Listen to Mary Greagh, Chair of the EAC, introducing the report here. 
 
The report itself is here.
 
There have been numerous press articles about the report but a very good one by Gareth Simkins of the ENDS Report is here.
 
Front page of the Daily Mail today below. Article here.

 
Yesterday, I was invited to attend a meeting in the House of Lords of the All Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group. Jon O'Neill of the Fire Protection Association gave a short talk on third party certification. He also talked about the need to update the Fire Safety Order, particularly in light of the Grenfell Tower fire. He and the FPA have talked a lot about the FSO recently but strangely have never mentioned the Furniture Regulations. This, despite O'Neill, along with Sir Ken Knight and Dave Sibert, having given a presentation to the Department of Business in December 2014 where they agreed that the current match test does not work and the new one will improve fire safety.
 
At the end of the meeting yesterday, I approached Mr O'Neill and asked him: "Where is the new test foam formula you insisted BEIS needed before putting the new match test in place?" There was quite a long pause then he said: "We passed it to British Standards."
 
Below is an entry from a paper I've written detailing the way that various parties blocked safety changes to the changes proposed by the government to the Furniture Regulations in 2014. It's based on BIS's meeting note and on the FPA's own presentation slideshow. I've mentioned before that Jon O'Neill was particularly aggressive over these changes, initially commanding my colleagues at the Department for Communities and Local Government to stop them. DCLG was not of course the department in charge of the Furniture Regs but then Mr O'Neill knew that. He also knew that Sir Ken Knight was the big fire chief at DCLG and had considerable influence over the officials working there on fire safety. In the event, two meetings were held in order for O'Neill, Sir Ken and others to try to bully BIS into dropping the changes. Unfortunately for them, the evidence that we had provided was unequivocal: the current test did not work and the new one would. 
 
Finally, O'Neill etc talked my BIS managers into a third meeting at which they said they would provide a new test foam formula for the new test – even though this was not needed since we already had one (that is actually in the current regulations). They did not come with the formula, however; instead they presented a delaying tactic (see below), i.e. that British Standards should be commissioned by BIS to spend 12 months coming up with a new test foam formula. As you can see from Mr O'Neill's follow up email to Bridget Micklem at BIS, he assumed that she had agreed they could go ahead. She did not reply to this email; however, the same suggestions were put to the minister, Jo Swinson, a few months later by amongst others, Dave Sibert and Paul Fuller (well-know lovers of flame retardants). She agreed. However, British Standards bailed at the last moment (in July 2015), informing the Chair of their relevant committee that they did not want to get involved in regulatory work especially when it was so politically sensitive. Since that time, changes to the Regulations remain blocked. BEIS did however go out to consultation once again in 2016 with exactly the same new match test proposal containing exactly the same test foam formula as proposed in 2014. In short, Mr O'Neill, Sir Ken Knight, etc, had done nothing more than hold up important safety changes for two years, and counting.
 
As I've recorded elsewhere on this website, I wrote to Sir Ken Knight twice in his capacity as Chair of the Grenfell Independent Experts Group, reminding him of the December 2014 meeting where he'd agreed that the current match test doesn't work and therefore to look at the role the failed Furniture Regulations played in the Grenfell fire. He didn't respond; neither has his panel ever even mentioned the Furniture Regulations. I also wrote to Jon O'Neill on the same lines who also did not reply.
 
Back to yesterday . . . I reminded Mr O'Neill that British Standards had refused that work, then asked him why the Fire Protection Association has done nothing about the fact the current match test fails in practice ever since (more than four years and counting), i.e. they're failing to protect the public from fire risk. To which he said, "We didn't agree the current match test fails." See below and make up your own mind about that.
 
But here's the thing: even if what he said was true, i.e. that in effect he believes the current match test works, why did he insist on a different test foam for the new test. Why not simply state that we should stick with the current one? Well, he was lying anyway. Just check out the third bullet point on his slide below: that the new test "should improve fire safety through the inclusion of materials which appear within 40mm of the cover fabric of a furniture product." Now I don't think I'm putting unfair interpretation on this but surely this is saying that because the current test doesn't allow for this effect, finished sofas are clearly not fire-safe? Also, a man apparently dedicated to fire safety has never since mentioned this failing of the current regulations.
 
