The Grenfell Inquiry is taking a break at present and I thought it might be timely to set out a few pieces of new information and reminders regarding the part played in the fire by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
As covered in detail on this site, BEIS is refusing to make changes to the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988, even though they know this is poisoning just about every person in the country and that the failures of the Regulations made the Grenfell fire worse than it needed to have been.
BEIS is refusing to respond to its 2016 consultation that once again proposed a new ‘match test’ that would put right the current failures and hugely reduce toxic flame retardants in UK furniture.
The current civil servant in charge of the Furniture Regulations has been in that post for nearly two years yet when questioned recently did not even know that the flammability requirements are modified British Standards. She also did not know what an interliner is.
In response to a FOI request made by the Grenfell Fire Forum, BEIS stated that it had had NO contact with the Grenfell Inquiry or the Dame Judith Hackitt review about the Furniture Regulations, e.g. to inform them that they are failing and therefore contributed to the fire. I questioned Dame Hackitt about this recently and she said that BEIS were working on the problems with the Regulations. So, who’s lying?
In January 2018, BEIS set up the new Office for Product Safety and Standards within itself, with a £3m budget. It has been criticised by the Chair of the BEIS select committee for doing nothing about Whirlpool washing machines which keep catching fire.
BEIS/OPSS were charged with investigating the fridge-freezer unit that is thought to have started the Grenfell fire. They issued a press release in May this year, stating that ‘experts’ had concluded that the risk from these units is low and therefore a recall is unnecessary. The APPG for Fire Safety and Rescue questioned the BEIS official about this, asking for the names of the experts and to see their work. This official – the same one that’s in charge of the Furniture Regulations - did not reply.
I put in a FOI request to BEIS asking the same questions and they responded to tell me the answers are at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hotpoint-fridge-freezer-ff175b-independent-investigation
However, this link was not given to the APPG and was not mentioned in BEIS’s press release. Strange. What could they be hiding? Well, we are currently looking into the test reports at that link and so far they look pretty dodgy, to say the least. Overall, BEIS is conflating two separate points, i.e. on the one hand, they’re saying that they tested second hand units of the same type as started the Grenfell fire to see if other such units in the UK need recalling but they don’t. On the other, they’re trying to imply that the actual unit that caught fire in Grenfell tower was also safe – which is incredible, considering it was responsible for 72 deaths. But see for yourself; here is what BEIS stated in the press release:
“The investigation into the fridge freezer Hotpoint FF175B model identified by the Metropolitan Police as being involved in the Grenfell Tower fire has confirmed there is no need for a product recall or any other corrective action, and that consumers can continue using the product as normal.
“As part of the government’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire, Business Secretary Greg Clark ordered an immediate examination of the unit by independent technical experts.”
The second paragraph is misleading in other ways, too. First, the unit was not examined by independent technical experts. Similar second hand models were examined by an Intertek test laboratory which produced a (questionable) report that the experts then based their decision on. The actual unit in the Grenfell fire has not been examined by BEIS. Second, it probably goes without saying that the ‘independent experts’ were in fact either BEIS officials or other officials appointed by BEIS.
My view is that BEIS are trying to claim that the actual unit involved in the Grenfell fire is not dangerous because the last thing they want is attention being drawn to products they are responsible for having added to the fire. Like furniture.
I have been working with Lady Mar on trying to get flame retardants out of products. In July this year she raised some parliamentary questions for BEIS to answer. Here are two of them:
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Fire Resistant Materials
HL9708
Q: To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they take to ensure that all flame retardants are safe (1) in normal use, (2) during fires, and (3) at the end of life when they are disposed of.
A: Manufacturers and distributors must ensure all consumer products are safe before they are placed on the UK market, including those that use flame retardants. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have lead responsibility for environmental policy and restrictions on chemicals.
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Fire Resistant Materials
HL9707
Q: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the study by the University of Central Lancashire, Flame retardants in UK furniture increase smoke toxicity more than they reduce fire growth rate, published in April; whether they have consulted with their Chief Scientist in forming that assessment; and whether, following that study, they intend to reconsider the efficacy of current flame retardants.
