a meeting, which the Prime Minister promised on the Floor of the House when he announced the outcome of the inquiry. We had a very good meeting with the Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention.”
“Grenfell and previous fires, such as Lakanal House, demonstrated that there was a comprehensive failure of the safety system that should exist to keep buildings as safe as possible. We made our submission in September 2021. After seven years—a disadvantage of public inquiries is that they take a very long time—I was disappointed that the inquiry did not really find time to engage with our recommendations. It did publish our submission, but from the recommendations, I think it is fair to say that a number of issues have been handed back to the Department to be resolved. Paragraph 113.58, entitled “Implementing change”, simply suggests that the London Fire Brigade should “establish effective standing arrangements for collecting, considering and effectively implementing lessons learned from previous incidents”.”
“The third was Keith Conradi, the former chief investigator of the air accidents investigation branch of the Department for Transport—who, as it happens, became the first chief investigator for the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, which, as a result of the inquiry conducted by my Committee, is now a statutory body. He helped set that body up; he is now retired. He helped with the submission. Keith Conradi in particular enabled us to understand building safety management as a safety management system. The events leading to the Grenfell disaster were not just the random failings or crimes of individuals. Where there is culpability, prosecutions must certainly follow, but that is not the main point.”
“Those are the lessons drawn from all the effective safety regimes in other industries, which should perhaps be applied in this case. I co-authored a submission to the Grenfell inquiry with three others. The first was former Labour Housing and Fire Minister Nick Raynsford, who, at the time, was chairman of the Construction Industry Council approved inspector’s register—CICAIR—which relates to the private sector building control surveyors the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) spoke about. I will come on to that conflict, which the hon. Gentleman is very concerned about. Another co-author was Kevin Savage, a leading figure in the building control profession; he happens to be a constituent of mine, but that was a coincidence.”
“That resulted in the formation of the rail accident investigation branch of the Department for Transport, with the result that no public inquiry into a rail accident has ever taken place again. Similarly, as Chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, I took a close interest in patient safety because we received the reports from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. We had Mid Staffordshire and all the maternity scandals, and we had public inquiry after public inquiry, until somebody suggested that there should be an investigation body accountable and answerable to the Secretary of State to look at why things go wrong in patient care and investigate the causes of incidents—without blame, incidentally—to find out what went wrong in order to make recommendations and put it right.”
“Members might well ask why I am taking an interest in this debate. I do not think I represent any community in a high-rise building with cladding problems in leafy Essex. The only interest I have to declare is that it turned out that my late mother was living in a block with unsafe cladding, so, to a very limited and minor extent, my family are suffering the loss of being unable to sell her flat. That is very small beer, but I put that down as an interest I should declare. I have long taken an interest in safety management systems—ever since I was shadow Secretary of State for Transport at the time of the Ladbroke Grove disaster, when I took an interest in what was being submitted to the inquiry and made a submission of my own, recommending that there should be a systemic approach to the safety system.”
“I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) and for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell), who both spoke very movingly on behalf of the victims of this tragedy who want to see justice done. I venture to suggest that what they want above everything is to know that nothing like this will ever happen again—that whatever happened that night, there will be some glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel and that some good will come of it. I praise the Secretary of State for recognising that it is the system itself that needs the most fundamental reform, and that the failures of individuals—whatever incentives existed and whatever conflicts were unresolved—were system failures. The cultural shift will come about as a result of a systemic review—a system change. Hon.”
“No public inquiry has taken place into an aviation accident since 1972 and there has not been a public inquiry into a rail accident since the Ladbroke Grove inquiry, because people have confidence in the new independent arrangements. They conduct rapid investigations. They focus not on blame, but on understanding failures and issuing binding recommendations for the future.”
