The Hackitt report has been unfairly traduced

摘要

Dame Judith Hackitt's Building a Safer Future report on the Grenfell Tower fire has been greeted with a simplistic outcry criticising her failure to demand a blanket ban on inflammable cladding on high-rise buildings. The minister responsible has bowed to public and media pressure to look into this proposition. But this is to disown the thoughtful nature of her inquiry and her more fundamental scrutiny of the issues, which go to the heart of the failures of government procurement processes in the construction industry.Government inquiries, despite their length and cost, rarely result in holistic responses. It is always easier to grasp for a big knee-jerk reaction, run with that and assume the job has been done.