At this point, Mr O'Neill was ushered away by a colleague, arm around his shoulder, to protect him from further questioning. Really, I'm not kidding. 
 
I've shown the links before between the FPA and the FR industry. One such being that after Dave Sibert was sacked by the FBU for colluding with the flame retardant industry (Matt Wrack's words), he was offered a lucrative new job by Jon O'Neill running the FPA's new test laboratory.
 
Does the FPA really care about fire safety? Well, I think that depends on who's paying them.
 
Oh, by the way, that colleague of Mr O'Neill's said that I should not be making these these claims (such as they were) without proof. If he's reading this blog, I suggest he checks out the entry below.
 
* * * 
 
Third meeting with the FPA/FSF – December 16, 2014
 
Sir Ken Knight, Jon O'Neill and Dave Sibert attend for the FPA/FSF (Fire Sector Federation). They start by giving a presentation, the essence of which is that they agree the new match test will work and that the current one has many problems. But they do not as agreed provide a new test foam formula. Instead, they insist that BIS commissions the British Standards Institute to 'fast-track' (over 12 months) a new formula for the regulations, in the meantime suggesting that BIS should go ahead with an interim test. 
 
See key slide in the FPA/FSF's presentation at bottom of this entry.
 
The important bottom line here is that the FPA/FSF is agreeing with BIS's proposed test, even if they're falsely claiming these are all FSF proposals! The only addition they're making is that BIS should initially go ahead with the new match test but continue using the old test foam, while British Standards comes up with a new one. However, this is blatant back-covering since they know very well that BIS cannot simply introduce a new interim test: that would require another consultation and would in any case be an unfair burden on industry. On the last slide point: they have of course ensured that this issue has continued to drag on ever since. 
 
It’s perhaps worth mentioning here that there is no evidence at all that the British Standards Institute had agreed to these proposals. In fact, their actions over the meeting they hosted on July 15th suggests they did not. For example, they instruct the Chair at the last moment, that they want this whole subject off their agenda since it is too political for them and in any case they do not believe they should be involved in drafting legislation.
 
Immediately after the meeting, O'Neill writes to Bridget Micklem of BIS to thank her for the meeting and ask her views on their proposals (see email below). She doesn't respond, despite Terry advising that this proposal from the FPA is pivotal, i.e. it is a Yes or No situation: if BIS says Yes, then a) the new match test will surely be delayed for at least a year, and b) BIS will have accepted FSF/FPA/Sir Ken Knight as being the main authority on the FFRs, and that will mean they’ll be able to extend the delays indefinitely. Not responding is likely to be taken as Yes, as indeed proves to be the case when the FPA/FSF gets their proposal confirmed at the Minister's round-table meeting in February 2015.
 
 
From: Jon O'Neill 
Sent: 16 December 2014 14:43
To: Micklem Bridget (EU); Earl Philip (EUD); Mike Larking; Louise Upton; Ken Knight; Dave Sibert; Edge Terry (EUD)
Subject: Furniture Regulations.pptx
 
Bridget
 
Thanks for your time today. As promised please find enclosed copy of my presentation. Having got the support of individual insurers to the proposal I am speaking to the ABI tomorrow and will pass on ant comments that arise.
 
I look forward to receiving your feedback to our proposal in due course.
 
Thanks & regards
 
Jon
 
 

Over the past 30 years, at a rough estimate, if you live in a house or flat you are almost twice as likely to die in a fire as someone who lives in a tower block covered in combustible cladding. In addition, the fire will be more toxic than a cladding fire and will affect you more negatively.
 
On top of that, you will also be risking your health from the large volumes of flame retardant dust that wear off your furniture on a daily basis and get into you; something that is not a problem with cladding.
 
So, when people living in tower blocks covered in cladding say they cannot sleep soundly in their beds, it's actually their bed they should probably be more worried about. For a start, they've been told it's not flammable because it must comply with the UK's tough furniture fire safety laws. But as this website has revealed, those laws do not work. For a start, they do not take account of the fact that no one sleeps on a bare mattress upon which they may drop a lighted match (the basis of the ignition test that applies). Bedding catches fire first and the amount of flame it produces completely wipes out any resistance the match test provides (even if it worked) by the time it reaches the mattress.
 
