Peter Apps on Blair's response to Grenfell Fire.
This was a system which Blair’s governments had more than a small hand in creating
It’s possible that Blair – who spends his time these days trotting around the world representing his modestly named ‘Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’ – doesn’t really know much about what caused the Grenfell Tower fire and what the landmark report into it revealed on Wednesday.
But if that is the case, he might have been better advised to avoid the question than to give a statement which is so categorically wrong.
Grenfell was not a result of mistakes within a good system. It was a result of a failed system, easily gamed by those acting out of dishonesty and greed and not robust enough to prevent straightforward incompetence.
And this was a system which Blair’s governments had more than a small hand in creating.
In fact, it was Blair’s government to whom the most direct warning about the looming danger of a cladding fire was delivered in 1999, and Blair’s government which disastrously failed to act.
A Select Committee of MPs investigating two earlier cladding fires had discovered a problem: fires were spreading via combustible plastic on the walls of the buildings and threatening residents in flats beyond the one where the fire started.
The committee had received worrying evidence from experts that the official standard in government guidance permitted the use of some of these materials.
This needed to be addressed, the MPs said, before a catastrophe. ‘We do not believe that it should take a serious fire in which many people are killed before all reasonable steps are taken towards minimising the risks,’ they said.
And so they recommended a change to the regulations to ban all combustible cladding materials, unless a system had passed a large-scale test. And they recommended checks on existing buildings and further monitoring and risk assessment of any cladding systems to be installed in the future.
But Blair’s ministers did not do this. The ‘large-scale testing route’ was implemented, but the worryingly low basic standard was left where it was. This was arguably the birth of the messy, deranged free-for-all we had before Grenfell.
Not only that, the further recommendation of checks on existing systems was booted out entirely. The government felt it was not right to exert this kind of control over landlords, so it advised them to check their buildings, but did not force them to do so.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this missed chance. In 1999, when this warning was issued, cladding was still new technology. Almost all of the thousands of buildings with cladding on, which are currently causing misery for residents around the country (not to mention billions of public money to repair), had not yet been installed.
Blair’s government was on duty when this chance was missed.
This was directly singled out in the inquiry report in its very first paragraph on the failings of government, and described as a ‘failure’.
At a similar time, the UK was supposed to be aligning its building standards with Europe and introducing the ‘CE’ marking – which provides additional assurance that something meets relevant safety standards. The government was warned in the early 2000s that we would become Europe’s ‘dumping ground’ for combustible materials if this wasn’t done.
But it wasn’t. Why not? Wednesday’s report didn’t reach a conclusion, but the evidence suggests that cladding manufacturers didn’t want the CE standard because they then wouldn’t be able to sell their combustible products anymore.
Foam insulation lobbyists had – for example – warned some of their products would be ‘prevented from continuing’ on the market if the new standards were implemented and said the move to European standards therefore ‘should not happen’.
It didn’t. In fact, the UK government only announced it was implementing CE marking for construction products last Monday.
Many of the products that would have been ‘prevented from continuing’ if this change had been made under Blair are now being stripped from the walls of our high rises.
It still does not stop there. In 2001, Blair’s government paid for a series of tests on popular cladding products – a result of the changes recommended by the Select Committee.
One of the materials tested was later used on Grenfell. It failed so drastically it nearly set the test lab on fire and the test had to be halted for the safety of those present. Officials were warned this product could be used under the current regulations. They did nothing to toughen the rules. Instead, this testing – according to Wednesday’s report – was ‘shelved and entirely forgotten’.
There is more. Which government introduced the lax system of fire risk assessment where anyone with a clipboard could sell their services to assess a high-rise building? Blair’s.
Which government fragmented the fire service and abolished the training college that previously provided a consistent level of professional performance? Blair’s.
With all this in mind, you might think the leader of this government would be rather conciliatory in his comments about the fire and report – which marks another damaging blot on his legacy.
The honest truth – to use Blair’s own words – is that a deregulatory government in the 1980s set the scene for Grenfell, and a deregulatory government in the 2010s missed the last chances to stop the fire from happening. But the government Blair led continued and supported this system, and missed pivotal chances of its own to put things right.
This was not a good system let down by human error. It was a bad system which utterly failed its citizens. If Blair wants to speak about Grenfell, the first thing he should do is apologise.
