14/06/2017 The Papers

live in a tolerant, liberal society. And that is why I have chosen to

step down as leader of the Liberal Democrats. The resignation statement

of Tim Farron from being leader of the Liberal Democrats. Now, I look

at the papers. Hello and welcome to our look ahead

to what the the papers will be With me are the writer

and broadcaster Mihir Bose and the former Pensions minister,

Baroness Altmann. We start with the only story on

tomorrow's pages. the Telegraph carries a haunting

photograph of the throwing their children out

of windows to save as avoidable, saying that residents

had repeatedly raised The Metro warns that dozens

of people are feared dead. The Guardian focuses on the warnings

from residents who it says were ignored. The Times reports the blaze

spread in a mere 15 minutes. And the Mirror carries a photograph of the

burning building with a single word, death trap. So, let's begin, this is

a deeply deeply distressing story and it is rightly on the front of

all of the papers. Shall we start all of the papers. Shall we start

with the times with this horribly violent image, disaster in 15

minutes. What does it concentrate on? You have also got that inset

picture of one of the residents waving help from the window. This is

such a tragedy, you cannot help but feel for the victims, their

families, their friends, to have been involved in this must have been

just absolutely horrendous. Children being thrown from the buildings and

one of them was caught, one was thrown from the ninth or tenth

floor, others jumped, we do not know whether they survived, it is

something that you see in a movie. The towering Inferno or whatever.

But this has happened in London. And But this has happened in London. And

they were told to stay put. They were told to stay within an hour

they would be rescued, though given the wrong advice. Whether it could

have been avoided, the safety measures but the actual advice to

stay stay put and someone defied that advice and saved himself and

his family. The stay put policy it was called. Stay put and dive. They

were told it was designed to have rigorous fire safety standards and

you would believe that. That is the advice given and you think they know

what they are talking about. And we tend to obey rules. And the fire

doors was poster last 30 minutes to give them time to arrive. It simply

wasn't correct advice. The Guardian again the story dominates its front

page with that... And the Guardian has a fair bit on the warnings that

were given not just about staying put but warnings going back several

years and there was an action group that said last November about this

catastrophic event will highlight the incompetence of the landlord.

These warnings were ignored. And serious questions need to be raised

about what sort of management was there and who ignore these warnings.

They raised the points that we would probably immediately think of, there

was no sprinkler system, where was the building white fire alarm, there

was only one fire escape for the whole floor trying to come in

residents trying to go out which is why they had to stay put policy so

firemen could get in but then also apparently there were some gas pipes

in the escape, in emergency exit. And they're worried about that too.

And the fire regulations have not been reviewed for 11 years. What

this raises questions is what are the fire safety in the buildings,

God forbid anything should happen but we need to ask those questions

immediately. This fire spread so quickly, let's not forget, 15

minutes, that is not a lot of time. The government says a major review

will happen looking at other buildings. The Telegraph, making the

point as he said disaster waiting to happen. And the cladding. It says

cladding was putting for energy efficiency reasons and the cladding

acted like a chimney, there is a gap between the cladding and the walls

and that allowed the smoke and fire and that allowed the smoke and fire

to spread upwards. And away the cladding was done. It should have

protected but it was a conduit for the fire to spread so quickly. For a

fighter damage in 15 minutes, something must've happened which

quite dreadful. And the London Fire Brigade warned after a fire in a

block in Hammersmith last August about the cladding and there was a

fire in a skyscraper in Dubai said the fire brigade was all ready

concerned about this and all one can say is the government has now said

it will urgently review the safety. This is the sort of story that comes

out from countries where things are not managed properly, where there is

proper control, not a country like ours where we take safety very

seriously. Controlled regulation should be looked at. And there are

regulations, one thing is fire safety regulations only apply to the

common parts not individual flats con they do need to look at that but

this is a bigger issue and lessons have to be learnt. I'm sure whoever

was involved in the cladding had no idea that there would be a fire risk

otherwise it would not have happened. No one would do that if

they thought it was. We do not know, it maybe it is not the cladding,

maybe something to do with gas pipes, we just don't know. But if

residents were warning we need to know what was done and whether they

were ignored and said these residents are always going to raise

questions needn't bother about it. And they were assured it met the

fire safety standards. A quick word, one more story that otherwise would

be on the lead story on the front pages in the Financial Times, Tim

Farron quits as the Lib Dems. I was quite surprised. Especially the

reason he gave, I think his assistant Lord Patrick had resigned

citing the issue of Tim Farron's Christian faith and the implications

for his belief in gay marriage and Tim Farron has taken what I think

you can only describe it as a principled position and said if my

faith is getting in a way of me being a political leader then I will

choose my face but it is really sad and I would not normally think that

we are the kind of country that would not be tolerant of somebody's

faith. You cannot be the leader of a political party, that is what he is

saying. It is unbelievable. It was an issue in the early stages of the

election campaign and he could not get over that. Otherwise the Lib

Dems would have done better because they were the representatives of the

remainders. We'll be back together at 11:30pm to discuss at greater

length. That is it for the papers. We are back at 11:30pm. See them. --

see you