Once again, the nation is coping with the disastrous consequences of a dysfunctional state and a corresponding public philosophy – one that states that deregulated markets work better than public initiative. Under this bleak worldview, public regulation is, a priori, bad.
It was this state and philosophy that together delivered a building safety ecosystem – and culture – producing Britain’s worst peacetime fire, whose lethal origins and outcome were so graphically described in last week’s report of the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster. Dysfunctional national and local government, feeble regulators and amoral businesses, it declares, were jointly responsible for the avoidable catastrophe that led to 72 deaths.
Over 1,700 pages, no one is spared. Tony Blair’s government did not heed the warnings of a crucial select committee; David Cameron’s government launched an unthinking deregulation drive, eagerly driven forward in housing and building safety by the then housing secretary, Eric Pickles, whose evidence disclaiming knowledge of the impact of what he was doing the report dismisses as “flatly contradicted” by departmental documents. Then there were the contractors who systematically lied about their knowledge of the dangerous inflammability of the products they were selling and deploying; building safety organisations and regulators asleep on the job; local government that ignored the worries of tenants; even the less than effective approach of the London fire brigade – firefighters, for example, not knowing which water hydrant to use.
The report makes 58 recommendations for change that address every weak link. There should be a single professionalised regulator of the construction industry. Oversight functions should be brought together into one government department. Government should be legally required to put on public record its response to the recommendations of select committees and public inquiries. The secretary of state should have a chief construction adviser. Builders of higher risk structures should hold an appropriate licence. The direction and skills of firefighters should be overhauled and a fire and rescue college established – and much more. Amen to all of that.
The inquiry chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, clearly knew that he was describing defects that are reproduced across Britain. For example, legally requiring each government department to publish its response and actions to every public inquiry and select committee report would represent a step change in the accountability of ministers and officials, removing their capacity to ignore or fudge such recommendations.
The framework for accountability Moore-Bick wants for construction would inevitably become a template for every other industry. This is a very necessary radicalism.
The deputy prime minister and secretary state for housing and local government, Angela Rayner, was solid enough on Radio 4’s Today programme the morning after the report came out. The authenticity of her shock over profit being so nakedly put before safety could not be doubted – but then she fell back on the memes and lines-to-take from the very government that was in the dock. None of the urgency of Keir Starmer’s response to the riots was on display.
Yes, all 58 recommendations would be considered, but nothing could be promised before six months. As for the police warning that it could be another 18 months before any charges were brought, she accepted that the legacy of weakened police and court capacity inherited from the previous government meant such delays were inevitable – but wouldn’t change.
Could the government say nothing stronger? Some recommendations are low-cost no-brainers. Of course there should be a single regulator for the construction industry, a fire and rescue college, and all responsibilities for safety brought into one department. Ministers should have said so immediately.
It is a disgrace that the police will take so long to bring charges, and the courts to hear them, that justice might not be done until 2028 or later. The treatment of rioters was prioritised: surely action – especially against the deceiving contractors – could be similarly expedited and the necessary resource found. In fairness, the inquiry, itself taking seven years and then not prioritising what it considers most important (surely tackling lying contractors and beefing up regulation?) did not help.
The baleful story of buck-passing, reluctance to act, delay and regulatory incompetence is not confined to Grenfell. It infects every block identified with cladding, one of which houses my own flat. After three years of painfully slow negotiation between anxious leaseholders, the builder, the freeholder and various regulators, agreement was finally reached last April on the scale of the necessary remedial action.
But work has still not started, because permission from the building safety regulator is now statutorily required as the building is high rise, and under a chronically under-resourced and agonisingly slow-moving Health and Safety Executive the BSR has not been able to process the application within its eight-week target. Construction News, via a freedom of information request, learned that as recently as February that the BSR had only 10 regulatory leads and eight case workers. More have been hired but capacity remains woefully short; a spokesperson told the paper that in any case the real problem was that many applicants, to whom it offers no advice, cannot fill out the complex forms correctly, so gumming up the process. The office of the local MP, one Sir Keir Starmer, took up our case but the HSE in reply took essentially – if more courteously, given the MP – the it’s-anybody-but-our-fault line. Beside the tragedy of Grenfell, the plight of the hundreds of thousands living in blighted flats, with fire risk ever present, is far less consequential. But it matters nonetheless.
HSE’s sponsoring department – the Department for Work and Pensions – needs to get a grip, but it will need Treasury support. Both the crisis in capacity in the criminal justice system and our regulators must be addressed. Nor can fundamental questions about accountability – or about the legal and regulatory structures in which British business operates – be any longer dismissed as poor “retail politics” that don’t “work on the doorstep”. Not in the face of 72 unnecessary deaths.
The country repudiated the Tory government, its austerity and obsession with deregulation and tax cuts. It knows Labour’s inheritance is daunting, but it is looking for a decisive break. Grenfell and the inquiry report may have one good outcome: becoming the catalyst that propels a potentially great reforming government into being just that. One element will be the robustness of its response to the inquiry; another will the character of the budget on 30 October, which must equip it with the necessary resources.
We need better than “austerity lite”, trying to meet impossible legacy spending targets that were set as a political trap. We need ownership of the change in direction towards which the inquiry report points. Here’s hoping.
• Will Hutton is an Observer columnist
