he conditions that facilitated the tragedy remain unchecked

Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

We are approaching the ninth anniversary of the 2017 fire at Grenfell Towers in London which killed 72 people, including 18 children. This week, the UK parliament has passed a Bill to build a memorial to the memory of its victims. The most effective memorial would be to ensure that such avoidable tragedies never occur again. However, the conditions that facilitated the tragedy remain unchecked. The root cause of the tragedy is lust for higher profits; corporate power, performance related executive pay, failure of regulators and indifference of governments to the cry of the people.

The Grenfell tragedy provides a lens for examining systemic failures, corporate abuses, and failure of governments to hold anyone to account in not only housing but numerous other sectors too.

The Grenfell Tragedy

The Grenfell tragedy occurred in one of the wealthiest countries and cities on the planet. The 24-storey social housing block was in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the most affluent borough in London. 

Grenfell Tower was located in the poor part of the borough, an area in the top 10% of the most deprived areas in England. Occupants of its 129 apartments had low incomes and survived on the margins of society. They frequently complained about the poor housing conditions, electrical faults and fire safety. There was no building-wide fire alarm or sprinkler system. Tenants’ complaints were ignored even though previous fires and fatalities at similar properties had raised safety concerns.

The fire was caused by an electrical fault which ignited highly combustible materials used in construction and refurbishments of the tower. A subsequent  inquiry concluded that there was “systematic dishonesty” by suppliers of cladding panels and insulation products. “They engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market … Arconic deliberately concealed from the market the true extent of the danger of using Reynobond 55 PE in cassette form, particularly on high-rise buildings.”

Kingspan knowingly made false claims about its insulation’s fire performance and conducted “long-running internal discussions about what it could get away with“. Celotex used “dishonest means”.to break into the market, presenting its insulation as safe while knowing it did not meet required standards.

The Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation responsible for managing Grenfell Tower on behalf of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea showed “persistent indifference” to tenants’ complaints about fire safety. The tragedy was the ‘culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry’, especially as little reform followed previous high-rise block fires.

The Government accepted all 58 of the inquiry’s recommendations but they have not been fully implemented. Many buildings still have the same cladding as in Grenfell.

To date, no corporation or individual has yet been charged or prosecuted over the death of 72 people. No company director has been disqualified by the Department of Business and Trade. The offending companies are not excluded from public procurement. Despite promises, no legislation has been introduced to improve corporate and director accountability. Ministers bat away calls for urgent action by claiming that the Police are looking at the issues.

Grenfell is not the only case of political indifference to corporate abuses and damaged lives.

Corporate Capture of the State

State capture, a form of political corruption, is all around us. Governments speedily prosecute carers and poor people for comparatively minor indiscretions but lack the necessary backbone for dealing with corporate crimes.

England’s water companies have over 1,200 criminal convictions. Companies reward executives for boosting profits by dumping sewage in rivers. They bypass rules on payment of bonuses. To manage public opinion, occasionally fines on companies are announced but then quietly waived or deferred. No company has had its licence to operate withdrawn. No corporate executive has been fined or prosecuted. 

The Post Office scandal goes back to the 1990s. The December 2019 High Court judgment showed that it falsely secured criminal convictions of hundreds of postmasters by not revealing that its Horizon accounting system was fundamentally flawed.  An independent inquiry revealed that it was assisted by Fujitsu, the supplier of the IT system, lawyers and business advisors. So far, the public purse has paid nearly £1.5bn in compensation to victims.

Horizon’s predecessor system known as Capture was used from 1992 to 1999. It too was flawed and was used to falsely secure criminal convictions of postmasters. Millions will be paid in compensation.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, no corporation or corporate executive has been fined or prosecuted. Fujitsu and others have made no contribution to compensations. Fujitsu still gets government contracts.

The third strand of the Post Office scandal is that there has been no scrutiny of the 100 or so postmaster convictions secured by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) for alleged frauds on payments of social security benefits. On 27 February 2025, a Minister told the House of Lords, “My noble friend Lord Sikka raised a question about the DWP convictions. I can assure him that the Minister for Transformation is looking into this, a review is being established”. On 27 January 2026, at a meeting with the relevant Minister I learnt that no review had taken place, and that the government had not even appointed a reviewer. On 23 March 2026, the government finally advertised for the post of a reviewer. The position may be filled by summer 2026 and the reviewer is expected to spend just 30 working days on the job. The review is expected to be cosmetic.

Secret commission from mis-selling of motor finance is the latest finance industry scandal. On 24 October 2024, the Court of Appeal ruled that it was unlawful for car dealers to receive a commission from a lender providing motor finance to a customer, unless it was properly disclosed to the customer and they gave informed consent to the payment. A possible compensation bill of £44bn, hitting bank profits, was mooted. Lenders appealed to the Supreme Court.

In January 2025 the Treasury, led by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, took the unprecedented step of applying to intervene and influence the Supreme Court judges on how they should interpret the law. The Treasury opposed the proposed redress and claimed the compensation would have “adverse consequences for the UK’s reputation as a place to do business and could negatively impact economic growth”. The court rejected the Chancellor’s interference. Faced with snub, the Chancellor said that she is considering emergency legislation to overrule the Supreme Court and limit customer redress. The August 2025 Supreme Court judgment severely diluted the redress available to customers.

The zeal to protect banks is not extended to victims of bank frauds. There is the long-running saga of frauds at HBOS, since 2009 owned by Lloyds Bank. Between 2002 and 2007, small business owners at the Reading branch were classified as ‘high risk’ even they had never missed a repayment of loans. They were sold unnecessary financial products and ultimately forced into liquidation, with senior managers benefiting from the forced sale of assets. Despite the evidence, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Serious Fraud Office and the Police declined to bring any prosecutions. Finally, in 2017, the Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner prosecuted and secured criminal convictions of HBOS managers for fraud and corruption. 

Still, no regulatory agency sought to fully investigate the £1bn frauds and secure compensation for the victims. The buck was passed to Lloyds Bank for a very limited investigation by Dame Linda Dobbs. A report was promised by 2018. Nothing has been published. I have raised the matter in parliament on several occasions. The typical response from Ministers is silence, indifference, obfuscation and buck-passing.

The above is a tiny part of evidence showing callous disregard for the lives of ordinary people. In the public mind corporate crime is associated with tax dodges, illicit financial flows, dud products, profiteering, bribery and corruption, but it is more than that. It destroys lives, families and communities. The abuses are part of an enterprise culture that persuades many to believe that `bending the rules’ for personal gain is a sign of business acumen. Stealing a march on a competitor, at almost any price, to gain financial advantage is considered to be an entrepreneurial skill, especially where competitive pressures link promotion, status, profits, market shares and niches with meeting business targets. The result is that people are denied safe housing, water, work and essential services. Yet governments are obsessed with deregulation, with little regard for human rights, workers’ rights and protection of people and the environment.

The political system has done little to address the root causes of abuses. Current laws do not impose a proactive duty on companies and directors to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm arising from their commercial activities. No attempt is made to reform corporate governance, democratise corporations, reform regulation and ministerial accountability. The state itself has become a sponsor of social terror where corporate profits are prioritised over people’s lives. Unless checked, further loss of confidence in institutions of government is inevitable.

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