Why then is there so much talk about removing cladding from buildings but none about removing furniture from people's homes? 
 
Let's look at some fire statistics. In the year 2017/18 there were 334 fire deaths in England. Around 80% of these occurred in dwellings, making 267 deaths. This represented an increase of 71 on the previous year, which is roughly the same as the official Grenfell Tower death toll. In the same year there were just over 30,000 primary fires in homes in England. A 'primary' fire is one that involves fatalities, casualties, rescues or five or more pumps in attendance. While most of these did not result in deaths, the statistics do not record the damage done to health and the environment by the massive volumes of toxins produced in all those fires. 
 
It seems, perhaps understandably, that a concentration of deaths in one place increases people's perception of risk. But there were nearly 200 fire deaths last year in dwellings other than Grenfell Tower. Yet they were spread out over the country, as were the deaths, and therefore received little if any attention other than local. But each death would have been totally devastating for the family concerned, and they would have been homeless too, everything lost in the fire.
 
And if you are concerned about firefighters' health, then clearly many more are affected by toxic fumes and smoke on a daily basis by house fires in general than were at the Grenfell Tower fire. While it is completely proper and understandable that the Grenfell fire should go through an official inquiry, where is the inquiry into the 200 deaths in fires in UK homes that same year? 
 
In short, in my view, a major reason why so much attention remains on cladding and so little on toxic fumes from furniture and other products inside the Tower is that it suits government and business to keep the argument narrow rather than expand into all the associated, at least equally and in some cases more important issues. At the very least, there are costs comparisons that make the argument obvious. The cost of replacing all combustible cladding on tower blocks is clearly dwarfed by the cost of replacing virtually every sofa and mattress in 27 million homes, not to mention disposing of them safely too. 
 
The obvious tactic, therefore, is to spend years debating about who's responsible for cladding replacement while in the meantime ignore the greater threat and, in the tried and tested British way, even if you end up paying for the one (and that is of course still open to debate -  long, long debate), you will at least avoid paying anything at all towards the much bigger problem.
 
Another cost argument is that at present, the flame retardant industry does not make much money from cladding. However, its paid for puppets, like the Fire Protection Association, BRE, Sir Ken Knight, Dave Sibert, etc, are working hard to increases the market via 'non-combustible cladding' (they never argue for simply removing it altogether). So it'll either lose a bit or gain a lot from cladding. Meanwhile, it's working hard to keep attention off of upholstered furniture because if that massive fire and poison risk is sorted out, the chemical industry could lose around £300m a year, and the UK furniture industry its much-loved trade barrier. Not to mention the massive hand-outs enjoyed by the puppets.
 
 

On 14th June, Boris Johnson gave his first media interview following his entry into the race to be leader of the Tory party. At one point he said:

“We already have goods that conform to different standards. France, for instance, has different laws on flame retardant furniture - but we have no laws to check goods.”

This was very unusual indeed. A BBC reporter picked up on it and by a somewhat roundabout route I ended up having a conversation with him about what might be behind Johnson's comment. Below is an email I sent to some colleagues about it. There are other connections with Tory Ministers I didn't list here, mainly for brevity's sake, e.g. the fact that the Special Advisor to Greg Clarke (Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) took a sabbatical to go work for a few months for Burson Marsteller, the massive PR firm that represents the three biggest flame retardant producers, at a time when the future of the Furniture Regulations was being decided by his own department.
 
From:EDGE TERRY 
Sent:14 June 2019 20:15
To:various
Subject:Boris and the Furniture Regs

I just had a long talk with [a BBC reporter] who was suitably amazed to hear what's behind all this. He's going to talk to others in the BBC who are perhaps more suitable for a bigger picture story.

I think the key question is why would Boris Johnson even raise the issue of the Furniture Regulations and flame retardants? Okay, he seems to be claiming the opposite of what is true - hardly a first for Boris - that France has nasty flame retardants in its furniture which we can't stop them importing. But as said, given the controversy around them, why mention them at all? What's he trying to head off?

