Laura Kuenssberg confronts Keir Starmer over Grenfell-style cladding

Keir Starmer has been confronted by Laura Kuenssberg over his refusal to say when dangerous cladding would be removed from thousands of homes.

The Prime Minister said he is “frustrated” at the speed of action in the seven years since the Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed 72 lives. Since the tragedy, surveys have found 4,630 buildings in England that are over 11 metres had unsafe cladding – but just 1,350 have been re-clad.

But Ms Kuenssberg told him victims of the fire, and those living in similar homes, want to hear a definite date. Last week campaigners told The Mirror they’ve been locked in lengthy legal battles to make their homes safe.

Mr Starmer told the BBC: “I’m frustrated that it’s going as slowly as it is to deal with the cladding. A lot of that is to is to find sort of true responsibility and to hold people to account for getting on with the job.

“The money is there, the intention is there. We need to move more quickly.” It comes after a bombshell public inquiry report found greed and “systematic dishonesty” led to the 2017 Grenfell blaze.

He said Housing Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is working “at pace” to deal with dangerous cladding. But after he refused to commit to a date for its removal, Ms Kuenssberg told him: “You are the Prime Minister now. Some people would want to hear you say, ‘You know what? In a year, everybody will be safe. In two years, everybody will be safe’.”

“What’s your ambition on this? Because for years people victims of Grenfell, their families and people who are in unsafe blocks have heard politicians promise that they were going to speed it up, promised that they were going to accelerate it.

“It’s exactly the kind of frustration that you yourself say you’ve heard and you understand, and yet here you are today, unable to give them a firm promise.”

The Prime Minister responded: “Well, I’m not going to give a false promise. I think we’ve seen too many of those in the last 14 years where people have given numbers and dates which they plucked from the sky, which are not meaningful.

“I’m not going to do that. I know that the work is going on to identify what blocks need work, on how the money has been allocated. A lot of this now is identifying and pushing those who are really responsible to do this, to do the work that they are required to do.

“If we need more powers to do that, we’ll pass those powers.”