Joe Powell
MP for Kensington and Bayswater · Labour · United Kingdom
“T7. I warmly welcome the Government’s swift introduction of the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026, which received Royal Assent last week. The activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have caused huge concern across the country and in particular to my Iranian and Jewish communities.”
“My constituent Billy Hood, a son and father, has spent more than five years in a prison in the United Arab Emirates after being convicted of possessing trace amounts of cannabidiol vape oil.”
“T2. This week it was revealed that Thames Water had slowed its reporting of pollution incidents by 70% since 2022, which is yet another example of institutional failure that has hurt residents across the region.”
“I note the recent data showing that support for renewables in this country is now at 81% of the public. Certainly, in every visit that I make to meet young people, including students at Imperial College London, climate change is one of the first issues they raise; they are concerned about the future that they are going to inherit.”
“People want politicians to serve their interests, not those of billionaires or millionaires based overseas, whether they are in the US, Russia, Thailand or, indeed, Montenegro. The revelations of the last few days have shown how important it is to update our rules.”
“I welcome the focus on supporting low and middle-income households. The Minister will know that after the July 2021 floods in central London, denial of flood insurance or punitive excesses for people living in blocks of four or more flats has been a serious problem. That is a big chunk of my constituents.”
The complete record
Every one of 417 lines we hold for Joe Powell, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 9.
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for her tribute to Sebastien Lai, who, as she says, has joined us in the Gallery. This afternoon, Members from across the House heard from Sebastien—Jimmy’s son and a constituent of mine—and the international legal team supporting him and the family. Jimmy is now 78. A British citizen in failing health after five years in solitary confinement, he now faces a fifth Christmas away from his family, including a granddaughter he has never met, Sebastien’s first child. What message does the Foreign Secretary specifically have for Jimmy’s family, and can she assure them that everything will be on the table in what the Government decide to do next?”
“T3. The Prime Minister was clear this week that the wild promises of Brexit have hurt our economy, eroded trust in politics and that there is no credible economic future for Britain without a closer relationship with the European Union. I completely agree. Can the Minister set out when he expects a youth experience scheme to be agreed and confirm that we will seek to rejoin Erasmus on terms that ensure that young people from all backgrounds can access opportunities across the European Union?”
“Q Grenfell United submitted some evidence to us with extracts from the Grenfell inquiry of local government officers repeatedly saying, “Can’t recall, can’t recall”. How would the duty of candour apply in those circumstances? How do we prevent what they would see as stonewalling of the inquiry? Tom Guest: Even if I were possessed of the information about the Grenfell live investigation, I do not think it would be wise for me to comment on that directly. However, having scrutinised the proposals on the duty of candour, we do not say lightly that it is tightly and clearly drawn. There is not an ambiguity in what is expected of public officials or public authorities in principle.”
“For me, if the Hillsborough law is what we have got in front of us today, a Grenfell law could be a national oversight mechanism that would ensure that no family ever has to go through what we have had to go through in the last eight and a half years to try and hold the Government to account.”
“I know it will probably not fit into this Bill, but we talked with Angela Rayner when she was shadow Secretary of State and when she was Secretary of State, and she informed us that we were pushing at an open door in terms of having a national oversight mechanism—an independent body that follows up on the recommendations made in public inquiries. The Grenfell Tower public inquiry cost £171 million. It is the families, eight and a half years afterwards, who are having to try and hold the Government to account to implement those recommendations; and it is not just us. In every inquiry, the recommendations seem to be buried. It seems to be left to the families to chase them up, and there is no way that that can be right. At some point we need to address that.”
“It was so upsetting just trying to deal with the trauma of the bereavement and leaving our homes and our communities. The idea that we would then have to go out and fund legal aid is just so cruel and heartless. This really needs to be part of the Bill, so that that happens in a fair, transparent and equal way for people. On the second part of the question that I would like to answer, there is a gaping hole in justice for people and victims that experience these kinds of disasters. There is a lack of a national oversight mechanism.”
