There’s a load of media noise about all the buildings covered in Grenfellesque flammable insulation. Who should pay to remove it?
The owners? They can’t afford it. And it’s not fair to punish them for what the surveyors’ said was OK when they bought. Owning a building brings lots of unforseen expenses though, it’s a gamble. It’s not unreasonable they should have to contribute something, but it shouldn’t bankrupt them.
The manufacturers went out of their way to sell it, knowing it was lethal. Should they pay? Look, nice idea, these guys were vicious and caused deaths. But did they break the law? What we can build with is governed by building standards. If there was money to be made out of it, and building standards said we could build with Semtex, then someone would. It would be immoral, but it wouldn’t be illegal.
In reality if we screwed the manufacturers to the wall for every penny they have it would pay a miniscule amount of what’s needed. In financial terms blaming them is pointless. Making a model of killer salesmen (and women) wouldn’t be a bad thing though… screw them to the wall to demonstrate that we like our capitalism to have morals. This ought to be done in a way to screw the management and shareholders, but let the manufacturing base be taken over and keep going. No point in putting people out of work and moving the industry to China because of a handful immoral salespeople. It should be a demonstration without structural consequences.
The fault lies with our building standards. This is a state responsibility that failed. The state (i.e. us taxpayers) have to foot the bill I’m afraid.
One thing that should come out of it is a more rigorous process for maintaining and enforcing building standards, not least so less people die.