Survivors and victims families of the Grenfell fire have called a leading Reform spokesman’s comments about the tragedy “not just insensitive, it is deeply dehumanising”.
Sir Keir Starmer and opposition parties have called for Simon Dudley to be sacked as Reform’s new housing spokesman after he said the 72 deaths were a “tragedy and a failure” but that “everyone dies in the end”.
An inquiry into the 2017 blaze in west London found the deaths were avoidable and preventable, while safety concerns were regularly ignored by local and national politicians.
Grenfell United, which represents some of the survivors and bereaved, said in a statement on Thursday: “Our loved ones did not simply ‘die.’ They were failed.
“They were trapped in their homes, in a building that should have been safe, in a fire that should never have happened. Reducing their deaths to an inevitability strips away the truth: this was preventable.
“To speak about Grenfell in this way is to erase responsibility. It suggests this was just fate, just ‘how it goes,’ rather than the result of years of ignored warnings, poor decisions, and a failure to value the lives of residents, and is deeply offensive and ill-informed.
“Everyone deserves the right to a safe home. But this attitude clearly shows Simon Dudley is not the man to ensure that happens.”
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In an interview with industry magazine Inside Housing, published on Wednesday, Mr Dudley said the building safety regulations introduced after the Grenfell fire were not working.
“That was a tragedy, it was a failure,” he said.
“Sadly, you know, everyone dies in the end. It’s just how you go, right?
“Extracting Grenfell from the statistics, actually people dying in house fires is rare. Many, many more people die on the roads driving cars – but we’re not making cars illegal, so why are we stopping houses being built?”
On Thursday morning, the prime minister called on Reform leader Nigel Farage to sack Mr Dudley over his comments.
Mr Farage brought Mr Dudley, a former head of Homes England, in as an expert to advise the party after he joined Reform in February.
He retweeted a post quoting his “everyone dies in the end” comments on Wednesday.
But after calls came him for him to be sacked, Mr Dudley said Grenfell was “an utter tragedy and quite rightly prompted a wholesale review and tightening of fire regulations”.
He added: “In no shape or form am I belittling that disaster or the huge loss of life. It must never happen again.
“I reiterate that, and am sorry if it was not sufficiently clear.
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