ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: Now the government has been severely criticised for its immediate response to the Grenfell Tower fire. The government didn’t publicly meet victims of the disaster until Friday and all this with negotiations to form a minority government still ongoing and Brexit talks due to begin tomorrow. Well the Trade Minister and Minister for London, Greg Hands, joins us now. How are you?

GREG HANDS: Good morning, good.

SR: Well let’s talk first about the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower, families trapped in their homes, really upsetting scenes. The government has of course been criticised for its response, warnings about fire safety ignored potentially by the council and the developers, people are right to be angry aren’t they?

GREG HANDS: I think that’s right. I think people are right to have concerns and want to seek answers to all those questions. There are a huge number of questions involved here and the role of the government is not only to provide the immediate support in support of the local council and the emergency services but also Theresa May of course has announced the setting up of a full public inquiry which will look at so many of the other longer term questions in relation to building, fire safety, the role of the different authorities and so on.

SR: The thing is, people want reassurance much quicker than that, don’t they? I mean you represent a neighbouring constituency, you have high rises in your constituency, you are a father yourself. If you were living on the 20th floor of a high rise putting your kids to bed, would you feel safe right now?

GREG HANDS: Well that is precisely why we are taking the action immediately. There is a police led investigation in conjunction with the fire and the Health and Safety Executive. It’s worth pointing out, Sophy, we still don’t actually know the cause of the fire, we are hoping to have that in the next couple of days.

SR: We don’t know the cause but know something went horrifically wrong when you look at the building, how can you give any reassurance to people who are worried about their family’s safety?

GREG HANDS: Because we’re undertaking an urgent inspection of other tower blocks, there are two and a half thousand such tower blocks in the country. The Department for Local Government and Communities has been in touch, has tried to contact 166 local authorities, the leading Housing Associations has an urgent programme of inspection underway but I would stress that until we actually know the precise cause of the fire at Grenfell Tower then a lot of this of course is speculation as to what might have prevented the terrible tragedy. But the most important thing is to get to the bottom of it and to take the action as quickly as we possibly can.

SR: Speed of course is the essence. Theresa May has said that the immediate response to help those people involved, the families, those people affected, simply wasn’t good enough and many people will look at her own reaction and say, actually that wasn’t good enough either. Why did it take her so long to meet with victims?

GREG HANDS: Well I think you have to understand – and of course we’re right, the immediate reaction wasn’t good enough, particularly in the local area, particularly with the victims, particularly with others who were affected. However the fire wasn’t actually brought under control until 1am on Thursday morning, later that same morning Theresa May visited the site, spoke to the emergency services who were still very much at that point emergency services in an emergency situation. She also went to the local hospital in my constituency, the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, to visit those who were injured and she has had two further meetings with residents both on Thursday and Friday, sorry Friday and Saturday, to talk with local residents and you will see a very long meeting at Number 10 tomorrow.

SR: You don’t think she did anything wrong?

GREG HANDS: The Prime Minister is very, very closely … she is very, very much involved, she has chaired the meetings to seek to deal with the immediate response. The Prime Minister is very personally affected by this disaster.

SR: Is there a risk though that this tragedy is at risk of highlighting what some people would perceive to be her weaknesses? Not showing natural empathy when she meets people, not being able to think quickly on her feet, to be blunt seeming a bit cold?

GREG HANDS: Well I don’t accept that actually because she has responded on four separate occasions with either visits to the site, the local community, the hospital, she’s had the residents in so I don’t accept that at all. What I do accept is that the response in the first hours, the first day, was not as good as it should have been.

SR: What should have been done?

GREG HANDS: Well I think we should have had more people on the ground and people more visible. I visited the local area on Thursday lunchtime and there were people putting in incredible efforts, I saw a lot of the local councillors out and about, a lot of council officials, I saw the Red Cross out and about, I saw Victim Support out and about. There was a big effort but I think perhaps we should have put more people in more immediately particularly on the first day and with a more high visibility role.

SR: Let’s talk about what happens next, the government’s response to the situation right now. This is what the Housing Minister Alok Sharma said on Thursday which was the government will guarantee – I hope that will be appearing on our screens soon. What he did was the government will guarantee that every single family from Grenfell Tower will be rehoused in the local area, so can you guarantee that every single family affected will be rehoused in that borough?

GREG HANDS: Yes.

SR: Within the same borough?

GREG HANDS: Within the local area, within the borough of Kensington and Chelsea or neighbouring boroughs within three weeks.

SR: But many people don’t see that as being in the local area. If you are being asked to move to a different borough which may have different schools, different council tax, that’s not the same.

GREG HANDS: Well we have also said that will pay for all of the costs that any resident would have by moving slightly further away, for example any costs of having to go to school in the immediate term and all these things. We have laid on a £5 million fund for the victims, for those immediately affected to cover these kinds of costs precisely for those kinds of reasons.

SR: So you can’t guarantee then that they will be housed in the same borough?

GREG HANDS: I am saying that they will be housed in Kensington and Chelsea or the neighbouring boroughs within three weeks, that is a guarantee given by the Prime Minister in conjunction with the local council.

SR: Let’s talk about some of the wider issues because I think some of the things that are so difficult to fathom about the fire is that some of these warnings were already there. Let’s talk about sprinklers for example, since 2006 all new properties have had to have sprinklers fitted and after the fire in Camberwell the Coroner recommended that the government looks at making sure that older properties are retro fitted with sprinklers, so why hasn’t that happened? Why is it that if you are in a new property you have more of a chance of surviving a fire than in an older one?