So said former prime minister Tony Blair on Sky News on Thursday – in response to being asked whether the Grenfell Tower fire represented ‘a failure of leadership’ by government.Blair said:
This was a system which Blair’s governments had more than a small hand in creating
It’s possible that Blair – who spends his time these days trotting around the world representing his modestly named ‘Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’ – doesn’t really know much about what caused the Grenfell Tower fire and what the landmark report into it revealed on Wednesday.
But if that is the case, he might have been better advised to avoid the question than to give a statement which is so categorically wrong.
Grenfell was not a result of mistakes within a good system. It was a result of a failed system, easily gamed by those acting out of dishonesty and greed and not robust enough to prevent straightforward incompetence.
And this was a system which Blair’s governments had more than a small hand in creating.
In fact, it was Blair’s government to whom the most direct warning about the looming danger of a cladding fire was delivered in 1999, and Blair’s government which disastrously failed to act.
A Select Committee of MPs investigating two earlier cladding fires had discovered a problem: fires were spreading via combustible plastic on the walls of the buildings and threatening residents in flats beyond the one where the fire started.
The committee had received worrying evidence from experts that the official standard in government guidance permitted the use of some of these materials.
This needed to be addressed, the MPs said, before a catastrophe. ‘We do not believe that it should take a serious fire in which many people are killed before all reasonable steps are taken towards minimising the risks,’ they said.
And so they recommended a change to the regulations to ban all combustible cladding materials, unless a system had passed a large-scale test. And they recommended checks on existing buildings and further monitoring and risk assessment of any cladding systems to be installed in the future.
But Blair’s ministers did not do this. The ‘large-scale testing route’ was implemented, but the worryingly low basic standard was left where it was. This was arguably the birth of the messy, deranged free-for-all we had before Grenfell.
Not only that, the further recommendation of checks on existing systems was booted out entirely. The government felt it was not right to exert this kind of control over landlords, so it advised them to check their buildings, but did not force them to do so.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this missed chance. In 1999, when this warning was issued, cladding was still new technology. Almost all of the thousands of buildings with cladding on, which are currently causing misery for residents around the country (not to mention billions of public money to repair), had not yet been installed.
Blair’s government was on duty when this chance was missed.
This was directly singled out in the inquiry report in its very first paragraph on the failings of government, and described as a ‘failure’.
At a similar time, the UK was supposed to be aligning its building standards with Europe and introducing the ‘CE’ marking – which provides additional assurance that something meets relevant safety standards. The government was warned in the early 2000s that we would become Europe’s ‘dumping ground’ for combustible materials if this wasn’t done.
But it wasn’t. Why not? Wednesday’s report didn’t reach a conclusion, but the evidence suggests that cladding manufacturers didn’t want the CE standard because they then wouldn’t be able to sell their combustible products anymore.
Foam insulation lobbyists had – for example – warned some of their products would be ‘prevented from continuing’ on the market if the new standards were implemented and said the move to European standards therefore ‘should not happen’.
It didn’t. In fact, the UK government only announced it was implementing CE marking for construction products last Monday.
Many of the products that would have been ‘prevented from continuing’ if this change had been made under Blair are now being stripped from the walls of our high rises.
It still does not stop there. In 2001, Blair’s government paid for a series of tests on popular cladding products – a result of the changes recommended by the Select Committee.
One of the materials tested was later used on Grenfell. It failed so drastically it nearly set the test lab on fire and the test had to be halted for the safety of those present. Officials were warned this product could be used under the current regulations. They did nothing to toughen the rules. Instead, this testing – according to Wednesday’s report – was ‘shelved and entirely forgotten’.
There is more. Which government introduced the lax system of fire risk assessment where anyone with a clipboard could sell their services to assess a high-rise building? Blair’s.
Which government fragmented the fire service and abolished the training college that previously provided a consistent level of professional performance? Blair’s.
With all this in mind, you might think the leader of this government would be rather conciliatory in his comments about the fire and report – which marks another damaging blot on his legacy.
The honest truth – to use Blair’s own words – is that a deregulatory government in the 1980s set the scene for Grenfell, and a deregulatory government in the 2010s missed the last chances to stop the fire from happening. But the government Blair led continued and supported this system, and missed pivotal chances of its own to put things right.
This was not a good system let down by human error. It was a bad system which utterly failed its citizens. If Blair wants to speak about Grenfell, the first thing he should do is apologise.