“Within about 48 hours, I was giving evidence to the Metropolitan police as part of its murder inquiry, and I was able to have a solicitor with me. But it was important that the solicitors that we had were able to totally embed themselves into the case and really commit themselves to what happened. The solicitors we had were human rights lawyers, so they had an expertise and an understanding of some of the issues that were most important to us. Part of the reason that this is so important is that I spoke with some of the Hillsborough families quite early on after Grenfell, and I heard from them that at the beginning of their journey towards justice and in the first public inquiry they had to go out—it makes me upset to talk about it—and raise their own money to pay for their own legal advice. I remember how we were after Grenfell.”
“Q Thanks, Edward, for all the amazing pressure and advocacy that Grenfell United has done on these issues. It is incredibly powerful. I have two short questions. First, during the Grenfell inquiry, you had access to legal aid. Would you reflect on what having that parity meant for the inquiry? Secondly, we heard in an earlier evidence session about how these inquiries lead to change. What oversight and accountability, even if not introduced by this Bill, can help us to ensure that we get change from recommendations? Do you have any reflections on that? Edward Daffarn: There were two things that I wanted to say, and you have asked me questions about them both. At Grenfell we were amazingly lucky. From day one we were provided with legal assistance, which meant we could go out and get solicitors and QCs to help to represent us.”
“Q To go back to your point about coherence, it would be helpful to hear how you foresee your role working with the additional support that will come through this law. Help us understand how it fits together. What does the coherence you might feel is not quite there at the moment look like? Cindy Butts: I hope that the inclusion of the IPA in law means that organisations understand the IPA’s role of supporting victims, survivors and bereaved families in accessing information and advocating for them for truth—for truth telling. I hope that it is clear that the responsibility of the IPA is to help them to achieve exactly that.”
“If the Bill ensures that the responsibility sits with those at the top, and those best-placed to effect change, I am fairly certain that they will not want to be that person who is held responsible, and therefore they will change the culture within those organisations.”
“With the Taylor report, the reason the trial of the criminal cover-up collapsed was because those officers gave their false police statements to Taylor, and Taylor was not an inquiry covered by the oath. That is why the courts said that their evidence could not be admitted, and therefore they were allowed to lie and faced no accountability. We would both say that the command responsibility is really important here. We need to start holding people individually to account for the appalling things they subject people to on occasions. Steve Rotheram: It needs to be strengthened, that’s for sure. That is to ensure that chief officers, chief executives or chief constables—whoever they might be—are personally accountable for crimes.”
“Obviously, the Hillsborough story is the failure to go that last bit of the journey towards individual accountability, which I think bedevils the British state still. In all the examples—Grenfell being a primary one, as well as Hillsborough and the Post Office scandal—where is the individual accountability? We would very much endorse what was said to you by Hillsborough Law Now. It is not about a chief executive or chief constable not knowing what is going on underneath; when there is a corporate cover-up, there has to be some individual accountability for that. It pains Steve and me that we were never able to achieve that in the Hillsborough example.”
“Q We heard earlier today about the failure of a local authority: the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the Grenfell case. In the brief time that we have, I am interested in how you will both seek to enforce this, if it is on the statute book, in your combined authorities and the local authorities under you, or those that you work collectively with. Do you need anything else included in the Bill? Do you have thoughts already about how you will set up enforcement and monitoring to make sure that it drives the culture change that Steve just talked about? Andy Burnham: We want to see a change, as advocated by Hillsborough Law Now, with respect to command responsibility, so that the responsibility is not just corporate but individual.”
“T6. At every resident meeting I host, I hear horror stories about the misuse of short-term lets, including illegal sub-letting, breaching London’s 90-day cap, late-night parties, and conditions that violate building insurance and fire safety. When will the hugely welcome mandatory register for short-term lets come online, and what difference will it make to ensuring that homes are not hotels?”
