David Cameron has provoked a wave of indignation from Grenfell fire survivors and housing campaigners after claiming that the inquiry agreed with him that fire regulations had not been part of his government’s “red tape drive” to cut regulations.
But campaigners said the former prime minister’s words were “bollocks” and “total bullshit”, since the inquiry report had explicitly said the effect of the Coalition government’s attack on red tape was that “even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded”.
Ed Daffarn, 62, a Grenfell tower resident who raised multiple concerns about fire safety before the fire, said he was “angry but not surprised”, and said Cameron was “failing to take responsibility”.
After Cameron’s government came to power in 2010, it created a “one in, one out” rule where new regulations could only come into force if another was scrapped, later becoming one in, two out and one in, three out.
Survivors of the Grenfell tower fire in June 2017 believe that the lack of regulations and ministers’ failure to act on a coroner’s report into a fire at Lakanal House, another London tower block, eight years earlier had contributed to the avoidable disaster that killed 72 people.
When the inquiry examined the issue, chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick took evidence from Eric Pickles, the housing secretary under Cameron, who made the claim that his prime minister’s “red tape challenge” had specifically excluded fire safety.
The inquiry report said it was “unable to accept his evidence” on the issue, which was “flatly contradicted by that of his officials and by the contemporaneous documents”.
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. Pickles’s remarks “served only to reveal the limits of his understanding” about the difference, it said.
In its summary, the inquiry was explicit that “the government’s deregulatory agenda, enthusiastically supported by some junior ministers and [Pickles],dominated the department [for community, housing and local government]’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded.”
And it said the government “determinedly resisted calls from across the fire sector to regulate fire risk assessors and to amend the Fire Safety Order to make it clear that it applied to the exterior walls of buildings containing more than one set of domestic premises”.
The former prime minister chose to make his first statement since the report was published last Wednesday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, at 6pm on Friday evening.
Cameron said “all of us who have served in positions of power” had made mistakes and said he wanted to “echo” apologies by Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak to survivors and the community, saying: “the British state let you down”.
Yet he claimed: “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.”
Pete Apps, who won the Orwell Prize for his book Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen, said 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.”
Ed Daffarn, who survived the Grenfell fire, said Cameron and Pickles were acting in the same way as some of the corporations involved, denying culpability in the face of the inquiry’s findings and the impact of the ministerial drive to reduce regulation.
“I feel angry, but I’m not surprised,” said Daffarn. “The report is a damning indictment of a government that put UK plc before the health and safety of Grenfell. The result is that 72 people die because the regulations didn’t keep them safe.
“Cameron and Pickles are failing to take responsibility in the aftermath, despite the overwhelming evidence put before the inquiry and its findings.”
Giles Grover, co-leader of End Our Cladding Scandal, said “that’s bollocks” when told of Cameron’s comments.
“It was Cameron’s government’s focus on deregulation that played a key part in people’s homes not being safe,” Grover said. “His government wanted to ‘kill off the health and safety culture for good’ amid a ‘bonfire of red tape’, and this culture pervaded throughout government, including housing and building regulations, during his tenure as prime minister, whatever he may now wish to believe.”
The Grenfell Next of Kin group, which represents immediate bereaved families, said Cameron’s comments were “staggering”. A spokesperson for the group said: “Has he followed the inquiry or listened to the evidence? We heard quite clearly that from 2010 onwards the government pursued a drive that had a disdain for regulations.”
Masoumeh Samimi, 38, 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.
“We buried the ashes of his “bonfire of regulation”. Samimi said she was told as recently as a year ago that police had found “another piece of bone” believed to be part of the remains of her mother.
Jennifer Frame, a former resident of Richmond House, which was destroyed by fire two years after Grenfell, said: “It is astonishing to see former prime ministers who held power and responsibility for the deregulatory culture which led to Grenfell trying to rewrite history to say they are blameless.
“This is just a continuation of the buck-passing and blame-shifting culture that was laid bare by the inquiry. If the political class cannot acknowledge their failings, then nothing will change.
“David Cameron boasted of cutting red tape, and he should not be surprised if the culture he presided over and the so-called ‘bonfire of regulations’ contributed to turning people’s homes into actual bonfires.”
