The Environmental Audit Committee's inquiry into toxic chemicals in everyday life held its second witness session on Tuesday 30 April – you can view it here: https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/02213e37-0dfe-47c3-89eb-b487ab5b0d86.
 
Following this, on the same day, the All Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group met to discuss the Furniture Regulations and fridge-freezers with the BEIS Minister, Kelly Tolhurst MP (this meeting is not publicly available). The Furniture Regulations were also on the table for the EAC session. Because of this, the CEO of the Office for Product Safety and Standards (part of BEIS), Graham Russell, was present at both meetings. His demeanour varied considerably, however, between the two, mainly because at the EAC he was under direct questioning while at the second all he had to do was sit next to the Minister who did all the talking. At one he looked nervous and shifty, at the other he appeared rather smug – I'll leave the reader to guess which was which.
 
Let's take a closer look at Graham Russell. Yesterday, an article appeared in Civil Service World about the OPSS and Mr Russell:
 
https://www.civilserviceworld.com/articles/interview/safety-guard-office-product-safety-standards-chief-graham-russell-reflects-agency
 
Here are a few quotes from it:
 
Simply put, Russell says, the primary purpose of the office is to “make sure that consumers in the UK have confidence in the safety of the products they buy”.
 
[On the Grenfell Tower fire and BEIS's investigation of the fridge-freezer that is alleged to have started it] “The way that fire developed and had such a horrendous effect on human life, I think has also made us all rightly think again about making sure we’re doing enough, particularly for the most vulnerable people,” Russell says.
 
Products the OPSS regulates include toys, furniture and children’s clothing. “These are not products that people think are going to put their lives at risk.”
 
“What motivates me is that this is about protecting people – particularly the most vulnerable people. I think that’s what drives a lot of people in this area,” he says.
 
What motivates him most is protecting people, he says. And yet this man has known for several years that the Furniture Regulations do not work and are therefore putting the entire population at risk from toxic poisoning. He's right when he says people don't think that furniture is going to put their lives at risk – partly because he's telling everyone, including his Minister, that the Furniture Regulations actually work.
 
He also knows that people in his OPSS team have been telling other civil servants behind closed doors meetings that they know the Furniture Regulations don't work but don't know what to do about it. They're terrified at what the public will think and do if it gets out that these regulations have never worked and that his Department proved conclusively that they don't in 2014. In short, his successors and now he as the product safety boss are lying to the public and politicians purely to protect their backs.
 
He and his OPSS officials have also lied about their investigation into the Grenfell fridge-freezer that caught fire. They concealed the actual report into the product, just told the world that 'independent experts' (which were almost entirely just their own staff) had concluded that the product was safe. But if you get hold of the actual test report, it shows that in key areas the product is actually dangerous. How about that? Two products – furniture and white goods – that are putting the population at risk and Mr Russell is lying about them both. With the result that the people of Grenfell are being blocked from an important aspect of the truth about the fire.
 
Russell is also blocking the truth about the toxicity of furniture which is further preventing the Grenfell community from learning the full truth about what they were exposed to. 
 
If you watch his performance at the EAC, it's apparent that the committee was very exasperated with his ducking and diving around the fact that the OPSS in practice has been pretty useless since its formation at the start of last year. Also, he kept insisting that consumers were well protected from defective products, even though everyone in the room knows they aren't. For example, Robert Chantry-Price from the Trading Standards Institute, another witness, informed everyone that Trading Standards has lost 59% of its officers in recent years and had its budgets slashed. There were several wry smiles when Russell said the OPSS has £500K for Trading Standards to undertake product safety, which increased when Chantry-Price commented that TS officers do not have the funding to travel to the products and pay for them in the first place.
 
At one point in the APPG meeting, Lady Mar asked the BEIS Minister a question about the fact that organophosphate chemicals were removed from weed-killers because they're so toxic but they're heavily used in mattresses, including children's. Lady Mar asked Tolhurst what she thought about the fact children are being poisoned as they sleep. Tolhurst chose to go on the offensive, stating that this was an "aggressive" question and how dare anyone question how she felt about children's health. This led to Lady Mar having to clarify that of course she is criticising the Department's policy. Which should not have been necessary of course, since Kelly Tolhurst's personal feelings are irrelevant. However, acting outraged allowed her to avoid answering the question and Lady Mar's additional point that the match test doesn't work. 
 
Instead, Tolhurst repeated endlessly that while BEIS is looking at the possible negative effects of flame retardants, she will not do anything to risk fire safety (of furniture). Let's be clear about this: Graham Russell knows full well that the Furniture Regulations do not work and represent a huge risk to the entire UK public. Yet he's briefing his Minister that they working, which is a lie, pure and simple.

In short, he is the key person responsible for ensuring that millions of children in this country are being poisoned by toxic flame retardants on a daily basis.
 
What kind of man is that?
 
Oh, at the end of the EAC session I approached Mr Russell and introduced myself. I started to ask him if he'd read his own Department's 2014 consultation document and technical annex, since these prove that the current match test doesn't work. But he jumped to his feet, avoiding my gaze, and said, "I'm not hear to talk to anyone; I'm not discussing anything with you!" I started to point out that he's a public servant and I'm a member of the public but he literally shoved me aside and, now red-faced, rushed from the room.
 
Now, I don't know about you but I figure that's not the way a man behaves who believes in what he's saying. Such a man would stand his ground, look me in the eye, and point out exactly why I'm wrong, along with warning me to stop spreading lies about his Regulations and unnecessarily spooking the UK public.

Yesterday (23 April 2019), I and Gareth Simkins (reporter with the ENDS Report) testified at the EAC Inquiry into toxic chemicals. You can watch it here:
 
https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/12b6bfb1-f578-4056-bbc2-c0d1df54b29d
 
Our testimony begins at 15:07. 
 
You can listen to the BBC's Parliament Today report on it here:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0777wmz
 
My written evidence to the EAC can be accessed here: 
 
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/environmental-audit-committee/toxic-chemicals/written/97678.pdf
 
Gareth's here:
 
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/environmental-audit-committee/toxic-chemicals/written/97684.pdf 

There is much to say about this Inquiry, including looking at the submissions provided by those with an interest in ensuring the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 remain unchanged. I intend to put up a page on this site concentrating on the Inquiry soon.
 
In the meantime, the bottom line in many ways that Gareth and I put to the Committee yesterday was this: 
 
There are around a million tonnes of flame retardant chemicals in UK dwellings – about 45kgs per home – which do pretty much nothing for fire safety; instead they're poisoning us all and making fires that do take place far more toxic. If the UK did what the US and the EU do, which is to utilise just a cigarette/smoulder flammability test, all those chemicals could be removed and our sofas/mattresses would actually be safer.
 

 
The BFC's manifesto for 2018-19 can be found here. It's subtitled: "The Government and The UK Furniture Industry working together" which they almost certainly are but not necessarily in the best interests of UK citizens.
 