A: The Department welcomes the paper by University of Central Lancashire and it forms part of the evidence we are considering in reviewing the legislation regulating the safety of furniture.
The first part of the first answer is not true. Flame retardants are not a product, for a start, and are therefore not governed by product safety laws. They are governed by REACH, the EU’s chemical assessment regime. While product safety law requires manufacturers to be able to demonstrate that, say, a bunk bed is safe beforeit’s placed on the market, using the recognised standards to do so, a flame retardant chemical can be placed on the market by the manufacturer purely on the grounds that he says it’s safe. The pattern with flame retardants is that eventually they are properly tested and almost always found to be toxic, then removed from the market. The problem being that they are still in millions of products. Note, too, that the second two points by Lady Mar were ignored. This is probably because where ‘during fires’ is concerned, FRs are incredibly toxic (see the UCLAN paper mentioned in the second question). And disposal of FRs at the end-life of products is a subject that both industry and BEIS are terrified of. In short, the Stockholm Convention is soon to rule that FRs in products must be disposed of safely thus. The UK, of course, possesses literally millions of sofas and mattresses stuffed full of toxic FRs. At present, these are disposed of dangerously but cheaply in land-fill. To dispose of them safely will cost a fortune. Strange that the Department for Business would choose not to mention this fact.
The second answer completely contradicts the first! The UCLAN paper proves that FR-treated UK furniture is highly toxic. You might also wonder what BEIS means by ‘considering’ the evidence that FRs are toxic in regard to regulating the Furniture Regs. Their own 2014 consultation paper demonstrates the toxicity of FRs. The UCLAN paper was published in December 2017 (although Professor Hull gave a demonstration of it several months earlier). Which means that for at least eight months, but more like for four years, this Department has done absolutely nothing about the fact that the failures in regulations it is responsible for are poisoning the entire country.
All of which raises perhaps the most germane question, why on earth are the consumer product safety laws in the UK governed by the Department for Business?
As covered in detail on this site, BEIS is refusing to make changes to the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988, even though they know this is poisoning just about every person in the country and that the failures of the Regulations made the Grenfell fire worse than it needed to have been.
BEIS is refusing to respond to its 2016 consultation that once again proposed a new ‘match test’ that would put right the current failures and hugely reduce toxic flame retardants in UK furniture.
The current civil servant in charge of the Furniture Regulations has been in that post for nearly two years yet when questioned recently did not even know that the flammability requirements are modified British Standards. She also did not know what an interliner is.
In response to a FOI request made by the Grenfell Fire Forum, BEIS stated that it had had NO contact with the Grenfell Inquiry or the Dame Judith Hackitt review about the Furniture Regulations, e.g. to inform them that they are failing and therefore contributed to the fire. I questioned Dame Hackitt about this recently and she said that BEIS were working on the problems with the Regulations. So, who’s lying?
In January 2018, BEIS set up the new Office for Product Safety and Standards within itself, with a £3m budget. It has been criticised by the Chair of the BEIS select committee for doing nothing about Whirlpool washing machines which keep catching fire.
BEIS/OPSS were charged with investigating the fridge-freezer unit that is thought to have started the Grenfell fire. They issued a press release in May this year, stating that ‘experts’ had concluded that the risk from these units is low and therefore a recall is unnecessary. The APPG for Fire Safety and Rescue questioned the BEIS official about this, asking for the names of the experts and to see their work. This official – the same one that’s in charge of the Furniture Regulations - did not reply.