Well, to speculate: it could be that the Tories see this as a potential scandal about to come out with them at its centre; for example:

• In 2014, Mathew Hancock and Oliver Letwin leaned on Jo Swinson to prevent her making safety changes to the regs
• Anna Soubry failed to get the changes made in April 2016 despite ordering civil servants to do so
• Sajid Javid appointed Sir Ken Knight as Chair of the independent experts group to the Grenfell Inquiry after Sir Ken had played a key role in blocking changes to the Furniture Regs
• James Brokenshire, his successor, has refused to look at the evidence against Sir Ken
• Kelly Tolhurst is now blocking changes and in a most unconvincing manner
• All of this impacting on the full truth about the toxicity of Grenfell Tower coming out
• Labour MPs like Emma Dent Coad and Mary Creagh doing the right thing against all these Tory shenanigans

Best wishes,

​Terry

Below is an email I sent to Graham Russell, CEO of the Office for Product Safety and Standards, on 28thMay. It is a genuine offer, supported by several other experts I've been working with who are as keen as I am to get the Furniture Regulations sorted and make the public safe again.
 
From:Terry Edge 
Sent:28 May 2019 09:48
To:Russell, Graham (Office for Product Safety and Standards) 
Cc:A wide range of interested parties.
Subject:The Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988
 
Dear Mr Russell,
 
Please let me help you and BEIS find a sustainable solution to overcoming the current impasse regarding the review of the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 (FFRs). 
 
Since BEIS's 2016 consultation, your response to stakeholders repeatedly asking when you will amend the FFRs has remained "soon" (e.g. as stated by the Minister, Kelly Tolhurst, to the APPG Fire Safety and Rescue on 30thApril, and in the latest Parliamentary Q&As raised by the Countess of Mar). Citing this long delay as the issue being 'complex' must be increasingly embarrassing to the Department.
 
It is evident that BEIS is still struggling to grasp the full complexities and undertones, and find the technical expertise necessary to make realistic recommendations and changes in this vital area of product safety. 
 
I wish to propose that with a group of genuinely independent experts I form a small consortium to help BEIS:
 

1. bring the FFRs into line with the rest of the EU and the USA by adopting a new cigarette test, dropping the match and fillings tests, thereby removing all flame retardants from UK domestic upholstered furniture; and 

 

1. revise the other outstanding aspects of the FFRs, which everyone agrees are hugely out of date, including those not covered by the 2016 consultation for whatever reason.

 
As you probably know, with full stakeholder support I first introduced proposals to revise the FFRs back in 2009 because they were already outmoded and not fit for purpose. I have worked consistently since to try to improve these regulations for the good of product and public safety, first as a full-time civil servant and now as an independent. I believe I still possess the most comprehensive and unbiased knowledge of the FFRs and their flaws that you will find. I also have the technical expertise and understanding for what needs to urgently change and how to achieve it. 
 
I also understand the political, industrial and academic landscapes to help you navigate conflicting stakeholder interests to make this right. I have maintained excellent contacts across the globe including both US and EU experts in furniture flammability standards, and I continue to work on a daily basis with groups and individuals campaigning for better health and environmental management regarding flame retardants, such as the Cancer Prevention Society and the Countess of Mar. 
 
I am therefore confident that I can bring the right mix of people on board, and that this proposal could be fully completed by the current exit target date for Brexit (31 October), enabling the UK to have the means to quickly remove the trade barrier the Regulations currently represent. 
 
I believe my proposal will be supported by, amongst others:
 

• The Environmental Audit Committee
• UK firefighters 
• The European Furniture Industries Confederation
• Trading Standards
• Grenfell residents (I work closely with Justice4Grenfell and Humanity for Grenfell and was recently commissioned by an Inquiry solicitor to provide a memorandum for Judge Moore-Bick on the role the FFRs played in the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy)
• Universities researching the negative effects of flame retardants, such as Birmingham and UCLAN 
• The Cancer Prevention Society, Breast Cancer UK, CHEM trust, Greenpeace
• The Countess of Mar and her supporters
• Furniture manufacturers - large, e.g. IKEA, and small, e.g. Cottonsafe 
• The public 
• The APPG Fire Safety and Rescue

 
I appreciate that certain elements of industry will not readily support the removal of flame retardants from furniture. However, if you watched the Environmental Audit Committee's session of 14 May, you will have noted the failure of industry to answer convincingly the EAC's fundamental question of why the UK alone insists on fire tests that don't work while the rest of the world is convinced that a cigarette/smoulder test alone supplies fire safety, without the need for any flame retardants. 
 