“I thank the Prime Minister for all his efforts on ramping up the economic pressure on Putin, including through oil and gas and the shadow fleet. On the $300 billion-plus of Russian sovereign banking assets in the west, we know there are a few holdouts in the European Union that do not want to mobilise a loan backed by those assets as a downpayment on reparations. Could he update us on what progress has been made to get that over the line and get that money moving?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree with the National Crime Agency that if it had open and accurate data on who owned and controlled those businesses, its operations would be much more effective? Those businesses are often linked to overseas territories, so the National Crime Agency cannot find their real owners and crack down on them.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for joining the last debate we had on this topic in this Chamber seven months ago. Does he agree that the link we are discussing between the overseas territories and the sorts of criminal activity that we all see demonstrates that the British public would be on side with cleaning up this mess?”
“The Government’s commitment to make London the anti-corruption capital of the world, as opposed to a dirty money capital, is extremely welcome. I know the Minister is personally committed to that agenda, and I look forward to the anti-corruption strategy in the next few weeks.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) on securing this debate and on his election to the chair of the excellent all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax. I thank other Members here and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) for championing this issue. We last met in this Chamber to debate this issue seven months ago to the day, so it is helpful to have another debate to check on progress and demonstrate to the overseas territories the strength of cross-party feeling about it. Such debates do have an impact. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West and I were featured in a cartoon in a BVI newspaper not long ago for bringing this issue up so frequently in the House—I take that as a badge of honour.”
“I think it should be broad, reliable and repeated access for those journalists who have helped to uncover so many issues in the past, while maintaining the Government’s long-term goal of publicly accessible beneficial ownership registers as the gold standard. The summit on illicit finance next year is a huge opportunity; it was great that the Deputy Prime Minister confirmed that on the world stage at the UN General Assembly this year. The summit will be 10 years on from the 2016 anti-corruption summit, where public registers of beneficial ownership for UK companies were first introduced. Could the summit be the moment when we finally move forward on this issue, too?”
“But the harms are still severe: serious organised crime, drugs on our streets, the high streets issue that many hon. Members have spoken about, sanctions evasion, tax dodging, environmental crime, destruction of tropical forests and property. I invite Members to join me on our “Kensington Against Dirty Money” walking tour, which Baroness Hodge and I conduct in my constituency. The No. 1 source of foreign ownership of property—my constituency has 6,000 such properties—is the BVI. The question is: why? It is not a victimless crime, and we need to understand why it is happening. Let me very briefly talk about next steps. I really welcome Baroness Hodge’s trip to the BVI. She is a fearless champion for this issue. It would be good to understand the BVI’s red lines for a legitimate interests test.”
“I am sure we all agree that we would not support that action. I want to make a serious point about where progress has been made. Some of us recently met the leader of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo. Gibraltar now has an open register, and he told us that it has had no impact on investment there. In fact, it has attracted a different type of investor: those making sustainable, long-term investments into a reliable market where financial secrecy is not undermining the strength of the financial services. I note that in the Public Gallery there is a representative of St Helena, which has made great progress—as others have said, we are also meeting representatives of the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Although it is not perfect, there has been political commitment from those leaders to make progress and work together.”
“I welcome Treasury Ministers’ previous commitment to go further on this practice by boosting HMRC to include community harm in its evaluation of whether to take on cases, and encouraging the Insolvency Service to do more to get back taxpayers’ money. Adding those practices on enforcement and planning to the suite of other things that this Government are doing to support our high streets is the way that we will work with our communities to revitalise them and to bring their high streets back to life.”
“I commend Westminster city council for cracking down on the candy shops on Oxford Street and across our city—a pioneering council supporting our high streets where its predecessor failed. I want to make the House aware of a particularly nefarious practice that has caught on. A shady organisation will pop up, with directors who have no idea what they are in control of. The organisation then fleeces the taxpayer and sells the public a dodgy product. Before it can be held accountable, the leadership changes and the organisation reappears under a new brand. This is not just the Conservative party’s strategy, but the practice of phoenixing.”
