The FBU has highlighted the role of Brandon Lewis in damaging the fire and rescue service in the years preceding Grenfell as he appears before the inquiry.
Brandon Lewis MP was minister with responsibility for fire between 2012 and 2014, and again from 2016 to 2017. Today he is the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. He is appearing to give evidence before the Grenfell Tower Inquiry today, Wednesday 30 March, and is the first politician to do so.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said:
“I watched for years as Brandon Lewis took an axe to the fire and rescue service. Our union warned of the destruction he was risking, yet we were ignored time and time again. He purposefully and persistently dismantled the fire and rescue service, through cuts and a privatisation agenda. In just five years between 2012 and 2017, 20% of firefighting posts were cut across England – that’s one in five firefighters. In London, 10 fire stations closed in 2014. Those cuts have had disastrous consequences across the country, and directly relate to the worst loss of life in a fire since the war.”
In 2013, Lewis commissioned an efficiencies review of the fire and rescue service in England by former chief fire and rescue adviser Ken Knight, which recommended saving money through a variety of untested suggestions such as substituting retained (part-time or on-call) firefighters for wholetime crews and was seen by the FBU as “a fig leaf for further cuts to the fire and rescue service”.
He was also responsible for failing to resolve serious fire safety issues. Prevention and enforcement were weakened, fire safety officers were cut by 25% between 2011 and 2017, and the number of fire safety audits falling by around a third between 2012/13 and 2016/17.
Lewis appears to have supported privatisation in relation to the fire and rescue service, with a 2013 Mirror story stating the newspaper had obtained a letter by Lewis to the Regulatory Reform committee, in which he called for new laws that “would enable fire and rescue authorities in England to contract out their full range of services to a suitable provider”. He also oversaw the sale of the Fire Service College to Capita, and indicated support for the attempted mutualisation of Cleveland Fire Brigade, saying Cleveland Fire Authority “wants” mutualisation.
He made statements which were supportive of deregulation in relation to the fire sector, for example telling the 2012 CFOA conference that “I firmly believe that businesses have the right to expect that those enforcing regulatory compliance do so in accordance with the fundamental principles of better regulation” and during a 2014 Westminster Hall debate saying “"We believe that it is the responsibility of the fire industry, rather than the Government, to market fire sprinkler systems effectively and to encourage their wider installation".