“An air accident investigation rarely takes more than a few months because the capability exists. In the Grenfell case, the Housing Ombudsman still felt that “residents’ complaints were dismissed and devalued.” I think the inquiry was overwhelmed with so much material and so many different elements. In a way, its terms of reference were too wide to be able to capably come up with a comprehensive set of safety system recommendations. It is also notable that although there was an inquiry into the Lakanal House fire, we had another inquiry into Grenfell. Public inquiries do not seem to resolve problems. A building safety investigation branch would transform that. It would operate independently, modelled on similar bodies for air, marine and rail. These bodies have proven their worth in both the rail and aviation.”
“The idea that the Health and Safety Executive or the new Building Safety Regulator should be conducting investigations is absolutely fine, but we can never guarantee that they will not come across a failing of their own and be conflicted in that investigation. The public will not have confidence in any investigation that they conduct unless there is an independent investigation that looks at all the elements of the system. The Hackitt review rather overlooked this issue. It failed to underline how future fire incidents would be investigated. This is a gap that is still to be addressed. The current system of resort to public inquiries, as the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green confirmed, takes far too long. I feel for those who were caught up in the tragedy directly. They have waited far too long.”
“I am very happy to agree with the hon. Gentleman and to welcome the Secretary of State’s announcements today about accelerating all of this and ensuring that action is taken much more quickly. I hope that that will result in much quicker action for his constituents. I was addressing the first major recommendation in our submission to the inquiry, which is that there should be established an independent building safety investigation branch of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, reporting directly to the Secretary of State. That removes any possible conflict that investigations have with any other part of the system.”
“Regulators, if necessary, can still run their investigations, as I was saying before. The safe space in the safety investigator does not protect anyone from legal culpability, as we saw when the air accidents investigation branch investigated the Shoreham air crash. It passed a file to the police, because it believed there had been negligence. The pilot was prosecuted. The safe space does not protect someone from wrongdoing.”
“They also provide a very significant capability that no other regulator can do—a safety investigation body is not a regulator, of course. They provide a legal safe space where anybody can go and say anything without fear or favour. Witnesses have protection and, if necessary, anonymity, so they can openly speak without fear of retribution of being sued or the words they give in evidence being used against them in court. This creates a culture of openness that accelerates the learning process while maintaining accountability. The introduction of a BSIB would not trespass on any other part of the safety system, such as the HSE or the Building Safety Regulator. It is an essential additional capability which needs to exist, otherwise we do not have that ultimate check over the whole system.”
“I am sure that may be a very good suggestion, but the point I am making is that we need an apex to our safety system. Whatever else the Government do to remediate the safety system as it exists at the moment, they need an independent safety investigator as the apex of the system, which is like a guardian angel over the whole system. The hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater said there should be—I think I quote him correctly—an independent oversight body. Well, this is the body he seeks. It would be constantly looking for risks in the system, not just investigating accidents, and following up directly with the Secretary of State to say, “This has not been done.” Crucially, the independence of the bodies is what commands public confidence.”
“Ironically, it was the building control function of a local authority, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, that failed so disastrously in Grenfell’s case. Despite that, everyone’s emphasis still seems to be more focused on restricting private sector involvement than on reform of the whole building control sector.”
“I had hoped that the inquiry would adopt this recommendation, as did the Cullen inquiry into Ladbroke Grove, and also the inquiry into offshore safety following the Piper Alpha disaster. It now falls to the Government and Parliament to get this right. The second recommendation in our submission is for a comprehensive reform of building control. Building control is the inspection system which should ensure that building regulations are followed, but Grenfell demonstrated its failure. I accept that there has already been some reform here since we wrote our submission. Much has been said, as we heard earlier, about how private sector building inspectors are endemically conflicted because they are appointed and paid by constructors and others, but that misses a horrible truth about the Grenfell case.”
“I have got the point. The problem with a public inquiry is that it starts from ground zero. It assembles a group of people who may be expert, but most of the lawyers will not be expert and will have to learn everything from scratch. The advantage of a standing capability is that there are experts who are permanently employed and who really understand everything about building safety, as it would be in this case. There would be human factors analysts, structural engineers, architects—key people with key skills, fully knowledgeable about the safety system that exists. They would start immediately after a tragedy, and they would conclude much more quickly on the basis of much better expertise.”
