Skip to main content

David Lammy: Grenfell fire was corporate manslaughter

THOSE responsible for the Grenfell Tower’s fire safety failings should be arrested for “corporate manslaughter,” Labour MP David Lammy said yesterday.

The Tottenham MP, who knew missing artist Khadija Saye, 24, for a “number of years” when she worked for his wife, slammed the failings that allowed the flames to spread rapidly as an “outrage.”

He said: “This is the richest borough in our country treating its citizens in this way.

“We should call it what it is. It’s corporate manslaughter, that’s what it is, and there should be arrests made, frankly.”

Mr Lammy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Ms Saye was a “beautiful young woman with an amazing career ahead of her, wonderful artist, her work is on show in Venice at the moment, and we’ve heard nothing.

“We hope and pray that she is amongst them [in hospital] and not perished in that building, as I suspect hundreds will have done by the end of this count.”

He added that most of the block’s residents were “the working poor” of London and described the incident as “absolutely the face of poverty.

“Many of us across the country have been caught up in an election, knocking on housing estate doors right across the country, travelling up to the top floors of tower blocks, and we know as politicians that the conditions in this country are unacceptable.

“We built buildings in the ’70s. Those ’70s buildings, many of them should be demolished. They haven’t got easy fire escapes, they’ve got no sprinklers — it’s totally, totally unacceptable in Britain that this is allowed to happen and people lose their lives in this way and people should be held to account.”

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today