“The planning system can prevent those outfits from opening in the first place, and I am encouraged to hear that Treasury colleagues are looking at how to step up enforcement. The National Crime Agency’s Operation Machinize hit hundreds of barber shops and other cash-intensive businesses suspected of illicit activity. I was astonished that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), dismissed the arguments on tax evasion, given the harms that it causes to legitimate businesses. At one end of the spectrum, we have businesses linked to serious and organised crime, hiding the proceeds of the drugs trade and washing that money through our high streets. At the other end, we have VAT evasion, business rate evasion and dodgy trading practices.”
“As revealed by London Centric, we have even had snail farms cropping up across the country to take advantage of tax loopholes. That is a symbol of the Tory economy: sluggish, brittle and hard-to-swallow molluscs taking up retail space and pushing out legitimate businesses. Change is needed, and it is coming not just from the Government but from communities. I pay tribute to the residents and councillors in Earl’s Court who joined forces with me to block a 24/7 licence for an adult gaming centre. That is a precedent that I hope will apply to other casinos and slot machine proposals, and I welcome the Government introducing new powers to say no to new betting shops, vape shops and others that degrade our high streets.”
“My residents care deeply about our high streets. From Earl’s Court Road to Queensway, and from Notting Hill Gate to Portobello Road, those high streets have a lot of potential but were put through the wringer by the previous Conservative Government. We had empty units, unconstrained rows of slot machine casinos, and the rise of vape shops, candy shops, Harry Potter shops and barbers squeezing out legitimate businesses. Banks closed, with no coherent Government response, and neighbourhood police budgets were slashed. We have seen the rise of shoplifting, attacks on retail staff and, of course, wages flatlining for a decade. People have less money in their pockets to spend on the high streets, thanks to the mini-Budget.”
“The housing provider says that the freeholder procured the insurance—the residents have seen evidence suggesting otherwise—but the confusion over who procured the insurance and how the premium was calculated has left leaseholders caught in the middle. The justification appears to rest on a fire risk assessment that many residents believe is flawed, but the result is that ordinary homeowners, including shared ownership homeowners trying to climb the ladder, have been left with unaffordable bills and no clear line of accountability for how those costs have been allowed to spiral.”
“Rather than giving up, Adriana now supports other residents in helping them to understand their rights and how to contest these unfair practices. Her determination is admirable, but it should not fall to residents themselves to protect one another from a system that is supposed to protect them. Another group of residents who speak to me regularly about these issues, who live in a building called Shaftesbury Place, have been hit with crippling increases to their charges after a 2,489% increase in their building insurance premium. That annual cost, which is up from £15,000 to £375,000 a year, has been passed directly to the leaseholders through their service charges.”
“At worst, the current system can represent a cartel, with a broken market in which competition between managing agents is undermined by monopoly-type relationships with some freeholders and a broken connection between those who pay the bills and those who deliver the services. The impact can be devastating. One of my constituents, Adriana, has taken her housing provider to tribunal three separate times simply to get clarity on how her service charge was calculated. Each time she has won, but the housing provider is still not providing the information; indeed, it is now offering to withdraw all the charges, rather than provide that information. That is not transparency: it relies on the assumption that the other residents, many of whom are elderly or financially strained, will not have the resources to challenge.”
“I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) on securing this debate. I know that leaseholders across the country will be watching this debate very closely, because the cost of being a leaseholder has contributed to the cost of living challenges that so many of our constituents have faced for such a long time. My leaseholder action group in Kensington and Bayswater, which the Minister kindly met with recently, regularly shares stories of escalating, unaccountable and untransparent service charges levied by managing agents that they have no control over.”
“I am incredibly proud of that commitment, and I know that millions of leaseholders watching this debate also want to see it delivered. It is something that previous Governments promised, but failed to deliver. This Government have already taken decisive action to dramatically improve the rights of 4.6 million private rented households in England by abolishing no-fault evictions, increasing security in tenancies, and ensuring safe and healthy homes for all. We have taken action to dramatically improve the rights of 5 million social rented households in England by bringing Awaab’s law into force, guaranteeing emergency repairs within a statutory timeframe. Now, we have the opportunity to deliver on our promise to the 5 million leasehold households, too.”