Let's take a look at page 15:

"The BFC applauds the Government’s decision to set up the Office for Product Standards and Safety (OPSS). Regardless of the outcome of Brexit negotiations on recognition and policing of standards, it is a positive development that the UK Government is taking product safety, monitoring and recalls seriously."

Given that the OPSS (part of BEIS) has been heavily criticised by a select committee for doing nothing about Whirlpool washing machines that keep catching fire and that it produced a misleading report into the fridge-freezer that caused the Grenfell Tower fire, lying about the findings of its own commissioned report, i.e. that in fact the product was dangerous and should be recalled, it's perhaps surprising that the BFC thinks the government is taking product safety seriously. But perhaps not; let's read on.

"The BFC continues to be a strong supporter of fire safety in the form of the Furniture & Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988, as amended. The Regulations are thought to have saved many lives, prevented many injuries, and stopped many house fires. Government research published in 2009 estimates that the Regulations saved approximately 54 deaths per year and prevented over 1000 house fires, which could have resulted in 780 non-fatal injuries."

The BFC knows full well that BIS's research in 2014 proved that the estimates in the 2009 report (which was not 'research' by the way, as the BFC claims) were without foundation; that therefore there is little evidence that the Furniture Regulations are saving any lives at all. The BFC is also very aware of Professor Richard Hull's findings, to quote Richard on the BBC's Newsnight:  
 
"We burnt two kinds of sofas: UK furniture flammability regulations sofas with flame retardants and a European sofa without flame retardants and we found that the UK sofa burnt slightly slower than the European sofa but in doing so it produced between two and three times as much toxic gas as the European sofa."
 
It's important to bear in mind here that Richard Hull's team were using furniture constructs that would pass the regulations' flammability tests; in a real life scenario, 90% of furniture fails the main ignition test, therefore there is little chance that an FR-treated sofa burns even slightly slower than an untreated European one.
 
The BFC goes on:

"The BFC is absolutely committed to preserving the safety levels of the furniture industry’s products in order to protect the lives of the public and of the emergency services. This is a view that our members share: 88 percent of respondents in our survey believe that the UK is right to maintain its high level of safety in relation to furniture and furnishings."
 
Let's be clear: the BFC is completely aware that its members are selling huge volumes of products that are not fire safe and therefore are not protecting the public and the emergency services, as proven by the government. The BFC has never disproved this. Here, it is resorting to its one remaining recourse: opinion expressed as fact.

"The BFC also recognises that there are concerns around the use of some fire retardant chemicals due to potential environmental impacts. The BFC supports the aims of the REACH regulations in controlling the use of chemicals that may be harmful to health or the environment. "

Lies by omission here. First, they only mention potential environmental impacts of flame retardants. Vast amounts of research show that FRs are incredibly impactful upon human health. Many of the BFC's members – with its endorsement – are for example packing children's mattresses with organophosphate FRs: the very same chemicals that were banned from agricultural sprays because they're so toxic. They're endorsing the use of these chemicals while knowing that they do little or nothing to prevent fire growth. Second, while it's very noble of the BFC to support the aims of REACH, in fact REACH provides the legislative framework for the use of chemicals which the BFC has no choice but to comply with. This statement is no doubt a bit of misdirection – what the BFC doesn't want you to know is:
 
a)         it has always supported the flame retardant industry's repetitive and deadly practice of putting new FRs on the market it claims are safe only for them to be withdrawn later when proper research finds they're toxic; but
 
b)         millions of sofas and mattresses in UK homes right now contain the banned FR, DecaBDE, poisoning many of us as we sit/sleep. What has the BFC done about ending this continuing harm to the population? Just pressured Defra to add a proviso into its new Waste Management Strategy in defiance of the Stockholm Convention, claiming that furniture which contains chemicals, like DecaBDE, which were legal at the time of manufacture (but later banned), are not 'hazardous waste'. This means the furniture industry won't have to pay for recalls or disposal at the end of a product's life and they can continue poisoning us with the latest FRs.

"However, the BFC is concerned that the Furniture & Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations have not been updated in the 30 years since they were first introduced. Since 1988 the industry has seen huge changes, not only in materials and processes, but also to the risks within the home environment. For the past decade, the industry has been seeking a full revision of the Regulations in order to update them so they are fit for modern purpose. To this end, the industry has been cooperating entirely with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but no response to the 2016 consultation to revise the Regulations has yet been published." 
​
Believe me, the BFC is really not concerned that the Regulations have not been updated, nor that BEIS has not responded to its 2016 consultation. The furniture industry loves the Regulations just the way they are because they are a very profitable barrier to trade, giving the UK industry a huge advantage in the home market. They also do not really want to see BEIS respond to the 2016 consultation since the only honest response BEIS can possibly make is to confirm its 2014 findings that UK furniture is not fire-safe. A response which would damn the furniture industry, for continuing to knowingly supply unsafe products for the past 5 years and damn itself for putting pension-protection and career comfortability before public safety over the same period.
 
Finally, it's probably no surprise to find no mention of the Grenfell fire in this manifesto, given that furniture made by BFC members that is not fire-safe and highly toxic made a massive contribution to the deaths and poisoning. Which of course is another reason the BFC does not really want a response to the 2016 consultation - because if it had insisted five years ago that it was going to stop selling toxic, flammable products, the fire would not have been as bad as it was.
 
The BFC also supplies the secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Furniture Industry Group and was recently telling all the world about a debate in Westminster Hall on 23 January this year, on the furniture industry. The current Chair of this group is Maggie Throup MP. The previous Chair, Stephen McPartland MP, was a key player in blocking changes to the Furniture Regulations (a move that was actively encouraged by the BFC), keeping them unsafe, and received a special award from the furniture industry for doing so, along with a place on the board of Furniture Village and around £40,000 a year for a couple of hours work each month. Richard Harrington MP, a BEIS Minister, has quite a lot to say in this debate although he makes no mention of the fact that UK furniture is flammable and highly toxic. The nearest we get to any discussion about flammability is when Mike Wood MP states:
 
"Research by the British Furniture Confederation showed that some products that come into the UK with CE approval are not properly flame resistant and can be burnt to a cinder in at little as 10 minutes, whereas a properly compliant product would self-extinguish within 10 to 15 seconds. Is he as concerned about that as I am?"
 
I expect Grenfell residents will be most reassured to know that the furniture in their tower self-extinguished within 10 to 15 seconds. Is the Minister as concerned? Well, he says:
 
"We share the desire of businesses for consumers to have confidence that the products in their homes are produced to rigorous safety requirements."
 
Let's just hope that those same consumers don't see the evidence on his own department's website that categorically proves that upholstered furniture is not at all safe. Whether the Minister himself has seen it is for now a matter of conjecture of course.

I was going to call this post, "How to Get What You Need from a Civil Servant" but a) you have to be able to translate what they really mean first, and b) it's extremely difficult to ever get what you need out of a civil servant, council official, or politician. 
 
