Repeat of Grenfell Tower tragedy 'in the post', ministers warned after Manchester tower found with flammable cladding

A repeat of the Grenfell Tower disaster is “in the post”, ministers have been warned, after a tower block in Manchester was revealed to be covered in combustible cladding.

Labour MP Emma Dent Coad, who represents the London borough where Grenfell Tower is located, issued the warning after it emerged the X1 Eastbank block in Manchester had similar external panels.

Housing minister Kit Malthouse, responding to an urgent Commons question on the issue, said he was “satisfied that everybody who is resident of that block at the moment is safe”.

Labour branded the revelation a “national shame” and said that it was “shocking” that 19 months on from the Grenfell Tower fire, buildings were still clad in the same material involved in the disaster.

Shadow housing secretary John Healey said: “It’s shocking that the government’s own figures show there were 437 high-rise blocks with the same Grenfell-style cladding, and 370 are yet to have this removed.

“It’s shocking that the minister knows every one of these blocks but won’t name the landlords and won’t tell the residents.”

Mr Healey said “whatever the minister says he’s doing, it isn’t working”, adding that the government response has “simply been too slow, too weak and always under pressure from this House and from Labour”.

He said: “If the government can’t fix problems this serious and this urgent, what on earth is it in office for?”

Unveiling Labour’s six-point plan to tackle cladding issues, the shadow minister said his party would widen the testing programme for building materials, set a deadline for all blocks to be made safe and make clear the legal duty to landlords to get this done and not pass the bill on to leaseholders.

He said his party would set up a loan fund for landlords to pay for remedial work, name the landlords refusing to make the changes and toughen the sanctions on them “up to and including taking over blocks”.

In response, Mr Malthouse criticised Mr Healey for making this “such an antagonistic exchange”, saying fixing the issue “requires significant amounts of engineering and construction work which will necessarily take time”.

Defending the government’s response to the tragedy in west London which killed 72 people as “immediate and wide-ranging”, he said “significant resource and effort has been injected into removing this cladding”.

He said while they continue to make progress, he agreed with Labour that “we will get to a small number of owners or contractors where we will need to consider more assertive measures, and they are under active consideration at the moment”.

Mr Malthouse had earlier opened the debate by saying: “There is nothing more important than making sure people are safe in their homes and we remain determined to ensure that no community suffers again as the community did so tragically and appallingly at Grenfell Tower.”

Ms Dent Coad later said that the minister was treating the issue “like some sort of theoretical exercise”.

She said: “People are genuinely afraid in their bed and just saying that the minister is satisfied is not really enough.

“Nothing has yet changed, the government is ignoring warnings, our constituents are going to bed afraid, current measures are not working, as one of the Grenfell survivors said, ‘Grenfell two is in the post’. How many more must die before the Government takes positive action to keep people safe in their beds?”

Mr Malthouse responded by saying that a “significant amount of work has taken place” since Grenfell to change building regulations.

PA