GREG HANDS: Well we have responded to all of the recommendations following the Coroner’s report on Lakenal House in Southwark, all of those recommendations, we wrote to local authorities specifically on the subject of sprinklers but clearly this is part of …

SR: You wrote to the local authorities, in some ways that’s not the same is it? You could have forced them to do it.

GREG HANDS: This is part of the public inquiry to look at these questions, Sophy. At the moment we don’t actually know in a specific case if sprinklers would have made a difference because we don’t yet know the cause of the fire and some of the consequences of the fire. It is really important that we have that before we jump to conclusions about alleviation methods that could be taken.

SR: There’s also the question of cladding, and I accept of course that we don’t know the full reasons for the fire, why it spread, but there have been a lot of questions about the cladding on Grenfell Tower and reports that it is banned in the US on buildings over 40 feet, in Germany, Denmark, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Serbia buildings above a certain height must also only contain non-combustible products so is our health and safety worse than Serbia?

GREG HANDS: Well that is part of the immediate investigation, is to look at the cladding and I totally understand people’s desire to have answers to these questions. We all saw the TV coverage on Wednesday of what appeared to be the outside of the building in flames so it is perfectly natural that people will want to ask these questions and to look at the cladding. However we do need to look at the specific police investigation into what is the cause of the fire before jumping to conclusions. What we are doing is we are examining the cladding that was actually used on the building and also how it was attached, which is also a key part of that question. That is part of the urgent investigating that is underway, that won’t wait for the public inquiry in terms of whether the cladding played a key role in this fire.

SR: Are there any questions about whether that cladding shouldn’t have been used under UK law as well?

GREG HANDS: My understanding is that the cladding that was reported is also not in accordance with UK Building Regulations, the cladding as was reported however what we do need to find out is precisely what cladding was used and how it was attached and that is the purpose, one of the purposes of the urgent investigation led by the police in conjunction with the fire service and the Health and Safety Executive.

SR: At times this week Theresa May, the Prime Minister, has looked like a bit of a broken woman, do you feel sorry for her?

GREG HANDS: No, I don't think that’s true. I’ve seen Theresa May chairing the meetings, chairing the government’s response, very much in control of the situation, directing efforts, a wide host of agencies involved – the fire service, the police, the Mayor of London …

SR: She has looked pretty shaken at times though, for example when she had to be bundled into a her car after a meeting at a church with the cries of coward ringing in her ears.

GREG HANDS: Look, I think it is totally understandable that somebody is showing the human reaction at what is a major, major disaster. The London Fire Brigade described this to me when I visited the site as the nearest thing London has had to 9/11, that if you like is the magnitude of this disaster so it is understandable that people are angry but it’s also, the Prime Minister is in charge of the situation, directing efforts and of course is personally affected by the disaster.

SR: Now there are reports this morning that MPs in your party, backbenchers, have given Theresa May ten days to turn it around and some are preparing to write letters of no confidence in her leadership. Is it only a matter of time?

GREG HANDS: I don’t recognise that, I’ve not heard this and what I did see on Monday when Theresa May addressed the whole parliamentary party in the House of Commons was a party united and in support of our Prime Minister, getting on with the job of delivering a programme for government which we will see on Wednesday in the Queen’s Speech, starting the Brexit talks tomorrow – there is a lot going on, dealing with the consequence, dealing with the immediacy of the Grenfell Tower fire. All of these things of course, there is quite a lot in the in-tray but the Prime Minister is getting on with it.

SR: You say the party is united behind the Prime Minister, is the reason for that really because they are so worried about Jeremy Corbyn and what would happen if there was another election?

GREG HANDS: Well I don’t accept that. Jeremy Corbyn after all lost the election and we do have more than …

SR: But you didn’t win it though did you?

GREG HANDS: … fifty seats more than Jeremy Corbyn, we formed a government and we’re looking forward to presenting a programme in the Queen’s Speech and doing what the British people want us to do which is to get on delivering for them particularly in relation to the Grenfell Tower fire but on Brexit and all these other incidents.

SR: You talk about Brexit, let’s talk a bit about your job as the Minister for International Trade because tomorrow your boss, Liam Fox, is going to be pushing trade deals with the US, at the same time David Davis the Brexit Secretary is going to be kicking off those talks in Brussels. Is that a little bit like starting a relationship or planning a wedding with a new girlfriend before you’ve actually sorted out a divorce with your current partner?

GREG HANDS: Well no, I don’t accept that because what we do need to do, you are quite right we cannot sign any trade deals until we are outside of the European Union but we do need to prepare the ground, to scope out those trade deals, have those discussions and of course the United States is our single largest trading partner, it is an incredibly important trading relationship. One million people in Britain go to work every day for US companies, in the United States one million people go to work for UK companies and it is really important that we have a very strong trading relationship both with the United States, with the European Union I might add and also beyond.

SR: Now Theresa May of course called this election to try and increase her mandate for Brexit, she ended up losing seats. As a result of that are you going to change your vision for leaving the European Union as a result, listening to what the public appear to have said in that election?

GREG HANDS: Well government policy remains unchanged and you have also got to remember, Sophy, that the Labour party also stood on a platform of leaving the single market and …

SR: Well the statement said that they …

GREG HANDS: Their position has move around a little bit but the actual manifesto said leaving the single market, so more than 80% of people voted for parties that were pledged to do that. We are getting on with what we said we would do, the Prime Minister’s speech back in January, the letter to Donald Tusk, the government’s white paper, we have laid out in quite a lot of detail the particular course that we want to take in relation to Brexit but these are negotiations, you cannot say precisely what the destination will be but we have laid out clearly what we want to do in these talks.

SR: Okay, Greg Hands, thanks very much for speaking to us today.

GREG HANDS: Thank you.