Remember, you're up against centuries of practice on their part. Medieval nobility made the fatal mistake of handing administration over to early civil servants. It must have seemed like a no-brainer at the time: they do all the boring auditing while you get on with the fun stuff like robber-baroning, hunting and sucking up to the monarch. But it quickly led to the situation we have today where you phone up an official with a legitimate complaint, them being a public servant and you being the public, yet you come away with the distinct impression that you have somehow offended them and feeling extremely lucky that they have agreed to possibly "look into it".
 
Years ago, on the Kenny Everett TV show we see Kenny at home. His doorbell rings; he goes to the door, opens it and outside is Billy Connolly who says to Kenny, "Yes?". Connolly takes the offensive at being bothered, saying, "You opened the door," then threatens to call the constable. Kenny closes the door but can't resist opening it again. Connolly is still there and now exasperatedly says, "YES?". This is exactly what it's like dealing with officials when you have a legitimate problem.
 
I was a civil servant for many years before becoming a whistle-blower against the service, so while I don't necessarily have all the answers, I think I can identify a few tricks of the trade that you can be forewarned about. 
 
NEVER EVER FORGET THAT IT'S ALL A GAME TO THEM
 
Civil servants for the most part, and particularly in recent years in Whitehall departments, are trained to never do or say anything that might lead to work, changes in the law, or helping the public. The game is to come away from any meeting or phone call having said nothing of any substance and promised little by way of actual follow-up work. Behind closed doors, they actually boast about achieving these aims, such as they are.
 
There is no clear solution to this other than to be constantly aware that they are playing a game. Therefore, try to make everything you say in a phone call or a meeting with them propositional, not just part of a narrative. Which is of course much easier said than done but below are some hopefully helpful clues.
 
LISTENING TO YOUR PROBLEM
 
You get through by phone to the right person (which itself is an art form, of course), this could be say the official who is in charge of the piece of law that you have an issue with. Bear in mind that they will already know about your complaint and will have already decided on the outcome. But very often, the first thing they will ask you to do is explain your problem in detail and how it is an issue for you.
 
This of course seems a very fair and reasonable line to take. And it would be if, as said, they hadn't already decided on the outcome of your complaint. In fact, this tactic is designed to both take the wind out of your complaint and to be able to note that they are "listening". As you talk for 5, 10, 15 minutes and all your points are being noted and "Hmmmm"ed and "I see"ed at, you start to feel confident: perhaps they weren't aware of this problem before and they're actually going to do something about it.
 
Sorry, but this technique is in the same department as the word "consider", which civil servants love to use in their drafts for Ministers' replies to MPs. "I will consider carefully all your points" writes the Minister, but of course "consider" doesn't promise any action at all. 
 
In short, they are not listening to your problem; they're managing it. And one way they manage it will be to tell their line manager that you spoke for a full fifteen minutes without interruption - eh? What a nutter. Civil servants have decided that this behaviour is on a par with people who write letters to them in red ink with lots of underlines, bolds and triple exclamation marks and therefore are only too happy to encourage you to take it up.
 
Possible solutions:
 
The Reverse Everett
 
When they ask you what your problem is, you say: "What do you think it is?" This is risky, however, since they will probably counter with The Reverse Connolly and say, "You tell me." Which in the circumstances is unfortunately not that unreasonable.
 
Punctuated Requests for Affirmation
 
You pause after every key point you make and say, "So, what do you think of that?" This prevents them from labelling you as a nutter who never stops for breath. It also requires them to clearly demonstrate their unwillingness to actually do anything about your complaint. Because they can only really reply, "I'm not in a position to say . . . " or "I'll certainly consider it . . . " or "Please carry on; I need to hear your whole argument . . . " This reminds me to advise that you should always record such phone calls - because this kind of avoidance of action, minimal though it is, will probably be the only evidence you ever get.
 
Summing up request
 
When you've finished, ask them politely to sum up what you've just said. They will do everything they can to avoid this because while they're only repeating what you've said, on tape or in notes it could look like they are actually agreeing with you. They may say they'll write to you after they've consulted other colleagues in the department, and they'll set out your issue then. But it's worth persisting with this one, politely pointing out that this is a serious matter which they've agreed to consider; therefore, it's important that you know they understand exactly what you're putting to them.
 
DON'T EVER SWEAR, RAISE YOUR VOICE OR CRITICISE
 
Just as officials are very good at establishing who's going to run an inquiry and quickly putting in place terms of engagement that very much suit them and not you, they do the same thing in miniature, in say a telephone conversation. They won't tell you the rules beforehand, of course, but if you break one of them it allows them to dismiss everything you say.
 
So, for example, if you make the mistake of saying, "For f*ck's sake!", even if it's the most appropriate response to them claiming that they don't know the first thing about the job they get paid £80K a year to do, you are still, er, fudged. Because not swearing is an internal rule in Whitehall departments and anyone who breaks it can be dismissed as a dangerous lunatic. Even if they're not a Whitehall civil servant. Even if they're a Minister.
 
Similarly, don't raise your voice, even if to do so would be the most human response to another duplicitous inanity they send your way, e.g. you say: "WHAT KIND OF PERSON ARE YOU?"
 
Watch out, too, for accusations that you are "criticising". For example, I was once talking to a civil servant, giving them information - on record, verified, factual information - that indicated that one of the "independent" experts they'd appointed was probably in the pay of the very industry that he was supposed to be investigating. Instead of expressing alarm and promising to look into the evidence, they accused me of "criticising" their expert and I could hear the scratching of a red pen making an entry in that nutter register.
 
Solution:
 
Politely, stick to the facts and evidence. Specifically say that you are not criticising (their expert); you are helping them to make sure that this important investigation into public safety clearly needs to be independent. They won't act on this, of course, but at least they can't put another tick against your name in the register.
 
THE TELLING FLASH OF IRRITATION/ANGER/IGNORANCE
 
Civil servants are well trained in never answering your questions and steering you towards premature balding by violent follicular self-assault, but there will usually be at least one moment when their guard slips, unconsciously. This is similar to when marriage experts talk about the flash or snarl of contempt that can appear in one partner which, while quickly suppressed, is a major indication of a failing marriage. 
 
For example, when after much stonewalling, I finally managed to get a meeting with Debra Macleod at BEIS who is now in charge of the furniture regulations, there were a couple of comments she made unconsciously which gave away her true position. Generally, she spent two hours avoiding the key question I put to her, which was: "Given that your department has proved the match test doesn't work in practice in around 90% of cases, do you agree that UK sofas are unsafe?" But there were two moments when she didn't realise what she'd actually said, mainly because deliberate ignorance is never a fool-proof tactic to take.
 
First, I asked her: "What are you doing about BS7177?" She paused then said, "Er . . . remind me?" To which I said this is a key area in the review of the regulations that she was telling everyone BEIS was working hard on, therefore she ought to know. I said it was to do with mattress covers. Her answer to this was another unconscious giveaway: "That's a British Standard and I'm not expected to know about standards, just regulations." However, the Furniture Regulations are based around modified British Standards.
 
