Author Archives: The Voice

It’s half a decade since we watched in horror as the Grenfell Tower fire took hold. At the time the Government promised that such a tragedy would never happen again, but in England alone, 10,000 buildings are still considered unsafe. Imagine the stress of being trapped in such a building, scared that it could go on fire at any time.

To mark the fifth anniversary, Lib Dem Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper and peer Kath Pinnock had called for a statutory public enquiry with the power to summon witnesses to give evidence under oath and demand disclosure of any relevant evidence.

Daisy Cooper said:

The horrific events which led to the loss of 72 people five years ago today will never be forgotten.

After the tragedy of Grenfell, this Conservative Government said ‘never again’. Yet five years on, tens of thousands of people are still trapped in homes which aren’t safe and they cannot sell, and lessons have not been learned.

Families living in homes with unsafe cladding and other dangerous fire safety defects are facing unimaginable stress and anxiety while the remediation programme stutters along at a glacial pace.

It’s simply shameful that five years down the line from this tragic disaster, the big changes needed to stop it from happening again simply have not happened.

A separate public inquiry into the Government’s handling of this building safety crisis is frankly long overdue and is nothing less than what those still living in unsafe homes deserve.

Kath Pinnock said:

As if people weren’t already struggling with just about everything going up very steeply in price, Ofgem said today that further pain is on the way. A further rise in the energy price cap means that households could be paying another £900 per year come October. This would be an almost doubling of the cap in 6 months and would be disastrous for people who were finding impossible to afford the basics before April’s rise.

Ed Davey has called on the Government to declare a national emergency and convene a special energy COBRA meeting to chart a way forward.

He said:

It is now or never to save families and pensioners on the brink. The government must declare the cost of living crisis a national emergency.  Boris Johnson has sat on his hands for months, he cannot waste a single second longer.