London, June 22: The Grenfell Tower inferno in London has opened a real Pandora's Box.

It is now slowly being revealed that some of the flats in the 24-storey residential block had almost certainly been sublet by residents in whose name they were registered, while others were most probably occupied by illegal immigrants.

Scotland Yard has upped the death toll to 79 but the real number may never be known because there is no record of the people who were staying in flats belonging to residents who broke the law by subletting them.

It may prove even more difficult to discover the identities of the illegal immigrants who were living in a twilight world always scared they could be caught out by the authorities.

They may not come forward if they survived and, if they perished, they may at best become charred remains with no name.

Prime Minister Theresa May made a Commons statement today that any illegal immigrants who were living in Grenfell Tower would not be reported to the Home Office.

And this from a Prime Minister who wants to cut migration to "the tens of thousands" and on a day when it was announced that the UK's population had surged to 65,648,000 by the end of June last year - an increase of 0.8 per cent over the previous 12 months.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, also acknowledged the possible presence of illegal immigrants or people living in sublet premises.

"There may be people who have got friends and family visiting, who they are worried about if they report them because they haven't got immigration status," he said. "All of those people should feel confident that if they come forward and speak to the authorities, that no action will be taken."One has to assume that if this was happening in one tower block it is also probably happening elsewhere, not only in London, but in capitals throughout western Europe.

Another, equally intractable problem is what to do with other tower blocks that have inflammable cladding similar to the one which turned Grenfell Tower into an inferno within 15 minutes.

Tests indicate the burning cladding produced deadly cyanide gases turning Grenfell Tower into a mini-Union Carbide plant like the one in Bhopal.

The government has promised to rehouse all those living in potentially hazardous tower blocks but this is clearly an impossible undertaking. According to May's statement, there are 600 of them with some form of cladding.

So far three of them are said to be similar to the cladding at Grenfell Tower, which had aluminium composite material (ACM) which burns easily. The towers will be checked at the rate of 100 a day.

No one has worked out what will happen if residents from hundreds of towers demand to be rehoused immediately -especially as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the hard Left believe the Grenfell Tower tragedy can be used to topple the Prime Minister.

"It is both a tragedy and an outrage because every single one of those deaths could have been avoided," raged Corbyn.

In her statement, a contrite Prime Minister said that initial failure in preventing the fire in the first place "was then compounded by the fact that the support on the ground in the initial hours was not good enough. As Prime

Minister, I have apologised for that second failure and taken responsibility for doing what we can to put it right."

"What became clear very quickly is that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea could not cope - and it is right that the Chief Executive Officer has now resigned," she said, referring to the departure yesterday of

Nicholas Holgate who head was demanded by the communities secretary Sajid Javid.

"It is also why I set up the Grenfell Tower Recovery Task Force, which I have been chairing personally," May added.

"The House should of course be careful on speculating what caused this fire," she warned. "But as a precaution, the government has arranged to test cladding in all relevant tower blocks.

She also confirmed that "151 homes were destroyed in the fire, most in the tower itself but also several in the immediate vicinity. All those who have lost their homes have been offered emergency hotel accommodation; and all will be offered rehousing within 3 weeks. Already 164 suitable properties have been identified and they are being checked and made ready for people to move into."

She said that "sixty-eight of those will be in a brand-new low-rise block that has just been built by Berkeley Homes. The developer has generously offered to turn over the entire block at cost price. Contractors are on-site now, working 24/7 to speed up fit-out so that the first families can move in this summer."

"We cannot and will not ask people to live in unsafe homes," May pledged.

There are problems, however, with transferring hundreds of poor Afro-Caribbean, Muslim and Arab residents into luxury estates intended for the white middle classes. Some of the latter will not mind but others in apartments costing £2m-£8m will not take kindly to living cheek by jowl with residents whose rents will be picked up substantially by the local council.

There is another issue. Should the flats be given to those who were actually living in the sublet premises or their "landlords"? And would the new apartments be sublet again for a fat profit?

May will not know whether to laugh or cry that a well known actress, Tracey Ullman, announced today that she has decided to caricature the Prime Minister on television.