The second giveaway was when I asked her what was happening with interliners. She said, "What's an interliner?" She'd previously been telling me that BEIS was working hard on the returns for the 2016 consultation. One of the proposals in that consultation was for interliners. These two comments were definitive proof that despite having been in charge of these regulations for 18 months (at the time), she hadn't even looked at them, let alone understood them. 
 
Now, you probably won't be able to get these people to face the punishment they should receive for this kind of deliberate obfuscation, lying and deliberate incompetence but there are two values in noting these kinds of unconscious responses. First, you have it on record if there ever is a future reckoning, such as a public inquiry. Second, their animal mind that is shaped to do everything to avoid responsibility will know that you know.
 
 
 

From my journal, 13th December 2018
 
The first phase of the Grenfell Inquiry ends tomorrow, exactly 18 months from the day of the fire. This week, there have been various summings-up and a few last minute desperate claims of innocence. For example, the head of Whirlpool (which owns Hoover) made the extraordinary claim that the fire was started not by an electrical fault in the Hoover fridge-freezer alleged to have been the cause but by someone on the 4th floor (say) dropping a cigarette which then blew into the flat below to set light to the same fridge-freezer. As has so far been typical of the Inquiry, absolutely no investigation into what might be behind this statement has been made. But here's a bit of my dot-joining thoughts on it:
 

• BEIS recently passed as safe both the actual model that caught fire and the product type (owned by Whirlpool) but in practice tried to hide the test report that actually shows there was/is a serious fire-risk in this product (as reported by electrical experts to the All Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group)

 

• BEIS obviously wants attention kept off of products that caught fire in the tower, and certainly those that are faulty like flammable furniture that isn't supposed to be

 

• Intertek, a test house not a group of "independent technical experts" as claimed, were commissioned by BEIS in contempt of proper procurement rules for government departments, perhaps because Intertek does a lot of testing work for white goods manufacturers

 

• BEIS has utterly failed to do anything about Whirlpool washing machines which keep catching fire, despite being heavily criticised by the BEIS Select Committee Chair

 
Which might or might not explain why the head of Whirlpool would make such a claim about a flying cig based on absolutely no evidence, rather than cite the 60+ page Intertek report that exposes his products as a fire risk (even if BEIS has lied about its findings)
 
Tonight, I listened to the BBC's summing-up of the Inquiry so far. They did their usual "balanced" report, claiming for example that Grenfell residents/survivors are split equally between those who think the Inquiry is doing a good job and those who don't. Really? Every resident that I've spoken to is utterly disillusioned with the Inquiry.
 
A few days ago, Judge Moore-Bick announced that Phase 2 won't start until the end of 2019 at the earliest, possibly into 2020, despite it originally having been scheduled for spring 2019. He puts this down to the fact the Inquiry will be releasing the 200,000 documents accumulated so far (but only to Core Participants). This "work won't be complete until Autumn next year," he says. "There is lots to do and it's likely to identify new questions . . . however, careful and detailed preparation which enables us to focus on the aspects of the programme that are of real significance should make it possible to ensure that the proceedings, once begun, can be completed within a reasonable time." (My emphasis.)
 
Here we see the casual but utterly deliberate establishment tried and tested tricks – the self-selected undefined timings; the false conflations; the unjustified linear assignments to tasks that could and should be running in tandem. For example, note that he calls the distribution of documents "work", when it clearly isn't: it's something that could easily have been going on simultaneously with the other work over the past 18 months. Also incredibly, in saying that when they start again they should be able to get to the really significant stuff, he is dismissing the 18 months work done so far. 
 
Grenfell residents meanwhile are exhausted, ill and suffering from grief and stress. So far, they've seen absolutely no justice at all and precious little truth. A year is a very long time, and my gut feeling is that this is designed to kill off the residents, both as in their challenge and perhaps even to a degree literally. This is how we do things in this country: what is supposed to be an Inquiry for the benefit of the people who suffered from the fire is clearly and more or less cynically built entirely around the needs of the establishment, both industry and government.
 
Moore-Bick also said he was "particularly grateful" for the 307 statements received from those who have lost relatives, survivors, and local residents.
 
But what he's actually saying is that those statements fell into Phase 1 which is not the significant part of the Inquiry. This, believe me, will be the reason given much later in the day, couched in more subtle words of course, for why the Inquiry has done absolutely no investigative work into those statements, and challenged nothing in any of the other witness statements it has received over the past 18 months.
 
 

One of the mostly unseen effects of the Grenfell Tower fire has been to get officials from different government departments communicating with each other for a change, albeit behind closed doors. It would be nice to think that this is in order to pool knowledge towards providing survivors with the full truth about, for example, the toxicity they were exposed to. Unfortunately, it seems as if this collusion is designed to do little more than protect business interests and the backs of civil servants who do not have the guts to stand up to them and have their own mistakes to cover. 
 
At one such secret meeting last year, an official from BEIS stated that his department knows that the Furniture Regulations don't work but doesn't know what to do about it. Hold that thought.
 
On 18thDecember 2018, Defra published "Our Waste, Our Resources: A Strategy for England" which can be accessed here. In the Ministerial Foreword, Michael Gove states:

"Our goal is to maximise the value of the resources we use, minimise the waste we create, cut emissions and help create a cleaner, greener, healthier planet. 

"By making sure that manufacturers and producers bear a heavier financial burden for the pollution they cause, the Strategy fully upholds the ‘polluter pays’ principle.
 
"And by protecting the natural world, and leaving it in a healthier state for the next generation, it will help us uphold a core pledge of our 25 Year Environment Plan." 

Which sounds good and indeed the press, where it can be bothered to, has picked up mainly on this intention to get industry to clean up its own rubbish. But let's look a bit more closely at how Defra has also made up its own rules inside this strategy that are directly in defiance of the Stockholm Convention (which the UK is signed up to), to allow mass chemical pollution to continue via upholstered furniture. 
 
For a start, there is not a single mention in this strategy of flame retardants (just one to "chemicals" – see below), despite the fact the UK is the largest polluter of the environment with regard to these chemicals in domestic products.
 
Flame retardants are Persistent Organic Pollutants, and here's what the Stockholm Convention says about POPs:

1) They are highly toxic; 
2)  they are persistent, lasting for years or even decades before degrading into less dangerous forms; 
3)  they evaporate and travel long distances through the air and through water; and 
4)  they accumulate in fatty tissue. 

As stated elsewhere on this site, UK homes contain the highest levels of flame retardant dust in the world, mainly because of our tough (but largely useless) Furniture Regulations.
 
