Speeches by Norris.

“Yes. Certainly for the aspects that we control, we are going to do much better in that regard by making sure we have comprehensive databases. We will offer all the opportunities that people want to have that conversation. If anybody listening today wants to have an individual conversation, I will have that in whatever …”

“The oversight mechanism is something that, exactly as you say, Ms Smith, the Grenfell bereaved and survivors, and next of kin, campaign for compellingly, as do families affected by Hillsborough and by the infected blood scandal—I’m afraid that, sadly, you could line up scandal and failure of the British state after sca…”

“I can only speak for my own views on this. You want to get it right, first of all. This is a really important thing that people are putting a lot of stock into. You have to find the balance, it seems to me, between what the Committee is doing here, what Parliament will do all day every day, the relationship between the…”

“Having looked at the previous evidence, I have reflected on the point about marking our own homework. I have to say that in preparing for this Committee I did not feel like I was marking my own homework. I feel—as you all look back at me in this way—like my homework is very much being marked for me. Similarly, when I s…”

“The tracker that we publish quarterly will reflect our departmental position. There will always be, as you would expect, internal debates and conversations about the best ways to do things, but what we put in the public domain will reflect what we are talking about and what we think. It will be a very sober reflection …”

“I am not sure of the distinction between the two things, so I would not want to say something that I cannot deliver on. To be clear, the picture that I as Minister look at regularly with Ben, Catherine and the team—that picture of the recommendation, what we are doing and what we will do next—is what will go into the p…”

“I cannot make that commitment today, Mr Cocking. That is a Cabinet Office-run process. I have made a commitment in line with what we published in the inquiry, on the publicly available information, and there is ongoing work across Government on the national oversight mechanism more generally.”

“That is—”

“On the oversight mechanism, I am saying that I cannot make that commitment today. That work is ongoing at the very centre of Government. On the tracker, that will be publicly available. People will be able to scrutinise it and talk to us about it. We are very mindful of progress. I think I am probably unique among Memb…”

“When I took over as Minister, I inherited a trajectory on which the effective remediation of buildings in the way you talk about was going to take us into the 2040s. It will probably not surprise you that one of the first questions I asked as the new Minister was, “How many buildings are we talking about here?” The ans…”

“I am Alex Norris, the Member of Parliament for Nottingham North and Kimberley. I am the Minister for building safety and, at some point today, fire.”

“I mean that the elected mayor will exercise those functions through a statutory deputy.”

“This is something that we wrestled with in the “English Devolution” White Paper, and that will follow in the Bill. It is very complicated. If arrangements deliver locally, that is the primary thing, but I do think that there is a responsibility for us, as the national holders of the ring. You cannot keep layering on mo…”

“I am not sure I could make an assessment on them being “swamped”, because I have not had that conversation with them, but I can speak from my experience. Clearly, people are feeling the need to escalate their complaints to them to a significant degree, as they do to us, so the system obviously does not work yet. One of…”

“Oh, sorry, I totally missed that. No, we accepted that recommendation and we are having an independent college of fire and rescue. That is another thing that we are working with the advisory group on. We still have to decide the kind of form and functions of that, but, yes, very much so; I think it is a great opportuni…”

“First of all, I think that that report, and some of the reporting in the media around culture, brought these issues to the fore. It was a priority for my predecessor, Diana Johnson, including both as Chair of HAC and subsequently as a Minister. Fire services are interesting organisations. We talk about the culture in t…”

“I will answer the second question first, because the answer is slightly quicker. We will lay the regulations on PEEPs in this coming quarter. Frankly, the hold-up is on my end, in that I take responsibility for PEEPs from today—assuming that the King is minded to move the responsibility—and I want to look at them. I wa…”

“There are gaps in the system that it could help to target. First, we are having to crunch 11 to 18 metres. The very good people at Homes England are going through this building by building by building. For buildings over 18 metres, there is an obligation for a building owner to say, “Hey, I’ve got an over 18-metre buil…”

“I really, really want to get on with this. That is the reason for a sharp 45-day consultation. The Green Paper reflected long-running conversations with industry. I think Philip White said it in the previous session: products are a bit of an underpriced element in the safety regime. I think people would be surprised th…”

“As you say, we have gone to the point of mandatory sprinklers for new facilities. The judgment made on impact was that, for existing facilities, the building owners need to manage that fire risk. It could be by the installation of sprinklers by choice. That way, there could be alternative models depending on the constr…”