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Grenfell survivors criticise ex-PM Cameron for claiming inquiry agreed fire regulations were excluded from ‘red tape challenge’
Survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire have criticised former prime minister David Cameron for his claim that fire safety regulations were not part of his government’s ‘red tape challenge’.
Launched by Lord Cameron in April 2011, the challenge aimed to cut back on regulation that was thought to be holding back economic growth.
His comments came two days after the final and second Grenfell Tower Inquiry report was published early on Friday evening.
Lord Cameron said: “All of us who have served in positions of power over the past few decades need to acknowledge that mistakes were made over too many years; community concerns were too readily sidelined or dismissed; voices too often unheard; and more could have been done to learn lessons from past tragedies.
“The report is clear that fire safety and building safety regulations were explicitly excluded from the coalition government’s greatly needed ‘red tape reviews’, given the importance we placed on safety and build quality.
“Indeed, the coalition and post-2015 governments took steps to increase fire safety regulation. However, it is important that this and future governments take note of this week’s findings to ensure that essential protections can never be brushed aside, minimised or dismissed.”
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Despite Lord Cameron’s claims, campaigners and survivors’ groups accused him of having not read, or misunderstood, the report.
The inquiry concluded that a “poorly run”, “complacent” and “defensive” government department “failed to act on what it knew” about dangerous cladding in the years before Grenfell, amid an enthusiasm for deregulation that “dominated” its thinking.
It assessed 30 years of missed warnings of a looming cladding disaster by ministers, officials and advisors at the department now known as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Inside Housing reporter Peter Apps, who won the Orwell Prize for his book Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen, said that Lord Cameron’s statement was “demonstrably and very clearly total bullshit”.
“Cameron is making the same mistake Pickles did when giving evidence – conflating the Regulatory Reform Order, which was exempt, with the building regulations, which weren’t,” he said, adding that the failures that contributed to Grenfell related to building regulations.
“Whoever wrote that statement for him either hasn’t read the report, has woefully misunderstood or is lying about its conclusions.”
The inquiry rejected outright the evidence of former housing secretary Lord Pickles, who had claimed that building regulations covering fire safety were exempt from the push to “cut red tape” during his time in charge, and instead issued a stinging rebuke of the government’s “profound” failure to prevent the disaster.
Ex-PM Cameron’s government had excluded one part of fire regulations, the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the inquiry found, but not building regulations and other documents which had a material impact on how construction firms approached fire safety concerns.
Reporting from the inquiry over two days in March 2022, Inside Housing also revealed how the fire minister warned the Cabinet Office in 2011 that treating fire safety issues as ‘red tape’ that needed to be cut risked “significant reputational harm” for the government.
The following day, it was revealed that the government considered scrapping building control entirely and relying on private insurers to maintain standards in the construction industry as part of its so-called ‘red tape challenge’.
Lord Cameron added: “I associate myself fully with the powerful statements delivered in the House of Commons this week by the prime minister and leader of the opposition; and I echo their unreserved apology. To the bereaved families; to the survivors; to the community; and all who have suffered: the British state let you down; it should not have happened; it must not happen again.”
However, survivors’ groups described his statement as “disrespectful” and “ridiculous”.
Grenfell United said in response: “The second former prime minister who has not bothered to read the executive summary or report. How many more want to disrespect us?! We’re noticing a pattern…
“Government ministers and corporates are denying involvement and dispute the judges findings. But they need to stop lying. It’s already a PR disaster.
“Who is the public going to believe? You, the government/corporates who repeatedly failed us over many years, or the judge and his panel of experts who have concluded their findings based on overwhelming evidence.”
The Grenfell Next of Kin group said: “There was a bonfire, Mr Cameron, and the ashes of that bonfire were returned to us, the immediate families of those killed, in a box, with maybe a remnant of our mothers, fathers, children, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters, in co-mingled ashes which we buried.
“The shamelessness of the former prime minister is staggering. Indeed the Conservative Party. Only last week one of the contenders for the Conservative Party, James Cleverly, was pitching for the leadership that was centred on the need for more deregulation.”
Masoumeh Samimi, whose mother and aunt were killed in the fire on the 23rd floor, said: “David Cameron is talking without thinking and his statement is ridiculous. They had a bonfire of regulations, with no regard to the lives of people.
“Deregulate at all costs for more profits, but what is the price of our kin? So was my mother and aunt sacrificed for your profits? Ultimately it is the state that is responsible for safeguarding citizens and it was this culture that created the conditions for the mother of all disasters.
Former PM Tony Blair has also come under criticism following the report’s publication last week, which he said came after years of missed opportunities to regulate combustible cladding, which were a result of unavoidable mistakes.
However, Mr Apps has set out, in a response for The Spectator magazine, why the system of regulation was not a good one, and why it was one in “which Blair’s governments had more than a small hand in creating”.
He added: “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 spokesperson for Mr Blair has since said that his “remarks have been taken completely out of context”.
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