Okay, time to step back a few years. Towards the end of 2013, I arranged a meeting at BEIS (BIS as it was then) with a group of furniture industry representatives, to bring them up to date with the changes we wanted to make to the Furniture Regulations. Changes that would have seen a huge reduction in brominated flame retardants in cover fabrics (BFRs are extremely toxic). Their reaction was less than enthusiastic, it has to be said, but at the time we didn't realise the full extent of their collusion with the chemical industry. I'd also invited a colleague from the Environment Agency to give a talk on the Stockholm Convention and how it was due to rule soon that products containing flame retardants like DecaBDE (ubiquitous in UK furniture at the time) would need to be disposed of safely. And that would be a very expensive process. Well, that certainly got their attention . . . so much so, that a delegation from the furniture industry travelled to Brussels soon after to put a case to the European Commission. Was this to support our proposal to remove harmful FRs from furniture? No, it was to try to get the Commission to let them off the likely huge disposal costs. "But we have a mountain of sofas and mattresses in the UK to dispose of!" they bleated. "Tough," said the Commission; "that's the UK's problem."
 
Then again, maybe they're breathing a little easier now, if they've seen the Environment Agency's record on enforcements, i.e. down from around 130 a year in 2012 to around just 15 in 2018 (see graph at end of this blog). The EA has of course been commissioned to undertake a study into the toxicity of the Grenfell Tower fire. Will that put up their enforcement figures? It's hard to tell since the EA has gone totally silent on this project.

Now, here's what's required of any nation that signs up to the Stockholm Convention:
 
a)    Develop and implement appropriate strategies for identifying stockpiles, products and articles in use that contain or are contaminated with POPs;
b)    Manage stockpiles and wastes in an environmentally sound manner;
c)    Dispose of waste so that the POPs content is destroyed or irreversibly transformed;
d)    Not permit the recycling, recovery, reclamation, direct reuse or alternative use of the POPs;
e)  Endeavour to develop strategies for identifying contaminated sites and perform eventual remediation in an environmentally sound manner.

Let's see how the UK deals with furniture under these requirements:
 
a) We'll come to the strategy as such in a moment but in terms of identifying stockpiles, etc, contaminated with POPs, basically the UK doesn't, other than citing a "mountain" of furniture. We don't even know what's in an individual sofa or mattress, just that it's a variety of FR chemicals.
b) At present, most sofas and mattresses at end-life go into landfill, where FRs leach out and get into water, soil and the food chain.
c) Virtually no furniture waste is disposed of safely in the UK.
d) The UK allows second-hand furniture containing toxic FRs to be re-sold.
e) As far as furniture's concerned, I'm not aware of any such identification that has been carried out.
 
In light of this, you'd expect the UK's new Waste Strategy to provide a solution. Well, if you turn to page 39 you'll find a section headed: "Invoking the 'polluter pays' principle and harnessing the potential of EPR for other waste streams". (EPR stands for Extended Producer Responsibility.)
 
On the face of it, then, this is the furniture industry's nightmare made flesh: as the producer they will have to take responsibility and, well, pay as the main polluter. Excellent: at last we'll safely get rid of the millions of kilograms of toxic FRs in our furniture and, because they'll have to pay, they'll stop putting new FRs in new furniture too.
 
Or not. Because on the same page we find this:

"Extended producer responsibility can help deal with those items and products which cannot be classified as hazardous waste, for example soft furnishings that contain chemicals which were legal at time of manufacture but which have subsequently been banned."
 
This is an extraordinary statement in that it completely defies the Stockholm Convention. It even contradicts existing UK government policy, e.g. on asbestos – because this statement rules that anything that contains asbestos is not hazardous waste if asbestos was legal at the time of manufacture. Er, so why all that effort to have it removed and disposed of safely that's been going on since 1999? Why do local authorities provide an asbestos collection service to its citizens? Shouldn't they also be offering a collection service for sofas and mattresses that contain toxic and banned flame retardants? Apparently not because Defra reckons there is a difference between one kind of hazardous waste and another; it just isn't explaining what exactly.
 
Let's translate what this statement actually means with regard to soft furnishings:
 
a) The literally millions of sofas/mattresses that contain now-banned FRs like DecaBDE can remain in UK homes because Defra has decided they're not hazardous waste.
b) When they come to the end of their life, we can continue slinging them into landfill.
c) Furniture manufacturers can continue the process of stuffing furniture with the latest FRs that only the FR industry reckon are safe, and when they're later banned do nothing about it.
 
Are there any hidden motives behind this policy?
 
Let's call this speculation for now, but here are a few possibles:

• If BEIS was to tell the furniture industry that under the Stockholm Convention they must pay to dispose of old furniture safely, the industry would publicly hammer them with the fact that it's BEIS's fault they've continued to use tons of FRs, i.e. because in 2014 BEIS proved the furniture regulations mostly don't work but has refused to put them right.

 

• If furniture containing FRs is (rightly) deemed 'hazardous waste' then clearly Grenfell Tower was stuffed with it and the resulting fire highly toxic. This would again impact on BEIS because as said they've refused to put the regulations right. It would also impact on the furniture industry since they've known for at least five years that they're selling toxic products. And it would impact on the flame retardant industry because their products contributed hugely to the UK's worst domestic fire since the war.

 

• If furniture in Grenfell Tower was hazardous then the Environment Agency will be compelled to start their investigation into the toxicity of the fire from the clear foundation that it was indeed toxic. With this ruling by Defra, however, wriggle room is introduced, i.e. they can claim furniture was not hazardous, which on the surface is ludicrous but shallow claims are surprisingly effective in a country that provides no oversight on its government departments.

 

• The cost of disposal of furniture at end-life would be huge. But if it's revealed that industry was knowingly supplying UK consumers with hazardous products, the costs could escalate and perhaps even be lethal. Law suits would abound, and the government itself would not be exempt from being prosecuted.

 
Let's just remind ourselves that this waste management policy was put together by public servants. It's supposed to protect our health and the environment. Which means that the provision it's introduced to de-hazard toxic furniture and thereby allow industry to continue poisoning all of us forever (unless something or someone intervenes and with Brexit looming that seems unlikely) is either an act of extraordinary incompetence. Or it's something else entirely.


​

To get to the full truth of anything it's often necessary to look not just at the immediate factors but also at many other, sometimes apparently lateral or even non-conformist, issues which, when joined up can reveal an even bigger truth. And where people and money are concerned, it's prudent to assume there is more than a little interest in both obscuring the dots themselves and making sure they don't get joined up. 
 
So far at least, the Grenfell Inquiry, Hackitt Review and independent experts panel has done very little dot-joining. Pretty much every subject is treated as if separate. For example, while cladding has been massively focussed on, no one has looked at the links between it and furniture, carpets, curtains, bedding. One such link being that they are all fuel sources; another that they often contain flame retardant chemicals. With the Grenfell residents currently very concerned about how their health has been affected by the toxicity of the fire, and given that when flame retardant chemicals burn they massively increase toxic fumes/smoke, you would have thought this was an obvious step to take. Yet instead we get the government and the council so far failing to even look for toxicity in soil, debris, human blood, etc, claiming (apparently clairvoyantly) that they do not need to because toxicity is 'low'.
 
There is a group of us working on joining the dots, however. And for the purposes of this blog I thought I'd give just one example. Below, to this end, I've put together some facts and quotes, along with a few background points that may or may not be relevant. In short, I'll lay down some dots and leave it to the reader to join them, or not. Please bear in mind that these are just a few of the dots within the overall picture, one that is shaping much of what goes on, or doesn't, at the Grenfell Inquiry.
 