I understand that Kelly Tolhurst is due to face the EAC on the 5thJune. Her discomfort at the APPG meeting was completely understandable when it was pointed out to her that the current and failing match test means that UK children are sleeping on mattresses containing flame retardants that were banned from weed-killer for being toxic. I believe she would be universally applauded if she was able to tell the committee that she has put into action a proposal that will rapidly lead to children's mattresses and all other upholstered furniture being free of flame retardants.
 
I would be willing to work in a full-time capacity on this project with you (detailed proposal to follow if you agree in principle), with consortium members providing their time where best needed; funding to be provided by BEIS, possibly from the OPSS budget you described recently to the Environmental Audit Committee. 
 
Thank you for your consideration of this offer. I would be pleased to meet with you to discuss this further.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
 
Terry Edge
Tel: xxxxxxxxx
 
 
Here is Mr Russell's reply:
 
 
From: "Russell, Graham (Office for Product Safety and Standards)" <graham.russell@beis.gov.uk>
Date: Thursday, 30 May 2019 at 17:25
To: Terry Edge
Cc: as before
Subject: RE: The Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988
 
Dear Mr Edge
Thank you for your email, the contents have been noted.
The government intends to publish its response following the consultation on the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 in due course.
 
Graham Russell
 
 
It's difficult to know if he is being sarcastic with his first sentence, since we both know that 'noted' is one of the dismissive terms civil servants use when they really mean 'F*** off'. It's similar to another favourite word of theirs, often used in Ministers' replies, which is 'consider'. The Minister will consider your points, which means of course that he/she won't.
 
One can only speculate as to why he doesn't feel the OPSS could do with some help over the Furniture Regulations. Perhaps it's because they have around 300 people on their books, with a budget of £12m per year. Yet not one of them appears to know anything at all about the regulations. Also, it may be an embarrassment to Mr Russell that in OPPS's first year being responsible for the Furniture Regulations, prosecutions and convictions have fallen to their lowest-ever: just 3. This, despite Trading Standards having reported that over 80% of furniture covers fail the match test in practice. What are those 300 people doing, one might ask? Well, my sources in OPSS tell me that they do have a lot of meetings. Something that I know from my last few years in BEIS, civil servants have become expert in.  
 
This lack of knowledge of the regulations in BEIS/OPSS was apparent when their Minister, Kelly Tolhurst, addressed the Environmental Audit Committee last week and amongst many inconsistencies and misleading statements claimed that the (still outstanding) 2016 BEIS consultation responses produced a consensus that there is not enough evidence behind the proposed changes to the (match) test. Unfortunately, there is a major obstacle facing anyone who may wish to verify this claim, which is that BEIS has refused to release the 2016 consultation returns, despite it closing nearly three years ago. The EAC asked to see them but was refused. I wonder why?
 
Well, while it is probably true that there would not have been consensus about changing the match test, since that would have led to huge losses in profits to industry, there simply cannot be an evidence-based consensus that BEIS's case regarding the match test has not been made. The clear-cut evidence for this is set out clearly in their 2014 consultation and accompanying technical annex.
 
So, why would Ms Tolhurst make such a false statement? Well, she is simply of course reading out from her briefing notes. Which are supplied by the OPSS. Why would the OPSS lie about their own consultations? I can only speculate but if the Minister had actually told the truth - that her own department has proved the current match test is unsafe - then of course she would be wide open to some serious questioning.
 
As it was, the EAC did seriously question her on this very subject. The Chair opened by saying that BEIS had proven 5 years ago that the current match test is not fit for purpose; did the Minister agree and if not, why not?
 
You can watch this session yourself to find how she replied but I don't think it requires a spoiler alert to tell you that no straight answer was forthcoming.
 
And so it went throughout the session, with the EAC asking Ms Tolhurst evidence-based questions and getting nothing but waffle or untrue responses. Her oft-repeated response to the question of why BEIS has failed to put these regulations right after so many years was that she would not do anything that might compromise fire safety; and her 'proof' that the regulations provide that, she claimed, lies in the government's commissioned report into the regulations by Greenstreet Berman in 2009.
 
