By Mark Rowe, Fire Brigades Union national officer
Over the last couple of weeks we have watched government ministers give evidence to the Grenfell Inquiry.
They were only called to give evidence for just over five days in total. When we consider that firefighters and control staff gave evidence for weeks, that is shameful on the part of the inquiry.
And the evidence they gave was shameful too.
Lord Pickles, for Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government, gave evidence that should disgust us all. He couldn’t even remember the right death toll. Instead he confused it with the death toll for another crime against the working class – Hillsborough – and stated what would be the wrong death toll for Hillsborough, at that.
More widely, he gave evidence in a manner which suggested he had more important places to be. In fact, he explicitly said as much. He said “could I respectfully remind you that you did promise that we would be away this morning and I have changed my schedules to fit this in. I do have an extremely busy day”.
It appears he does not care about Grenfell, that he does not care about the bereaved, survivors and residents of Grenfell, and that he does not care about the people who died at Grenfell. He can barely even be bothered to try and help find out why this awful tragedy happened.
But ministers’ evidence turning stomachs went beyond that.
Time and time again we heard ministers trot up and deny that deregulation – a government commitment to cutting rules, benefit business - had anything to do with Grenfell.
Let us be clear: there is absolutely no way that that is the case.
Grenfell is widely acknowledged to have resulted from specific gaps in regulation. Deregulation, meanwhile, has been pursued for forty years by governments of both colours.
Are we meant to believe that this is all a big coincidence – that on the one hand the government wanted weak regulation and the other hand there were specific weaknesses in the legislation, and that these things had nothing to do with each other? According to the evidence of these ministers, apparently so.
There was a background of a deregulatory agenda during the coalition government and the Conservative government that came after. It was symbolised by the “Red Tape Challenge”, and the “One In, Three Out” policy.
Against this background ministers ignored repeated warnings that fire safety building regulations were too weak when it came to external cladding. This including recommendations from the Lakanal House fire coroner, where six people died following the spread of fire across external cladding.
But ministers from these governments gave evidence that essentially said that these warnings being ignored was nothing to do with deregulation. That these recommendations were ignored for a whole variety of reasons – their own incompetence, civil servant incompetence, anything except the most obvious answer. The true answer.
The evidence of Eric Pickles here, whose department was responsible for building regulation, was as vital as it was stunning.
He was presented with evidence that senior civil servants in his department felt crushed in what they could do by deregulation. Yet he claimed that it was an utter mystery why they would feel like that, despite his own repeated cheerleading for deregulation during his time as secretary of state.
He also repeatedly claiming that documents showed he had exempted vital building regulations from specific deregulation policies. The inquiry has not been able to find a conclusive document of this type.
There are some further, clear examples when it comes to deregulation and Grenfell, too.
In 2013, Eric Pickles removed sections 20 and 21 of the London Building Act. Section 20 imposed additional fire safety requirements dependent on the height of a building. This is an example of deregulation – removing safety law to give the construction industry a free hand.
Brandon Lewis attempted to push through the mutualisation of the fire and rescue service while fire ministers – effectively privatising the service without consulting with firefighters or the communities we serve.
Lewis and other ministers also cut one in five firefighter jobs, along with fire station closures, weakening resilience and damaging the public service our communities rely on in emergencies.
Despite these links, despite all the evidence that has come to light, what did Pickles have to say on deregulation in his closing remarks to the inquiry?
“This isn’t about deregulation”.
He couldn’t be further from the truth.
