How did a fridge freezer bring a nation to a halt - Grenfell Tower and lessons for public policy?

1. How did a fridge freezer bring a nation to a halt - Grenfell Tower and lessons for public policy? John Wilson SBC 2nd Annual Conference, Shanghai, 26-27 October 2017

2. Background • Monday 19 June 2017 at 11.00am UK came to a halt for a minute’s silence for victims of Grenfell Tower fire • Grenfell Tower is a 24-storey, 67m high, tower block of 129 flats in North Kensington, West London. It was designed in 1967, approved for construction in 1970, construction commenced in 1972 and was completed in 1974. • The fire started from a fridge freezer on the 4th floor in the early hours of 14 June. • At least 79 people died. • Causes currently being investigated – public enquiry led by Sir Martin Moore-Bick but some criticisms over its terms of reference e.g. significance of cuts in firefighter numbers, closure of local fire stations, fire safety deregulation (see, for instance, comments by Fire Brigades Union, The Guardian 2 October 2017) • Irrespective of the technical causes, there are very serious public policy and management issues, reflecting a wider politico-economic context

3. Grenfell Tower • Part of Kensington and Chelsea LBC • Managed on the council’s behalf by Kensignton and Chelsea Tenant Management Association – contract terminated on 27 September for breaching its duty of care, ignoring residents, failing to carry out repairs and for its response to the disaster • The tower underwent a major renovation in 2016 at a cost of £8.6m and was undertaken by Rydon Ltd with Artelia for contract administration and Max Fordham for specialist mechanical and electrical advice. • As part of the renovation, and intended to improve the building’s physical appearance, new cladding was fitted and, beneath the cladding, new thermal insulation material was fitted. • In undertaking the work, the contractor originally chosen, Leadbitter, was dropped in favour of Rydon as the Rydon bid was £2.5m lower reflecting the fact that alternative cladding with better fire resistance had been rejected on cost grounds, and this was despite the fact that the Council had approximately £300m in reserves.

4. Grenfell Tower • Grenfell residents repeatedly expressed concerns, not least from 2013 e.g. only one staircase, no sprinklers fitted (2012 report said could be retrofitted at £1150 per flat), official advice to stay in flat, exposed gas pipes and KCTMO had been told to cover with fire-retardant boxing but only two-thirds had been • Speed at which the fire spread was maybe due to the external cladding (a resident said it ‘spread like a fire you throw petrol on’) • Failure fully to learn from the fire at Lakanal House, in London in 2009 when 6 people died, and implement the coroner’s recommendations e.g. re sprinklers • Clear evidence that Ministers had ignored the views of Grenfell Resident Group • On 28 July Scotland Yard said there were ‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect corporate manslaughter

5. Why? New York Times 29 June: • There are disasters that enter history as much for the political mark they leave as for the death and destruction they wreak. Such was Hurricane Katrina for George W. Bush, leaving an indelible image of a president slow and weak in response to human suffering. And such may be the Grenfell Tower fire for Prime Minister Theresa May, and more broadly for the infatuation with austerity and deregulation of British governments for the past four decades.[Emphasis added]

7. Why? • How did the fire start and spread so quickly – definitive technical answers will be given by official investigation • What created the conditions that led to the fire – indifference, negligence, absence of effective means for residents’ ‘voice’, deregulation? spending cuts? • What caused the above factors – i.e. what was the defining characteristic of the ‘past four decades’? • Theresa May appears to agree with the significance of the decades-long context.

8. Four decades of negligence? Theresa May, P.M., 28 June (first PMQs after the General Election) • That is why I am clear that in addition to the inquiry that needs to identify the specific issues for Grenfell Tower—what happened in relation to Grenfell Tower and who was responsible—we will also need to look much more widely at why it is that over decades, under different Governments and under different councils, material has been put up on tower blocks that is non-compliant with the building regulations. There is a very wide issue here. We need to make sure we get to the bottom of it and that is what we are going to do.[Emphasis added]

9. So what had been happening over four decades? Neo-liberalism. • Mid-1970s to the present day: neo-liberalism • ‘New classical’ economics • Supplanted Keynesian social democracy • Politico-economic philosophy that individual liberty and economic efficiency are maximised when markets are allowed to operate freely, requiring a minimal role for the state. • Liberalisation – e.g. privatisation, deregulation, competitive tendering, public private partnerships, reducing public spending, reducing (direct) taxation. Post-2008 austerity. • Public bad, private good

10. A new consensus? • Because Conservatism is not and never has been the philosophy described by caricaturists. We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality. We see rigid dogma and ideology not just as needless but dangerous. Conservative Party Manifesto (2017, p9) • Regulation is necessary for the proper ordering of any economy and to ensure that people – and their investments – are protected. Conservative Party Manifesto (2017, p13)

11. Maybe not………….. • However, poor and excessive government regulation limits growth for no good reason. So we will continue to regulate more efficiently, saving £9 billion through the Red Tape Challenge and the One-In-Two-Out Rule. Conservative Party Manifesto (2017, p15)

12. Neo-liberalism - consequences? The British economic model needs fundamental reform. It is no longer generating rising earnings for a majority of the population, and young people today are set to be poorer than their parents. Beneath its headlines figures, the economy is suffering from deep and longstanding weaknesses, which make it unfit to face the challenges of the 2020s. IPPR (2017, p1). • Unwillingness to spend, and unwillingness to tax • Trapped in an orthodoxy? • Theresa May speech for BoE independence 20th anniversary, 27 Sept 2017

13. Neo-liberalism – Grenfell Tower a consequence? ….Grenfell Tower offers tragic evidence that the British state, in its relentless pursuit of less government, has gone too far in shedding its fundamental duties to protect public health and safety. That is where the political and moral investigation must start. New York Times 28 June 

14. Lessons for Public Policy? • Address factors that gave rise to the fire and the shocking inadequacy of the response (not of firefighters but of the Council) • Address nationally the risks re residential properties • Act on findings of the public enquiry • Criminal charges for those responsible • More fundamentally – make sure the next 40 years are not like the last 40 but more like the decades that preceded them and Keynesian social democratic consensus