Well, I commissioned that report, while at BIS (as it was then). And we commissioned it on the basis that at that time we all believed the regulations worked. On that basis, Greenstreet Berman guessed – because that's all you can do – how many of the drop in fire deaths was down to the furniture regulations and not, say, smoke alarms and the decrease in home smoking. Since then, of course, we have learned that the main ignition test in the regulations does not work; therefore, the estimates of lives saved in the GB report are invalid.
 
This point was put in a different way by the EAC to Ms Tolhurst and earlier to industry witnesses: that the rate of fire deaths per million population in the UK is not better than New Zealand (which has no furniture fire safety regulations) and at least 5 other EU countries (which only use at most a cigarette test that requires no flame retardants), therefore why do we have so much tougher furniture regulations? FIRA, extraordinarily, in response to this tried to claim that the UK suffers from 'unique' kinds of fires that warrant stricter regulations. But as the Chair pointed out, that's irrelevant (as well as being nonsense, of course) because the outcomeis the same. A point that FIRA appeared not to get, or want to get. Ms Tolhurst also had trouble understanding this somewhat fundamental point.
 
There were four witnesses at last week's session, all responsible one way or another for public safety. Without going into too much detail, what was depressing was that every single one of them, when asked about a subject that puts into conflict safety against profits, always gave industry the benefit of the doubt.
 
Behind them were two rows of civil servants, sometimes passing notes to their masters facing the Committee. My companion said to me, at the end of the session, "Look at those civil servants. They actually look happy – because they've got away with it."
 
Quite. And that, more than anything else, probably explains why Mr Russell told me and my colleagues to f*** off.
 
Even though he knows that if he took us on, we could sort out the mess he's maintaining at BEIS in nine months tops: we'd have safe fire regulations and an end to flame retardants in UK furniture.
 
And with that I'll f*** off for now.
 
 
 
 
 
 

As said in a previous post, industry's defence to the Environmental Audit Committee with regard to their support of the current Furniture Regulations has been, well, pathetic. All they've offered is opinion posing as fact and the strange inability to mention the fact that the Furniture Regulations in their current state make them a lot more money than they would if they were put right.
 
There is evidence that many in industry have always known these Regulations do not work, and all of them have known for sure since 2014 when the government published the evidence. What has been their response? - to deny, block, evade, lie and carry on raking in the cash.
 
All of which would be bad enough if it only involved money. But these Regulations in their current state mean that UK homes contain the highest volumes of flame retardant chemicals in the world. But they're safe, said Mr Kannah of the flame retardant industry to the EAC recently. When it was pointed out to him that flame retardants are often banned for being toxic he said they were working hard to make them safer. Meanwhile, millions of sofas and mattresses in the UK still contain the poisonous decaBDE, a now-banned brominated flame retardant which adds nothing at all to fire safety but certainly adds to toxicity and ill health.
 
What is the true mentality of the industry? It can be seen, for example, in the fact that they were told several years back by government lawyers that it is illegal and dangerous to be treating sofas with stain-repellent sprays. These often make sofas flammable again and can react with flame retardants to produce highly toxic fumes and dust. When I told a journalist this he was stunned. "So, you're telling me," he said, "that we pay more for our sofas because they contain flame retardant chemicals to supposedly make them flame resistant, then we pay more again to have them treated with stain repellent that makes them flammable again?"
 
He was right. And guess what: they're still persuading customers to pay extra for stain-repellent chemical treatments.
 
Then there's the perhaps somewhat ironic practice of undertreatment. This involves a textile manufacturer treating a roll of fabric properly with flame retardant chemicals – the "golden roll" as it's known in the business – and having it tested to the Furniture Regulations' requirements. But the fabric that's actually sold to manufacturers is under-treated, with everyone in the chain profiting nicely. Trading Standards found that around 80% of furniture fabrics on finished products fail the main ignition test because of this. You might think that's good because it means less flame retardants, doesn't it? Perhaps but it also proves the lie that these chemicals are needed to make your furniture fire-safe (that and the fact that the damn stuff wears off so easily anyway). And your home and blood will still be infected with large volumes of chemical dust – flame retardants and mixer chemicals which no one outside of the chemical treatment industry even knows the identity of. And the chemical, treatment and furniture industries will be profiting hugely from duping you into in effect paying for something you aren't getting.
 