“My constituents would appreciate hearing from the Minister—or from a different Minister at a later stage—about our progress on tackling the issue of building insurance. It is a big issue, particularly for metropolitan Members of Parliament. Of course, that must go hand in hand with continuing on the path to full reform of the system. I was delighted by the High Court’s decision to comprehensively dismiss challenges to the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. That is a vital step that will enable progress towards implementing reforms that will make it easier and cheaper for leaseholders to extend their lease or buy their freehold. I hope it will smooth the way for a new Bill that will deliver on our manifesto commitment to leaseholders—to “bring the feudal leasehold system to an end” in this Parliament.”
“I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. There is now an overwhelming case for introducing mandatory professional standards—which I know the Government are bringing forward—and for considering what regulation might look like, whether that is a new regulator or expanding on the current system. It is clear that some of the suggestions that the Government have consulted on in their “Strengthening leaseholder protections over charges and services” consultation have the potential to deliver for residents such as mine and my hon. Friend’s. That includes a right to veto their property agent, and I hope the threshold for that will be set at a level that will work in places such as my constituency. With a large number of overseas and absent owners, reaching high thresholds can be challenging, so I hope the threshold will be accessible.”
“T7. Earlier this month I visited the Spear programme in north Kensington, which is doing fantastic work in supporting young people back into employment through programmes that the DWP data lab has found to have a significant impact. Could the Secretary of State outline how evidence produced by units such as the data lab will help guide the trailblazer funding to get young people back into work?”
“Will that include the types of skills that we need for the BSR? Will the BSR moving under the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government deliver the additional transparency and accountability that we need on performance? I hope this debate can contribute to a better BSR that can tackle the building safety crisis and the housing crisis together.”
“I welcome the Government’s decision to unlock the building safety fund to social housing providers, as well as the £39 billion for the affordable homes programme, the remediation action plan to devolve responsibility down to local level, so that we get that building-by-building conversation on fixing the cladding crisis, and the construction products regulation process. Those are all positive steps. In closing, like other colleagues, I ask the Minister how much she is able to keep track of the hiring process for the 100 new staff, including the 15 new inspectors, who Andy Roe told us would be in place by the end of September. How do we deal with the skills shortage? What conversations is she having with the Department for Education to co-ordinate the construction skills package announced several months ago?”
“They include: hiring more registered building inspectors centrally, given that 27% of the backlog is due to a lack of registered building inspectors being able to get on to projects; engaging in predictable pre-application dialogue; having clearer guidelines for submissions; moving away from a staffing project model that relies on ad hoc multidisciplinary teams that take too long to form, which were described to our Committee as “dysfunctional” by Mr Roe; and perhaps even considering whether more minor improvement works, which are the majority of projects in the BSR, could be dealt with outside the scope of the full gateway process, to keep the BSR focused on the higher risk projects.”
“Members that I have never met anyone involved in campaigning for truth, justice and change for Grenfell who does not want to see this Government tackling this country’s housing crisis, including by increasing the supply of social and affordable homes that would get children out of temporary accommodation in constituencies like mine, which has some of the worst housing inequality in the country. The question for me is not whether the BSR should exist, but how it can improve. I welcome its improvement in transparency. We can now get a breakdown of the reasons behind the delays. We have already heard some really constructive suggestions.”
“Mr Roe said: “if we have not shown very significant change by the end of the calendar year, we run the risk of losing the complete confidence of everyone in the regulatory regime.” That is why it is so important. It has been felt in recent months that there has been something of a campaign about the Building Safety Regulator, and some of that campaign is driven by a desire to roll back changes in building safety introduced post Grenfell. I totally reject the false choice between safety and house building. I believe we need a regulator that works. That means being specific about what changes will make the system more predictable and faster, to help deliver on the Government’s housing goals, while ensuring that we do not compromise on safety. I can assure hon.”