I put in a FOI request to BEIS asking the same questions and they responded to tell me the answers are at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hotpoint-fridge-freezer-ff175b-independent-investigation
However, this link was not given to the APPG and was not mentioned in BEIS’s press release. Strange. What could they be hiding? Well, we are currently looking into the test reports at that link and so far they look pretty dodgy, to say the least. Overall, BEIS is conflating two separate points, i.e. on the one hand, they’re saying that they tested second hand units of the same type as started the Grenfell fire to see if other such units in the UK need recalling but they don’t. On the other, they’re trying to imply that the actual unit that caught fire in Grenfell tower was also safe – which is incredible, considering it was responsible for 72 deaths. But see for yourself; here is what BEIS stated in the press release:
“The investigation into the fridge freezer Hotpoint FF175B model identified by the Metropolitan Police as being involved in the Grenfell Tower fire has confirmed there is no need for a product recall or any other corrective action, and that consumers can continue using the product as normal.
“As part of the government’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire, Business Secretary Greg Clark ordered an immediate examination of the unit by independent technical experts.”
The second paragraph is misleading in other ways, too. First, the unit was not examined by independent technical experts. Similar second hand models were examined by an Intertek test laboratory which produced a (questionable) report that the experts then based their decision on. The actual unit in the Grenfell fire has not been examined by BEIS. Second, it probably goes without saying that the ‘independent experts’ were in fact either BEIS officials or other officials appointed by BEIS.
My view is that BEIS are trying to claim that the actual unit involved in the Grenfell fire is not dangerous because the last thing they want is attention being drawn to products they are responsible for having added to the fire. Like furniture.
I have been working with Lady Mar on trying to get flame retardants out of products. In July this year she raised some parliamentary questions for BEIS to answer. Here are two of them:
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Fire Resistant Materials
HL9708
Q: To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they take to ensure that all flame retardants are safe (1) in normal use, (2) during fires, and (3) at the end of life when they are disposed of.
A: Manufacturers and distributors must ensure all consumer products are safe before they are placed on the UK market, including those that use flame retardants. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have lead responsibility for environmental policy and restrictions on chemicals.
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Fire Resistant Materials
HL9707
Q: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the study by the University of Central Lancashire, Flame retardants in UK furniture increase smoke toxicity more than they reduce fire growth rate, published in April; whether they have consulted with their Chief Scientist in forming that assessment; and whether, following that study, they intend to reconsider the efficacy of current flame retardants.
A: The Department welcomes the paper by University of Central Lancashire and it forms part of the evidence we are considering in reviewing the legislation regulating the safety of furniture.
The first part of the first answer is not true. Flame retardants are not a product, for a start, and are therefore not governed by product safety laws. They are governed by REACH, the EU’s chemical assessment regime. While product safety law requires manufacturers to be able to demonstrate that, say, a bunk bed is safe beforeit’s placed on the market, using the recognised standards to do so, a flame retardant chemical can be placed on the market by the manufacturer purely on the grounds that he says it’s safe. The pattern with flame retardants is that eventually they are properly tested and almost always found to be toxic, then removed from the market. The problem being that they are still in millions of products. Note, too, that the second two points by Lady Mar were ignored. This is probably because where ‘during fires’ is concerned, FRs are incredibly toxic (see the UCLAN paper mentioned in the second question). And disposal of FRs at the end-life of products is a subject that both industry and BEIS are terrified of. In short, the Stockholm Convention is soon to rule that FRs in products must be disposed of safely thus. The UK, of course, possesses literally millions of sofas and mattresses stuffed full of toxic FRs. At present, these are disposed of dangerously but cheaply in land-fill. To dispose of them safely will cost a fortune. Strange that the Department for Business would choose not to mention this fact.
The second answer completely contradicts the first! The UCLAN paper proves that FR-treated UK furniture is highly toxic. You might also wonder what BEIS means by ‘considering’ the evidence that FRs are toxic in regard to regulating the Furniture Regs. Their own 2014 consultation paper demonstrates the toxicity of FRs. The UCLAN paper was published in December 2017 (although Professor Hull gave a demonstration of it several months earlier). Which means that for at least eight months, but more like for four years, this Department has done absolutely nothing about the fact that the failures in regulations it is responsible for are poisoning the entire country.
All of which raises perhaps the most germane question, why on earth are the consumer product safety laws in the UK governed by the Department for Business?
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