Speaking of the chemical treatment industry, their representative organisation, FRETWORK, has made two written submissions to the EAC. Both were written by Peter Wragg. Mr Wragg has been involved throughout the ongoing review of the Furniture Regulations – ten years and counting now. However, he appears to have somehow completely avoided seeing all the evidence produced in that process to prove the current regulations are not fit for purpose. I'm sure the fact that if they're put right it would lead to the treatment industry taking a massive hit in profits has nothing to do with his continuing assertion that the regs are just fine as they are.
 
Mr Wragg makes a very nice living from chemicals. Most of the time, he is not required to defend the darker side of the negative effects they can have on health and the environment. When he is, he tends to react with condescending opinions presented as solid facts which he himself sometimes calls 'rants'. 
 
See for yourself. Below is a link to Mr Wragg's first submission to the EAC. I've gone through it in detail since I think it is worth exposing the fact that his members are in effect poisoning the entire country by treating (or undertreating) fabrics for regulations that do not work for no good reason other than profit. Sorry, that's remiss of me; I should have pointed out that Mr Wragg provides ample proof that the regulations work – see his "Case of the Pink Cushion' – really, I'm not making it up (he is).
 
FRETWORK submission with my comments here.

On 14th May, industry representatives gave oral witness to the Environmental Audit Committee's Inquiry into toxic chemicals in everyday life. The second session included representatives from FIRA, the British Furniture Confederation and Lanxess (ex-Chemtura). The key questions put to them by the EAC were: 

• Why is the UK alone in insisting on a [Furniture Regulations] match test (which doesn't work) for its furniture flammability regulations when the rest of the world agrees that a cigarette/smoulder test alone provides fire safety and which requires no flame retardants?

• What are your industries doing about reducing/removing harmful flame retardants from furniture?

• What have you been doing about getting the Furniture Regulations updated since 2014?

 
You can read the session transcript here: http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/environmental-audit-committee/toxic-chemicals/oral/102212.pdf
 
Or watch the video recording here (second session starts at around 11:26:00): https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/2322b527-3fbc-45c6-ba06-eda9e872118e
 
It's no exaggeration to say that all three performed very poorly, offering no substantive answers to the Inquiry's questions at all. Indeed, they were often outright misleading and evasive, with some statements which can only be described as lying. 
 
Gareth Simkins and I will be submitting a full analysis on this session to the EAC. In the meantime, there is a short extract below.
 
By the way, Lanxess was represented by my old friend K, who in a neat circular fashion features in the very first blog post on this site. Then, I wrote about how he'd phoned in May 2012 to tell me that he'd heard we were planning to change the match test, even though Steve Owen and I had not discussed it with anyone else at that stage. Seven years on and K has certainly been successful in ensuring that massive amounts of his company's toxic products remain in our sofas. Big bonus every year, no doubt.
 
While we were waiting outside the EAC meeting room last week, I introduced Gareth to K. We asked K what his company was doing about removing the millions of kgs of the now banned flame retardant, decaBDE, still in millions of sofas and mattresses in UK homes (that Lanxess has made a fortune from). His reply was odd: he said that never has there been a death in a hospital that was diagnosed as being caused by a flame retardant chemical. Well, that's all right, then.
 
Extract from the EAC session with commentary:

Kerry McCarthy: The other thing is the allegations of corruption that were made against officials at what was then the BIS Department and the suggestion that there was interference with the process. Does anyone have any views on that? 

Kasturirangan Kannah: Can I go first again?

Kerry McCarthy: That was evidence from Terry Edge and Gareth Simkins.
 
Kasturirangan Kannah: Yes, there was one allegation made about an ex-Fire Services Chief, and the Chief of Merseyside was named. Our company—it was Chemtura then—had sponsored the Fire Safety Platform, as it was then. It has now moved on to the European Fire Safety Alliance. We completely refute any suggestion of corruption, totally.
 
Kerry McCarthy: In terms of your involvement in that, could you say a little bit more about what your involvement was in that process? 

Kasturirangan Kannah: Sure. The Fire Safety Platform’s objective was fire safety in the home. They talk about smoke detectors, they talk about vulnerable populations, they talk about unsafe furniture and so forth. That was their job. At no point did the Fire Safety Platform ever speak up on behalf of flame retardants. It made it very clear at the beginning that it would not do so. We respected that. We said as long as there is a spectrum of fire safety solutions, that is fine. That is exactly what it did. In terms of the specific allegation, I think the gentleman concerned has to respond to the allegation, but in our understanding there was no such impropriety, no corruption at all.