“No, because a regulator is a part of the system, whereas a safety investigation body stands above the system. It is very simple. If you are a regulator, you are a participant. You are capable of making mistakes, and you need to be independently investigated, or checked, to confirm that you are not breaching rules, or failing in some way—through no fault of your own, perhaps. Everyone makes mistakes. Most bad things happen because of human error, not because of bad people doing bad things.”
“Recommendation 113.37 proposes that there should be a panel to consider the matter, which I hope will happen, but if it decided to ban private sector building control, that would seriously aggravate the capacity problem.”
“We welcome the steps taken to require all building inspectors, whether working for local authorities or registered building control approvers, to be individually registered by the BSR, but further steps can and should be taken to drive up standards and to maximise much-needed capacity. However, recommendations 113.37 and 113.38 in the final report of the inquiry could undermine this process. Implicit in recommendation 113.37 is the assumption that it is inappropriate for private sector commercial organisations to be involved in building control work at all, although no evidence is advanced to support that assumption. It is an assumption that many people make, but there is no evidential basis for it.”
“Our recommendation suggests a fully integrated building control service involving both local authorities and registered building control approvers working to common standards within a framework designed to promote continuous improvement. That, I think, is the right answer. To deal with high-rise blocks, multidisciplinary teams would be set up to perform the building control function, recruited on the basis of proven skills and experience from both public and private sectors on a level playing field without the choice being biased in favour of the former. That, I submit, should be the Government’s objective.”
“Restricting private sector competition would exacerbate these problems, driving skilled professionals not back into local authorities—because they cannot afford them—but into consultancy roles in which they would be working for the construction companies directly, not inspecting what those companies are doing. Rather than narrowing the pool of inspectors, we should be raising the standards of building control across the board. Private sector approved inspectors were already subject to a strict licensing regime through the Construction Industry Council approved inspectors register, with a code of conduct, regular auditing and a complaints process. Moreover, the local authority, not the private sector building control sector, was responsible for the problem at Grenfell.”
“I am not in favour of taking building control away from local authorities, but if we go down the route recommended by the hon. Gentleman, we will not succeed in making buildings safer, not least because of the shortage of capacity in the sector. If it is decided that there cannot be any private sector building control surveyors, there will be even less capacity, and remediating all this will take even longer. An approach that relies entirely on local government or a state body of building control risks worsening a situation that we are already experiencing. The building control workforce is ageing, and recruitment struggles to keep up with demand.”
“I will be as quick as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I am extremely grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question, because that was a failure of regulation. The crucial point is this. In other safety-critical industries, such as the civil aviation, rail and marine sectors, there is no ban on the private sector being selected to perform inspections. Employees of airlines, of aircraft manufacturers and of aircraft engine manufacturers perform the inspections, but they are independently regulated, overseen and certified by the Civil Aviation Authority. The fact that they are employed by the airlines or by commercial interests does not make them incapable of objective judgment. The whole aviation sector flies incredibly safely on the basis of aircraft being inspected not by Government inspectors or public employees, but by the private sector.”
“I regret to have to warn the House that if we do not get this right, and do not finish working on what the inquiry has presented to us and fill in the gaps, there will one day be another Grenfell, just as Grenfell was a repeat of earlier safety failures. We have an obligation to get this right finally for the Grenfell community, for the memory of those who died and for future communities. The Government now have the opportunity to follow up the inquiry, to build on its findings and to put in place institutional arrangements that will embed learning and safety improvement in residential building management in a comprehensive safety system that matches those of other safety-critical industries.”
“Aviation and rail safety has much fuller public confidence and a lower accident rate under such models, delivering safety improvements faster, more effectively and at lower cost than traditional public inquiries. Reforming building control would ensure that all inspectorates operate under consistent and rigorous oversight, regardless of whether they are in the public or private sectors. Our proposals are not just about learning from the Grenfell tragedy, but about preventing the next disaster. The inquiry shows the systemic failures in building safety and regulation that led to an avoidable tragedy.”