• From 2008 until earlier this year, Dave Sibert was the National Fire Safety Advisor and IRMP Advisor to the Fire Brigades Union, a paid role that came with an FBU credit card.

 

• Around May 2018, Sibert was forced to resign from this post, although this has not been publicly announced by the FBU. Here's what Sibert himself says about it in an article dated 7 September 2018:

 
"THERE IS supposed to be an ancient Chinese curse, which reads: ‘May you live in interesting times’. After the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower last year, those of us in the fire industry have certainly been ‘living in interesting times’. The curse appeared to point its crooked finger at me when I was forced to resign from my previous job, although in the end resignation gave me the opportunity to take up the challenging – but very rewarding – role of head of the special projects group (SPG) at the FPA [Fire Protection Association]."
 

• Sibert was given this new paid post at the FPA by Jon O'Neill, Managing Director of the Fire Protection Association.

 

• The FPA is funded by the insurance industry. The insurance industry is preoccupied with protecting property from fire. The flame retardant industry claims its products do so.

 

• UK homes have the highest levels of flame retardant dust in the world, the main reason being our unique and very stringent furniture flammability regulations.

 

• In 2014, the FPA signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the US's National Fire Protection Association.

 

• The NFPA consistently supports the flame retardant industry in first trying to block then to overturn the decision by California to drop its open flame furniture test in 2014 – which meant that flame retardant chemicals were no longer necessary in California/US furniture. For example, also in 2014, the NFPA supported a lawsuit by one of the big three world-wide flame retardant producers, Chemtura, against the state of California, insisting on the retention of the open flame test which would lead to the retention of millions of kgs of flame retardants in US furniture.

 

• In 2014/2015, Dave Sibert, Jon O'Neil, Paul Fuller and Sir Ken Knight played a major role, working together, to block safety changes to the UK's furniture regulations that would have led to a massive drop in flame retardants in cover fabrics. For example, in 2014, Dave Sibert wrote the FBU's response to the government's proposal to make the furniture regulations safe. It was entirely negative albeit with absolutely no evidence by way of support. This contrasted sharply with the many very positive returns from individual fire services, including the London Fire Brigade who applauded the proposals that would make furniture fire-safer and made some useful suggestions for other improvements.

 

• Sibert, O'Neil, Fuller and Knight, however,  succeeded and such safety changes are still pending. In the meantime, UK furniture continues to contain the highest levels of flame retardants in the world.

• Paul Fuller resigned his post in May 2018 as Chair of the Fire Sector Federation after just a year, "for a variety of reasons", at the same time as Sibert was forced to resign his post at the FBU.

 

• Paul Fuller requested an invitation to a British Standards meeting in 2015 to discuss what to do about flammable children's fancy dress outfits. He opened his introductory talk by stating, "I'm not here today to advocate for flame retardants in children's clothing . . . "

 

• As can be seen elsewhere on this blog, in late 2017, I publicly challenged the four people named above to explain why they had not done the extra work they'd talked a Minister into agreeing to on the furniture regs' new match/open flame test, with the result that UK furniture remains stuffed with flame retardants and is not fire-safe. None of them answered.

 

• Following the Grenfell fire, Dave Sibert and the FBU were often quoted in the press, strongly in support of the Stay Put policy, right up until March this year; for example:

'Fire Brigades Union safety expert David Sibert has said: “The principle that tower blocks are built on is that every flat is a fire-resisting box, every flat is completely surrounded by fire-resisting construction from the rest of the building. So you should be able to set fire to your own flat and leave it to completely burn out and it won’t affect anybody else in the building.”' Guardian, 12 July 2017

'Dave Sibert, the Fire Brigades Union’s fire safety adviser and chairman of a national committee on fire safety standards, told the newspaper that if the "stay put" advice was not in place during the incident, some of the 60-plus people saved may have been injured or worse if they were fleeing the building.' The Sun, 25 May 2018
 
'We do not agree that firefighters on the ground had concluded within 10 minutes that nobody should stay in their flats to await rescue. We simply do not know the evidence at this stage. There is no evidence that we are aware of so far that any such policy was scrapped within 10 minutes. We are aware that residents were actually rescued from their flats until very late into the incident.'  FBU press release 25 May, 2018
 

• However, Sibert appears to have now changed his view or at least to have moderated it. From a slide presentation he made around July this year:

3.58 STAY PUT STRATEGY 

STRATEGY NORMALLY ADOPTED IN BLOCKS OF FLATS AND MAISONETTES WHEREBY, WHEN A FIRE OCCURS IN A FLAT OR MAISONETTE, THE OCCUPANTS OF THAT DWELLING EVACUATE, BUT OCCUPANTS OF ALL OTHER DWELLINGS CAN SAFELY REMAIN IN THEIR DWELLINGS UNLESS DIRECTLY AFFECTED BY HEAT AND SMOKE OR DIRECTED TO LEAVE BY THE FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE 

SOURCE: BS 9991

There is a contradiction here with his earlier statements to the press, i.e. the standard BS 9991 says the Stay Put policy should 'normally' be adopted, whereas Sibert had earlier insisted it applies to 'every flat'.
 
The standard goes on to say that people should stay put (if the fire is in another flat) unless directly affected by heat or smoke. Again, Sibert earlier is very clear that you must stay put whatever, even stating that any flat that is on fire can completely burn out and it 'won't affect anybody else in the building'. 
 
He appears to be using the standard to set up his change of direction since later in the presentation he states:

1. IN A POORLY BUILT HIGH RISE RESIDENTIAL BUILDING, A STAY PUT EVACUATION STRATEGY SHOULD NOT BE PUT IN PLACE. AND 
2. WHEN FIRE SPREADS THROUGH A POORLY BUILT HIGH RISE RESIDENTIAL BUILDING, A STAY PUT EVACUATION STRATEGY DISAPPEARS. NONE OF IT CAN BE APPLIED. 

Neither of these two points was made by him before. But they nicely backwards-cover the emerging evidence at Grenfell, i.e. that 'stay put no matter what' was the wrong policy.
Then he comes up with a statement that contradicts his new view but which is perhaps intended to exonerate his previous view:

WHEN FIRE SPREADS THROUGH A POORLY BUILT HIGH RISE RESIDENTIAL BUILDING, FIREFIGHTERS MAY HAVE TO SAY TO RESIDENTS STAY WHERE YOU ARE, WE WILL DO OUR BEST TO RESCUE YOU

'May' is probably significant here in that it creates wriggle room for him. But to repeat his earlier post-Grenfell view: 
 
"[Sibert] told the newspaper that if the "stay put" advice was not in place during the incident, some of the 60-plus people saved may have been injured or worse if they were fleeing the building."
 
