Grenfell campaigners have called on Tony Blair to apologise and take responsibility for decisions made by his government that contributed to the fire that killed 72 people.
The former prime minister said on Thursday that tragedies such as the west London fire, which came after years of missed opportunities to regulate combustible cladding, were a result of unavoidable mistakes.
The final report of the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire was published this week and included several criticisms of decisions made under Blair’s premiership.
While David Cameron’s government’s “bonfire of red tape” received some of the strongest censure, the 1,700-page report by the inquiry’s chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, also detailed failings under New Labour.
Highly combustible cladding caused the 2017 fire at the 24-storey block of flats to spread uncontrollably.
The report said that during Blair’s first term his government “failed to heed the warning” from the environment and transport select committee in 1999 that it “should not take a serious fire in which people were killed [for steps to be] taken to minimise the risks posed by some external cladding systems”.
Another missed opportunity came at the start of Blair’s second term in 2001, when the government “failed to pay due regard to the striking results of a large-scale test” of aluminium composite cladding panels “which burned violently”. The report said it failed to even publish the results of the test and took no steps to ascertain the extent to which panels of that kind were in use.
When Blair was asked on Thursday whether he accepted that tragedies such as Grenfell and other scandals meant there had been a “failure of leadership” in government, he replied: “This is a difficult thing to say, but it’s the honest truth – however good your system is and however well-intentioned it is, and however hard people work, they’re going to make mistakes.”
He added: “It’s important that you hold people accountable for those mistakes, of course, but I don’t think you’re ever going to get a situation where decisions are perfectly taken in perfect circumstances and there aren’t accidents or tragedies that occur.”
Yvette Williams, the founder of Justice4Grenfell, said: “Blair’s got a lot to answer for. He needs to take responsibility for things that he played a hand in doing. He was a good prime minister in some ways but some real shit went down in his government and we’re still seeing the lasting effects of it today.”
She said Blair’s use of the word “accidents” in his comments made her “feel like it’s just jettisoning our lives at whim … they can be cast away at any time, because accidents happen. But they don’t just happen. In all of these things, somebody made a choice along the way, and they made that choice because our lives are cheap and they don’t matter.”
On Wednesday dozens of MPs left the Commons at once before Keir Starmer made a statement on the Grenfell report. Williams said: “It’s like parliament emptying … how many slaps in the face can you take?”
Damel Carayol, whose cousin and her daughter were killed in the fire, invited Blair to explain his words. “Of course you apologise. It’s a simple thing to do. You admit what you’ve done wrong … for what his government were involved in that contributed to Grenfell happening, of course you apologise.
“We’re not talking about mistakes happening. We’re talking about the neglect and ignoring what needed to be done, ignoring the implementation of recommendations. It’s cause and effect.”
Stephen Mackenzie, a fire security consultant, said of Blair’s remarks: “It’s incredibly arrogant from an experienced statesman and politician. The problems with the legislation and guidance stems from his government. Much of the cladding was installed during his government’s tenure and Gordon Brown’s follow-on.”
Emma Dent Coad, who was a Kensington MP at the time of the fire, said of Blair’s comments: “This was an avoidable atrocity … What he says is complete nonsense.”
The former Labour MP, who is now an independent councillor, added: “Tony Blair needs to actually read the report and not just pull opinions out of his back pocket.”
A spokesperson for Blair said: “Mr Blair’s remarks have been taken completely out of context. He wasn’t asked about any specific inquiry but whether in general the standards of leadership in government today had declined as evidenced by the Grenfell, Post Office and tainted blood scandals.
“Since the tainted blood scandal went back to the 1980s and in the 1960s and 1970s there were also inquiries into different tragedies and failures in government, he was merely pointing out that unfortunately such failures were not only recent. He was in no way seeking to diminish the responsibility of governments, including any of his own, for such failures or minimising the seriousness of the Grenfell Tower inquiry’s findings of multiple failures across a range of institutions.
“It was an appalling tragedy, he has the deepest sympathy for all who were affected, who lost family and friends, the survivors living with the consequences today, the first responders, and the community itself.”
