"Systematic dishonesty" and "persistent failure" were among the chief causes of the Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72 people in June 2017, rules an inquiry into the disaster. Unveiling his 1,600-page report, Martin Moore-Bick, a retired judge chairing the inquiry, explains that multiple parties contributed to the fire, "in most cases through incompetence, but in some cases through dishonesty and greed."
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00:00We find that there was a failure on the part of the government and others
00:04to give proper consideration at an early stage
00:08to the dangers of using combustible materials in the walls of high-rise buildings,
00:14that including failing to amend in an appropriate way
00:19the statutory guidance on the construction of external walls.
00:23That is where the seeds of the disaster were sown.
00:28We discovered that there had been systematic dishonesty on the part of manufacturers
00:35involving deliberate manipulation of the testing processes
00:40and calculated attempts to mislead purchasers into thinking
00:45that what were combustible materials complied with the provisions of the statutory guidance
00:51that advised against their use.
00:54The picture is one of a persistent failure to give sufficient importance
00:58to the demands of fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people.
01:04Not all of them bear the same degree of responsibility for the eventual disaster,
01:09but as our reports show, all contributed to it in one way or another,
01:15in most cases through incompetence, but in some cases through dishonesty and greed.
01:24For more UN videos visit www.un.org