He's very clearly stating that more people would have died at Grenfell if they had not stayed put and instead tried to flee the building. Yet everyone, including the FBU, always knew that Grenfell Tower was a 'poorly built high rise residential building' of which Sibert now says a stay put policy cannot 'be applied'. Back to 'may' again.
 
I'll end with another of Sibert's slides which pretty much sums up the massive contradictions between Sibert's earlier and later views on Stay Put:

Two ‘classes’ of high rise residential building 

1. THOSE WITH THE FULL PACKAGE OF FIRE SAFETY SYSTEMS WHERE STAY PUT EVACUATION IS SUITABLE. 
2. THOSE WITH SERIOUS FAILINGS IN THEIR FIRE SAFETY SYSTEMS WHERE STAY PUT EVACUATION IS NOT SUITABLE. 
3. There are buildings where the stay put evacuation strategy is inappropriate. 
4. This [sic] NOT because there is anything wrong with the stay put strategy. 
5. It IS because there are buildings out there with inadequate fire precautions and fire safety systems. 

• The flame retardant industry has a history of funding/bribing fire sector officials: proof of this where Bob Graham and Mike Hagen are concerned is in the public domain. It's an open secret within the fire sector that there are other currently serving officials taking money from the FR industry. 

 
 

Extract from my journal, 30th June 2015
 
At our team meeting today, the two main discussion topics are Steve’s position as Technical Advisor and lines to take at FW/6. 
 
[Background: FW/6 was the technical committee at British Standards responsible for furniture flammability. John Lord deliberately informed Jo Swinson, the Minister, that I had brought a Civil Service Code case against my managers – for failing to implement the new match test in April 2015. This gave her no choice but to ignore my government response to the 2014 consultation and instead choose Lord’s. His was a put-up job which would have delighted industry in that it instigated at least another year’s delay in bringing in the match test. The main justification he gave for this was to say that we needed to get FW/6 to provide more input to the test (which we didn’t, of course). The meeting with them was looming and there were complications, not least of which was that Steve had just been elected as the new Chair of FW/6 . . . ]
 
Chris’s opening comment about the upcoming FW/6 meeting says it all, really: “We’re covered because the Minister didn’t promise anything.” She means, of course, that John’s published government response that he conned past the Minister didn’t promise anything. And even then, that’s not strictly true; the response’s Next Steps actually say:

“The aim of this would be to enable BIS to launch a new consultation early in the next Parliament, covering all the proposed changes to the Regulations which stem from the stakeholder discussions outlined above, complete with draft regulations, guidance and further technical explanations. 

“This would in principle enable the full review to be completed by April 2016.”
 
Maybe one day, Swinson will realise that when she instructed her officials to get the new match test in by April 2016, they actually made sure that was going to be an uphill task, i.e. by changing the aim, without her permission, to – as it says above – getting a review of allthe Regulations in by that time (no chance) and even then, it’s only ‘in principle’. If future historians ever want to work out why millions of UK citizens continued to be poisoned by the furniture in their own homes long after it was necessary, they should head for these ‘Next Steps’ by Mr Lord (not his real name) and see just how powerful a single mendatious sociopathic civil servant can be when he has a wealthy and rewarding industry to suck up to.
 
Barbara’s solution to the ‘Steve problem’ (i.e. he’s now Chair of FW/6) is one of two options:
 
1)         British Standards are asked to provide a stand-in Chair for this particular meeting. Steve of course can still speak.
 
2)         Steve is asked to step out of the room when the BIS material is discussed.
 
Here in all its glory is the senior civil servant’s extraordinary hubris. Because, it hasn’t occurred to Barbara for a moment that this is FW/6’s meeting, not BIS’s; not hers to control. She, like most of her kind, spends her entire time telling lower ranks what to do and think; therefore assumes an outside body will allow her to do the same. She also has already forgotten the farce she caused by trying to railroad a group of test experts not so long ago – particularly the part where she was literally stamping her feet and crying, “You’re not listening to me!”
 
On 2) even John can’t restrain himself from pointing out that allthe material at this meeting is BIS’s.
 
Barbara has also only just noticed that Steve is still our technical advisor, and has decided to let him go. She says that she, Chris and I will phone him on Thursday to give him the news. 
 
Then it’s time to discuss what lines we’ll take at FW/6 and things get a bit fruity. Sorry, when I say ‘we’, I do of course mean ‘Terry’. Because, while I have to listen to these higher ranks talking well-enunciated bollocks, it’s me who’s going to have to face a roomful of vested interests at FW/6. Sorry, when I say ‘fruity’ I reall mean ‘fruit and nutty’. 
 
John is now annoyed because British Standards have not actually done anything since he and Barbara coerced them into agreeing to look further at the regs, and they’ve now only got one month left to do so, if we’re to meet the new deadline of implementing in April 2016. Not that he wants to meet the deadline necessarily but he does want to be seen to be ‘doing something’. He thinks it’s down to bad adminstration at BS and doesn’t react when I point out that the Minister agreed with them having 12 months in which to do the ‘work’ – it’s John who changed it. I point out further that Sir Ken and the others had won 12 months off Swinson and were not going to now agree to just 6. He doesn’t like me saying this of course, since he made this change without Swinson’s permission. Incredibly he then suggests, and the rest agree, that I should tell them they’ve got a month to deliver. This is the same John, of course, who remained utterly silent a few months back when Sir Ken bullied us into the 12 months in the first place.
 
I remind them that weasked for this meeing with BS and that making such a demand will only cause bad feeling. And then the ultimate irony – John says I should tell them, tough, get on with it, and if they come and complain to the Minister, so be it. 
 
And true to form, he then decrees that Chris and I need to work out the actual lines to take for the meeting since he has other things to be ‘doing something’ about.
 
Had a long talk with Steve this evening. He was quite amused at his forthcoming ‘sacking’ as our technical advisor. He’d already told UKTLF that he was no longer in that role anyway. Oh, and UKTLF [association of test houses] have decided that the match test is ready to go and are considering challenging our commission to British Standards on the grounds that it’s unnecessary. If they do that, Steve as Chair of FW/6, will put me on the spot to defend BIS’s commission. Please do, I said. That should make an interesting ‘line’ to discuss with Chris tomorrow. He also said he’ll stick it to Barbara in her phone call to him by commenting on what a great job Terry has been doing on the match test. 
 
He also said that in persisting with this, it’s uncovered just how corrupt the industry is. But the problem with that is it will just increase the cover-up and it’s the UK consumer who’ll suffer. 
 
Which is the eternal dilemma of anyone who’s trying to do the right thing. While the bought just throw statements and commands that don’t stand up to any kind of honest scrutiny, the good guys have to spend much time explaining why the evidence suggests they can’t do things that way. They also face the problem in doing so of how much they reveal that they’re on to them. Because once the bad guys know you know they can of course shift their machinations to one side, thereby causing you a whole barrel more work.
 