“I completely agree. The record keeping of airlines, air engine manufacturers and aircraft maintenance companies has to be absolutely meticulous. It is inspected by the CAA, but the information originally comes from inspections conducted by people who are employed by the private sector. I think the hon. Gentleman agrees that we need to tackle the regulation, not indulge in shorthand for saying that anybody making a profit must be guilty. I abhor the idea of people making a profit at the expense of safety, but that is not what happens in other industries. The success of independent accident investigation and safety investigation branches in other sectors speaks for itself.”
“Given the public opposition to the Norwich to Tilbury project, the funds being amassed for legal challenges, and the opportunity for judicial review at least twice during the process, it is likely to be delayed for far longer than just one year. That risk is likely to apply to the other 17 pylon schemes proposed in the great grid upgrade. Nevertheless, National Grid plans to use overhead pylons as the primary infrastructure for the massive reinforcement of the national grid. I put it to the Minister that the current concept is not deliverable. The implication is clear. The way to secure public consent is by pursuing strategies that respect and protect local communities and what they value—their property, their livelihoods and the countryside.”
“That is a much faster rate of investment than we have seen so far, but projects for 2030 are already falling behind. Given the strength of public opposition to overhead pylons, it is highly unlikely that any pylon proposals will be delivered on time. The “Clean Power 2030” report sets out how delays are already affecting key projects such as the one from Norwich to Tilbury, which is 184 km of pylons across Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. NESO says that it will now be delayed by a year to 2031, and that delay is very costly. NESO estimates that the cost of delay is £4 billion a year—far higher than previous estimates—mainly because of the constraint payments that have to be paid to wind power generators.”
“Fintan Slye, the executive director of NESO, made the importance of engaging community support clear on Radio 4 when the report was launched on 5 November: “I am acutely conscious that building infrastructure, pylons, does impose on people and their locality.” He also emphasised that “it is really important…that we bring people and communities with us on this journey”, and that the transition to net zero only works “if we can bring society with us”. He is clearly saying that infrastructure solutions must align with community priorities. The challenge to install new capacity is enormous. The UK has around 14 GW of offshore wind capacity but, to meet future energy demands, that capacity will need to grow nearly threefold by 2030 and continue expanding so it can handle 125 GW of wind by 2050.”
“Relying on new lines of pylons for the entire upgrade, as proposed, will delay decarbonising the national grid, because they arouse such hostility and will end up costing more because of the delays. This debate is therefore not just local. Decarbonisation is one of the great national challenges that the United Kingdom faces. How it is achieved, how quickly and at what cost is an issue of national importance. The National Energy System Operator’s “Clean Power 2030” report is welcome, but it highlights the scale of the challenge. NESO is clear that public support is critical to achieving those ambitions, but its response to the Secretary of State in that document warns that losing public consent is a significant threat to delivering projects on time and within budget.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the delivery of electricity grid upgrades. It is wonderful to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am grateful to have the opportunity of this debate. I chair a cross-party group of MPs from Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk. We are working to promote the Clean Power 2030 objective, but we want to deliver it more cheaply and quickly, because it is becoming increasingly clear that undergrounding high voltage direct current cables is the way forward for the great national grid upgrade. Undergrounding will carry public consent and will avoid delays, and will therefore be cheaper as well as better for the countryside.”
“My right hon. Friend is completely right. It affects other colleagues, including some present here today representing, for example, Lincolnshire. We know that there are concerns in north Wales, and on the east coast of Scotland in the area represented by my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), who is representing the Opposition Front Bench. This is a very widespread problem. Undergrounding HVDC cables is not only technically viable, but the most sensible and sustainable solution for the future of our energy network—that is, if we cannot have it offshore. I acknowledge that quite a lot is going offshore, but it rubs salt in the wound that other areas, from Scotland to north-east England, have the luxury of offshore schemes, but we in East Anglia do not. Our countryside is not worth the investment.”