John Healey had an Urgent Question this morning demanding to know why the government hasn’t provided additional funds for fire safety post-Grenfell:

“The Secretary of State has refused any government funds for essential fire safety work… can he confirm… there will be no government funding for councils or housing associations for essential retrofit fire safety work?”

When the boot was on the other foot in 2009, the then Housing minister John Healey was asked the same question in the wake of the Lakanal House fire. Guess what. Healey said no to any additional funds for fire safety:

“The resources local authorities receive for management and maintenance and major repairs should enable them to implement necessary fire safety measures in council housing.”

Hansard never forgets…

Guido has got hold of the video of Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell telling a Glastonbury crowd that the Grenfell victims were “murdered“. In fact he says it twice. Worth watching for the awkward audience reaction when he repeatedly drops the M-word.

“Is democracy working? It didn’t work if you were a family living on the 20th floor of Grenfell Tower. Those families, those individuals, 79 so far and there will be more, were murdered by political decisions taken over recent decades. The decision not to build homes and to view housing as only for financial speculation rather than meeting a basic human need murdered those families. The decision to close fire stations and to cut 10,000 fire fighters and then to freeze their pay for over a decade . They were political decisions.”

So does McDonnell think the many, many Labour councils who also approved unsafe cladding are attempted murderers?