In other words, while Barbara and John decree that they have other things to do so can’t face FW/6 and the many guests scheduled to come, including Sir Ken Knight, it’s me who’ll be standing in front of a whole gaggle of mixed and overlapping vested interests (since there’s no way Chris will do so [and in the event she did indeed cry off sick at the last minute]). It’s me who has had to spend the past few years getting up to speed so they can’t overwhelm me with techno-babble. It’s me who’s spent eleven years building solid relations with them so that I can at least resist them without it getting too acrimonious. It’s me who once again will have to look Sir Ken in the eye and face up to that well-connected, calmly overbearing, establishment-backed “You will do as I say” command. 
 
Why will I do this? Because it would be wrong not to.
 
 
 
 

We now know that while Grenfell Tower was still burning and for days following, officials of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council were holed up in their offices planning their denials and busily shredding incriminating papers, doing nothing at all to help stricken citizens. The government was busy with its urgent priorities, too, one of which was shaping the Inquiry to minimise damage across a whole range of interests, including its own, in particular the bodge it had made of buildings and fire regulations over the past thirty years or so. That and the fact it was directly responsible for failing to put right the furniture flammability regulations when it had the chance to some four years previous to the fire. 
 
There were plenty of well-compensated officials in government and the fire sector who would have received their orders almost as soon as the building caught fire. Oh, and let's not forget the flame retardant industry. After all, they had markets to protect, and it didn't help that outside the UK, the western world had largely turned against its products in furniture. So much so that it had been expanding into building materials instead. But it clearly wouldn't do if the truth got out that its products in sofas and mattresses in the tower were obviously not doing the job of preventing fire; worse still, they added greatly to the toxicity of the blaze. And so Dr Malcolm Tunnicliff was rushed into the media, while the fire was still burning, to assure everyone that there was no hydrogen cyanide poisoning (actually there was, and lots of it) and only old furniture (pre-1988) was toxic; modern furniture was not. Now, a common theme amongst those with something to lose from tragedies like Grenfell is that when they are pushed into an ethical and logical corner regarding, in this case, their lies, they simply don't respond. And so Dr Tunnicliff did not respond when I wrote to him to point out that he'd got the issue with furniture exactly the wrong way round, i.e. modern furniture is far more toxic than older stuff when it burns.
 
Meanwhile, a shocked and devastated community had to look after itself. 
 
There was an interesting moment, following the end of a meeting in June this year at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. We were being escorted from the meeting room to the reception via the lifts by, well, I'll call her Doris for now, since civil servants are very sensitive about being named in public. Even though they're public servants. 
 
Incredibly, considering what had gone on in the meeting, Doris was smiling and actually skipping a little with some kind of self-induced pleasure. She then made small talk by asking us what we were doing next. Instead of answering that particular question, however, I decided to try popping her joy bubble by saying, "You met the All Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group yesterday and they're hopping mad that you didn't answer any of their questions either."
 
I watched her carefully. The jolly sheen in her eyes dimmed for about half a second but then quickly returned. "We had a meeting with them, yes," she beamed.
 
As we left the building I said to my colleague, "She believes the meeting went well because she thinks she dealt with us. She'll tell her line manager everything's fine and probably get a positive mention in her annual report."
 
Move forward to last week. I'd put in some questions to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (along with many other people) regarding their complete inability to acknowledge, let alone deal with, the fall-out of the fire in terms of sickness and environmental damage. One of my questions was what is the Council doing about the fact the government proved four years ago the furniture flammability regulations don't work and therefore they contributed greatly to the toxicity of the fire? Well, RBKC contacted BEIS for a statement. Doris would have provided it and what she put forward was the same stock response BEIS has been giving for over a year - that they're still working on the regulations but must not do anything that would reduce fire safety.
 
Compartmentalisation. In our meeting with Doris, I had asked a similar question about twenty times: do you agree that your own evidence proves that the current match test fails in up to 90% of cases and therefore UK sofas are unsafe? She would not reply. The closest she got was to say the government believes the regulations can be improved.
 
To state that BEIS must not do anything to reduce furniture fire safety when they themselves have already proved it doesn't exist is clearly a lie. Doris lied. How can a civil servant lie in a public statement, especially when the result of that lie means millions of people are being poisoned in their own homes, and the Grenfell Tower fire was worse than it should have been?
 
Compartmentalisation. At one point in our meeting, I asked Doris about the sofa in her own home and the fact that it is toxic both in normal use and especially if it catches fire. I watched her eyes cloud briefly, sensing a trap - a trap, for God's sake! Yes, a trap of the truth - finally, she said, "I don't feel that my sofa is unsafe." Bear in mind, this is the woman who is responsible for these failing regulations that right now are damaging the health of thousands, perhaps millions of children. "And what are your feelings based on?" I said, "against the hard evidence on your own department's website that proves your sofa isn't safe." She didn't respond, presumably because to do so might have weakened the compartmentalisation protecting her from having to actually do some work. 
 
Doris, by the way, has been full time on the furniture regulations for around two years. She's even received a promotion in post, her salary now around £50K a year. When I asked her where they'd got with interliners (a proposal for which is in the 2016 consultation document that they are still apparently 'working' on) she said, "What's an interliner?"
 
This, in a nutshell, is how the establishment - government, local authorities, fire services and police at management levels - works. It is not there to help/protect the public. It exists to protect and reward itself. Similarly, the leadership of RBKC does not exist to protect its citizens; it exists as a career platform for itself. Like BEIS, it compartmentalises in order to allow it to lie, essentially. And when it's presented with the truth in such a way that threatens that compartmentalisation, it will just go silent, like Dr T.
 
So it is that the Leader of the Council, Elizabeth Campbell, has gone silent on me. As detailed on the Grenfell Tower Fire page of this site, after she mentioned that I'd raised the issue of the furniture regs at a recent RBKC meeting (well, she didn't have much choice), I wrote back offering to bring her up to speed on one of the main contributors to the fire. She didn't reply. I wrote a reminder. Again, she didn't reply. 
 
And thus the Leader of RBKC joins the long list of others who do not reply either, such as Sir Ken Knight, Dame Judith Hackitt, the Inquiry, BEIS, MHCLG, the GMB, Matt Wrack of the FBU; and Dave Sibert also of the FBU but recently and mysteriously stripped of his job there.
 
Silence, of course, should be damning, a sure indication of cowardice and mendacity. But it often works in the UK, unfortunately, simply because the recourse of the ordinary person is much more limited than it should be. The press used to be a reliable recourse but they are mostly hamstrung these days, by rich owners who do not want their rich mates pursued, and/or by the fear of legal action. There is a TV journalist who has been following the Grenfell fire since the beginning. I had a long conversation with him once about the role the furniture regs played in the fire. He was very interested but he didn't report on it. Later, I found out that he'd suffered from thyroid cancer. Thyroid conditions are one of the more well-established effects of flame retardant chemicals the like of which will be in this journalist's furniture in large amounts. I wrote to him about this. He didn't reply, although he's still reporting on Grenfell. Just not on the bit about furniture and flame retardants.
 
Yes, in a way you know you're right when they don't reply. The trouble is, they're surrounded by many others of a like mind, who also don't reply.