“That is up to 1 million people still stuck in unsafe buildings, victims of the building safety crisis that is ruining lives. Many of those residents have themselves suffered due to the performance of the Building Safety Regulator. Other Members have not yet mentioned that there are almost double the number of major cladding remediation projects awaiting gateway 2 approval than there are new builds. The housing journalist Pete Apps wrote today of a housing association-owned block that has been waiting since November 2023 to install new fire doors. I welcome the new chair of the Building Safety Regulator, Andy Roe, being so candid last month with the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, of which I was a member up until this week.”
“As the Grenfell Tower inquiry revealed, there were a litany of systematic failures that led to the fire—a failure to learn lessons from previous fires, most notably the Lakanal House fire in 2009; a failure of Conservative Ministers to update approved building regulations; a failure of manufacturers to produce safe cladding; a failure of builders and architects to ensure safe design; and a failure to spot risks on the part of local building control, who signed off an unsafe building. There are many more. As many Members will know from their own constituencies, this problem stretches far beyond Grenfell. Today, more than 5,500 residential buildings contain dangerous, flammable cladding and fewer than half of mid and high-rise buildings have even begun remedial work.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton South (Mike Reader) and for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) on securing this debate. I start by briefly reminding hon. Members why Britain’s building safety regime needed such radical reform after the Grenfell Tower fire, which took place eight and half years ago in my constituency of Kensington and Bayswater, with 72 people losing their lives in an entirely preventable and foreseeable tragedy. The bereaved, survivors and our community are still waiting for justice. We hope it will come soon.”
“I strongly welcome the sanctions targeting the $108 billion in oil revenue that the Kremlin received last year and the progress on the $350 billion in frozen Russian sovereign assets. I applaud the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor for their efforts in building a coalition with the EU and others to move from using the interest payments to using the capital. Does she agree that that recent breakthrough shows that legally this money should be treated as a downpayment on the reparations for the horrific harm that Russia has caused, which we know it will do everything to avoid paying?”
“10. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Online Safety Act 2023 in reducing children’s exposure to harmful online content.”
“I also welcome my right hon. Friend to her place. Does she agree that Reform’s reckless plans to scrap the Online Safety Act would fail a generation of young people, including all the parents and children in my constituency of Kensington and Bayswater who have joined my local campaign to protect children online?”
“I believe that an oversight mechanism would help the Government to improve, deliver on a public sector reform agenda, and deliver on justice and change for victims, including those at Grenfell.”
“Grenfell shows us the cost: after the Lakanal House fire in 2009, the coroner made clear recommendations to review building regulations, including guidance on external fire spread applicable to new and older housing stock. If those recommendations had been implemented, it is very possible that the fire eight years later would have been avoided. I urge the Government to consider independent oversight of whether lessons from inquiries have been learned, including through a national oversight mechanism. This is not about taking power away from Ministers or Parliament. If the Government wish to reject recommendations, they can do so and explain why, but that should be done openly and transparently.”
“But we know, from Windrush to the Post Office, LGBT veterans, infected blood and many other scandals, that we need to reform how we approach injustices involving the very state that is supposed to protect people. That starts with the Hillsborough law: an essential levelling of the playing field between victims and the state, including, as others have said, parity of legal aid and a duty of candour. But we should not stop at the Hillsborough law. It is also vital that we ensure that lessons of past tragedies are never ignored. To go through lengthy and expensive public inquiries and then fail to change compounds the original injustice further. The same goes for coroners’ findings, including prevention of future deaths reports, which are vital early warnings to the state to prevent larger tragedies.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) for securing this debate. More than eight years after the Grenfell Tower fire, the fight for justice for the 72 who lost their lives, the bereaved and the survivors continues. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the publication of the Grenfell Tower inquiry report, which shone a light on the systematic failure that led to the fire. I welcome the Government’s acceptance of the recommendations from the inquiry, but there has still been no criminal accountability and the pace of change has been far too slow—just witness the families across the country still sleeping in unsafe flats that have not been remediated. I pay tribute again to the Hillsborough families, who have fought to ensure that other communities do not have to suffer as they did.”