LONDON (Labour Buzz) - While most of our attention is taken with Brexit and COVID 19 the unfolding horror at the Grenfell inquiry passed by almost unnoticed. Everyday releases fresh horrors which, in a different world, would have people up in arms. Today we got a double dose, with news that staff at Kingspan joked about cheating to pass safety tests, and lobbied MPs after the fire.
The inquiry heard that Kingspan, the company which made the insulation, hired a PR firm Portland weeks after the fire to lobby MPs on their behalf. The company which manufactured the flammable Kooltherm K15 used on the Tower block identified key decision-makers including Sajid Javid, Amber Rudd and Michael Gove as part of a political engagement plan.
The document’s overview said: “Some people will not want to meet you and they will not want to be lobbied, but there is still immeasurable value in getting Kingspan’s Manifesto in front of these key decision-makers. We want them to read it.”
Messaging, said the firm, needs to be ‘punchy, memorable and easy to understand’.
Lobbying MPs shortly after your product has been used implicated in a fire which killed 72 people would be bad enough at the best of times. However, with Kingspan, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Yesterday the inquiry heard that Kingspan had cheated to get the 0 safety rating which certified the product as having limited combustibility. A test to claim the rating was only performed on a foil facer element of Kooltherm K15 rather than the whole composite material.
This allowed it to achieve a technical Class 0 rating in England and Wales, but not in Scotland.
Instant messages showed the team knew very well that the tests were flawed. Indeed they found it funny.
Arron Chambers won the award for the most inappropriate use of the term ‘LOL’ ever. He told his colleague Pete Moss that K15 “doesn’t actually get Class 0 when we test the whole product tho LOL’
He added “Yeahhhh, tested K15 as a whole, got class 1 wheyy LOL”
Moss expressed his surprise that the firm had lied to get the rating before replying ‘whey shit product, scrap it.”
Chambers replied with more messages ‘yeah all lies mate, all we do is lie here’.
Other emails referred to the fact that K15 had passed the tests as ‘a bit of a cheat’.
In an excruciating session, the messages were shown to Adrian Pargeter, head of technical and marketing at Kingspan in the UK.
“It’s very disappointing to read that from my perspective,” he said.
Richard Millett QC was damning in his assessment. “You were seeking to perpetrate a fraud on the market and also to mislead customers into buying products you knew had failed regulated fire safety tests.”
Add this to the existing pile of accusations including that Kingspan had sold K15 insulation with an unrepresentative fire certificate based on a 2005 test which claimed it was safe for use on buildings higher than 18 metres. The tests have since been withdrawn from the market.
The firm has said it did not provide any advice about the suitability of their product for Grenfell and only learned that a ‘small amount’ of their insulation was used on the tower after the event.
The majority of the flammable insulation came from another firm Celotex.
The inquiry continues.
(Written by Tom Cropper, Edited by Klaudia Fior)