Minister denies ‘aversion’ to more fire regulation in years before Grenfell

Brandon Lewis was fire minister between July 2016 and June 2017, and prior to that was minister for housing and planning from 2014 to 2016.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis MP was minister for policing and fire services between July 2016 and June 2017 (Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA) (PA Media)

Former fire minister Brandon Lewis has denied at the Grenfell Tower inquiry that the Government had an “aversion” to increasing fire safety regulation in the years leading up to the fatal blaze.

The Northern Ireland Secretary was the minister for policing and fire services between July 2016 and June 2017, and prior to that was minister for housing and planning from 2014 to 2016.

He was also responsible for fire and resilience while working as parliamentary under secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) between 2012 and 2014.

He is the first politician to appear before the inquiry into the west London tower block blaze, which killed 72 people on June 14 2017.

Mr Lewis told the inquiry that, during his time as under secretary at the DCLG, “a lot” of the meetings he had with the fire policy team were to discuss industrial relations rows between the Government and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU).

These rows included strikes over pay and conditions and the sell-off of the UK’s main fire training centre.

In his witness statement to the inquiry he said that policing and foreign criminality were the “dominant” parts of his portfolio while he was policing and fire services minister, with fire policy “forming a relatively small part”.

The inquiry heard that there was an internal proposal to create a national regulator for fire safety in response to the 2013 Knight Review into the fire and rescue services.

According to the June 2013 proposal, the regulator would oversee “local approaches to supporting compliance and enforcement of the fire safety order” and would address “many of the concerns businesses have raised”.

A July 2013 email sent to Mr Lewis’s office was then shown to the inquiry.

It said that “(Lewis) was not keen on the idea of a national regulator, but further work should be done to scope with the option”.

Mr Lewis was asked by counsel to the inquiry Andrew Kinnier QC why he was not keen on the idea.

He replied: “I don’t recall where I was at the time on it, but I imagine it would have been because of the the wider issues around looking at how we make things efficient (and) effective with the schemes that we already have.”

He told the inquiry that at the time he would have needed to ensure it “doesn’t just become another layer of regulation”.

“If we’re going to look at something like this, how do we ensure that it doesn’t just become another layer of regulation that doesn’t deliver anything meaningful over and above what we’ve got and the capacity to deliver through the machinery that’s already there?”

He denied this was a “generic objection” to the idea, as the email adds that further work must be done.

However, he said: “Conceptually, it’s unlikely that I would be attracted to creating another body on top of bodies we already have in existence.

“I’d be more interested in how we use the bodies we have got.”

A paper on the topic was produced by then-fire safety policy lead Louise Upton in December 2013.

Mr Lewis told the inquiry that he does not know why the proposal did not progress any further.

The inquiry was shown the paper, which warned that the fire sector has not “stepped up to the plate” to deliver “a strong self-governing sector”.

The paper also warned that “without an effective sector-wide, holistic approach to fire safety, it seems that the Government’s policy of standing back to allow the sector to fill the space by Government is risky”.

It added that this policy risked the Government’s reputation on public safety as “no-one has any certainty on standards/benchmarks for appropriate levels of safety in non-domestic premises, and the policy of allowing the sector to fill the gap is criticised”.

Mr Kinnear put it to Mr Lewis that there was an “aversion” to increase fire safety regulation.

He said: “In reality, we’re dancing around the truth here, which is that there was an aversion to increase regulation, even in the face of failure by the industry to remedy the problems about competence of fire risk assessors.”

Mr Lewis denied this was the case, pointing to work done by the department to improve carbon monoxide testing and on smoke alarm safety.