A top south Bucks politician has defended his decision to vote to reject a proposed rule requiring landlords to make their homes “fit for human habitation” in light of the Grenfell Tower tragedy because, he says, there is no “causal connection” between the two matters.

Beaconsfield MP Dominic Grieve argued that the Labour-proposed amendment to the government’s Housing and Planning bill, which was rejected by Conservative MPs last year, related to private landlords and not public authorities, like Kensington and Chelsea Council, which manages the building through the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO).

Mr Grieve also said that the amendment was declined because it was “thought to add nothing to the position of the duties on private landlords in how they have to deal with the state of their premises”.

He said: “If you let a house, you’re subject to a whole series of regulations as a private landlord about the state in which that house has to be in.

“So to pass a blanket amendment saying that the house must be fit for human habitation – well, it’s blindingly obvious that it has to be in for for human habitation but above all it has to be specifically fit in a whole series of list of things.

“But in any case, this building that has caught fire wasn’t in the hands of any private landlord, it was in the hands of a public authority.

“The council or the councils are subject to a completely separate set, and probably far more, subject principally to the provisions of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

“So the idea that the amendment, which was debated whenever it was, can have any relationship to that absolutely central duty, which has been around since 1974, let alone the rest of the regulations, strikes me as being as just a little bit far-fetched.”

Combustible cladding is thought to have contributed to the rapid spreading of the inferno, which engulfed the north Kensington tower block last week killing at least 79 people.

Mr Grieve, who is a landlord, said the tragedy was a “terrible event” which “should not have happened”.

He added: “There is something that has gone very wrong. But what has gone wrong I’m not in a position to tell and neither is anybody else.

“It may be it’s a piece of gross negligence by somebody, it may be that the rules weren’t followed, it may be that the rules were not clearly enough defined.

“But it’s not possible to comment on that – what one can say is that the duty on the council as the landlord through their tenants’ organisation, and indeed the duty on every single contractor who was involved in that building, is to comply with the terms of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

“So somewhere along the line if cladding was put on which was not fit for purpose, then that will come up but it’s got nothing to do with the debate we had on private landlords.”

He added: “This does seem to me like somebody trying to make bricks without straw and trying to put together a criticism which absolutely has no validity whatsoever – and if it does, I would like somebody to explain to me what the causal link is between these two things because I honestly don’t see it.

“To accuse the government of having contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire by turning down an amendment in relation to private landlords, which had no bearing on a council’s duty as a public authority, is putting two and two together and making 16.

“It just doesn’t make any sense at all.”