Commentary:
 
Chemtura (and the other FR companies) did indeed fund Mike Hagen's Fire Safety Platform (and his subsequent ventures). However, Hagen always claimed he was independent of them. But it's certainly not true that he never spoke out in favour of flame retardants. Hagen attended several BIS workshops and that is precisely the line he often took: that flame retardants equal fire safety. 
 
It may be worth looking a little closer at Mike Hagen's Fire Safety Platform's response to BEIS's 2014 consultation. He describes the FSP thus:
 
"The Fire Safety Platform is a non-profit association with a mission to reduce the risk from fire. It is an independent body that does not support any fire safety product, technology or commercial organisation. Support is welcome from all individuals and organisations concerned with fire safety. Currently, the Platform receives financial support from Albemarle, Busworld, Chemtura, the European Flame Retardants Association, ICL Industrial Products and Sprue Safety Products. Burson-Marsteller [PR company for flame retardant producers] acts as the secretariat to the Fire Safety Platform."
 
Given Burson-Marsteller's and Chemtura's etc deep involvement with trying to block fire safety changes to the California standard, it's a little hard to believe that Mike Hagen's attempts to do the same with the UK's proposals are independent of the same companies' aims here.
 
In his response, Hagen sets out his pro-FRs position pretty clearly: 
 
"There is a danger to the safety of UK and US citizens if 'scaremongering' [about the dangers of flame retardants] rather than balanced, risk-based arguments is allowed to prevail. For instance, the strong UK environmental lobby against such chemicals forced change in California which is widely accepted to be leading to a reduction in fire safety standards [hardly 'widely – only the FR industry and its supporters are claiming this]."
 
Hagen also claims that BIS's proposals are the sole work of Steve Owen who, he says, 'BIS has presented . . . as their 'guru' in these matters.' And concludes that Mr Owen's proposals do not appear to have 'been peer-reviewed nor subject to scrutiny by technical experts' – see above [earlier in our full commentary for the EAC] for proof that the opposite is the case. I perhaps should point out that Mr Owen was appointed as official technical advisor by his line managers, which followed his company (Intertek) winning an open tender to develop proposals for a new match test.
 
In 2018, Anna Stec told me that she was being incredibly frustrated in her efforts to obtain data about cancers in UK firefighters, chiefly by Mike Hagen and Dave Sibert who sit on all the relevant BSI committees and government-appointed bodies. She has since been commissioned by the FBU to look into such cancers, shortly after which Matt Wrack of the FBU told her that Dave Sibert (then fire safety officer for the FBU) had been sacked for 'colluding with the flame retardant industry'.
 
Earlier in the session, the Chair of the EAC pointed out that Chemtura had been responsible in the USA for setting up false citizens' safety groups to advocate for more flame retardants in products, and other lobbying activities; she said:

Chair: I am challenging you on your covert lobbying in the US. Does any of that go on here?
 
Kasturirangan Kannah: I cannot comment on what happened some years ago in the States, but I can find out more detail. You are saying it is covert lobbying on the part of Chemtura along with other companies. You need to— 
​
Commentary:
 
Kannah's wording is interesting here, i.e. "what happened some years ago in the States." Lobbying by the flame retardant industry is still very much alive in the USA. See this article in today's Guardian, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/24/massachusetts-flame-retardants-firefighters-safety-cancer- about how lobbying from the American Chemistry Council is blocking bills to remove flame retardants in a lot of US States. Kannah's company, Lanxess, is a member of the ACC, as are the other two huge flame retardant producers, ICL and Albemarle.
 
K goes on to deny that any kind of similar lobbying has gone on in the UK where changes to the Furniture Regulations are concerned. However, as this blog has recorded, the three FR companies and their PR outfit, Burson Marsteller frequently lobbied me and always to press me to keep up the high levels of flame retardants in UK furniture. Flame retardants equals fire safety, they often chanted. Well, this EAC session showed that they do not have the faintest bit of evidence to support that claim; indeed, all the actual evidence points the other way.
 
 
 

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.