14/06/2017 The Papers

Ministers have ordered urgent checks on buildings where similar work has

Hello, and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers will be

With me are the writer and broadcaster, Mihir Bose,

and the former Pensions Minister, Baroness Altmann.

Good evening to you both. Good evening.

Tomorrow's front pages, starting with this.

There's only one story on tomorrow's front pages.

The Telegraph carries a haunting photograph

The Express reports people throwing their children out

of windows to save them from the blaze.

The i describes the tragedy as avoidable, saying that residents

had repeatedly raised concerns about fire safety.

The Metro warns that dozens of people are feared dead.

The Guardian focuses on the warnings from residents it says were ignored.

The Times reports that the blaze spread through the building

The demands to know how something like this could have happened.

And the Mirror carries a photograph of the burning building

So, we will begin. So much to talk about. This story rightly dominates

every single front page. The Mail. It has that terrifying image of the

tower, really, as an Inferno, asking how the hell could it happen, a

sober pun, because it does look like hell. It must have felt like hell.

This is such a tragedy. The first thing is to talk about the people

who have suffered, the families and loved ones, people in hospital,

people we don't know what happened to them. My heart goes out to them.

How could this happen in Britain? The indication is this is clearly a

tragedy that could have and should have been avoided. We need to know

why it wasn't and who is responsible and what steps were not taken that

should have been taken? In a country like ours, one of the most advanced

and developed, with our resources to make and health and safety

regulations. Yes. A fire destroys a whole tower block? That is what this

is suggesting. Sheer disbelief we can see this in London. In this day

and age and in our country, with all the effort of rules and regulations,

fire safety has been a strong point in all of the health and safety

regulations, and every tower block has to have a fire safety

inspection. It all has to pass. The residents seemed to have been told

it did and there was no fire risk. This is a Dickensian past. It should

have happened decades ago, not in 2017. The i. It spells out a little

bit more on the front page what you were saying about the concerns

raised. Tragic, horrific, avoidable. It has gone on to detail in the

other pages about concerns raised a long time ago in 2009. There was a

fire back then. Six people died. 20 people were injured. At that time,

the fire spread very quickly and there were questions spread about

how that happened. It seems nothing has moved on from there. In 2013,

there was an all-party Fire and Rescue review. Questions need to be

answered. The residents themselves have been raising questions and

warning that this sort of thing could happen. Regulations were

changed, but clearly whatever was done has not avoided this kind of

disaster. And that is the real sadness of all of this. You know?

People have spent a lot of time and a lot of money on assessing fire.

They had a policy for fire. Clearly it is not sufficient. It takes

something like this for us to learn that. The residents where indeed

warning it would take a catastrophe, a catastrophic event, as the put it,

before someone would take them seriously. Questions were raised

about the cladding acting like chimney, encouraging the fire to

spread, going between the cladding and the walls. It was meant to keep

people safe. They were told to stay put in their flat and they would be

rescued. That advice sounds almost lethal, an invitation to death. In

fact, those who ignored the advice save themselves. That is where you

got the headline "Deathtrap." Actually, the stay put advice would

be OK if they came and put the fire out. But if you were staying put,

and you were thinking you should get out, you could not, because the

smoke and flames engulfed everything. Yes. How could this

advice you given when the fire safety precautions were not there to

make the advice mean anything? What makes it more sad is the London Fire

Brigade apparently warned about this cladding. There are already concerns

about it. We have to stress that we don't know if this is because. We

don't know. -- the cause. There was also talk about recent gas pipes and

works, some new ones put in the stairwell with boilers and so on.

There may be other reasons, but we don't know. And this building is

30-40- 50 years old. People living in similar properties will be

worried today. We don't know much about it except that it moved very

fast in a matter of minutes. The fact you can talk about so many

potential reasons, these have all come out during the day, mostly from

residents. I just feel sorry for those residents who have been going

along and saying this is a risk, this is a risk, and have been told,

"No, it's fine." Obviously, no one wants to be proven right in these

circumstances. We have to make sure we understand what because he is. --

the cause is. The government will be looking at buildings with similar

cladding. I hope they put in place rescue plans in case this happens.

If you have safety standards and they don't work, what do they mean?

It destroys confidence! The whole thing is based in confidence. There

are fire safety standards and I believe when a fire comes I will be

safe. If they don't work, there is no way to feel secure. All of the

flats had these expensive fire doors put in. A lot of money was spent

trying to do this. Clearly, something has been going wrong.

Something has gone dreadfully wrong. Yes. We spent some time talking

about how it happened and concerns raised. Let us talk now about the

people. The Times. A picture of one of the people waving from their

window. I cannot imagine how desperate they may have been inside.

"Help, help!" A story of trapped parents throwing their children. One

was caught, apparently. That is an amazing story. Extraordinary.

Wonderful. The fact they had to do something like this! This echoes of

what happened in 9/11. Yes. That was a totally different thing. This, the

causes of this, they should have been avoided. We don't know if the

parents of the baby survived. They were thrown out of the ninth or

tenth floor. We don't know how many have died. The news at the moment is

12. We know roughly 600 people were in the block, don't we? We only know

about a certain number of deaths and people in hospital. Stories of

people calling loved ones. One had four children. When she got down...

Six when she was up and four when she was down. Another, her

12-year-old daughter, got separated somehow. They don't know where she

is. That they had a stable policy

because they only had a single staircase. If all of the residents

were trying to get out while the Fire Brigade were trying to get in,

then the fire could not be extinguished. Stapleton is a

widespread policy. The Fire Brigade has to be able to get in to put any

fire out. With one stairwell, it is common to stay tell people to stay

in their flat if their flat is not on fire, to allow emergency services

to work. Clearly that was not the right advice here. The fire doors

clearly did not work. The blaze spread so quickly. That is the

thing. That the blaze spread quickly. They may have withstood the

fire but they were overcome by smoke, we do not know. Continuing on

to the Metro. Every front page has this terrible, terrible photograph

on it. The Metro has in the foreground one of the many brave

firefighters. The heroes. They are the ones, really, we should

acknowledge. They do what they do all their time and that picture sums

it up. There he is, fighting the fire but you can feel the strain.

Understandable he should be feeling strain but is still doing this job

in trying to rescue people. Some firefighters say this is the worst

thing they have ever seen. There have been in the service for decades

and they have not seen anything quite like this. We have not seen

anything like this. This is a towering Inferno, movies like that.

What you think is may believe that this is a real-life tragedy. They do

an amazing job day in and day out. Unfortunately, recently, they have

had a lot to cope with. Not just the firefighters, of course. They have

all stepped up to the mark and done what they are supposed to do and we

rely on them that they really did come through and they have been

there to help just as we would want them to. We do not often

acknowledged that, we do not highlight what happened with Borough

market, how quickly rescue services were there. The point has been made

with firefighters in particular is that while everyone else is fleeing

danger, they are going into it and it must have been terrifying. They

were going up the floors and searching all the flats. They got to

the 19th or of the 24 building. -- 24 floor building. They are trained

and they are professional, they are dedicated and they are there for us.

I can not pay enough tribute to them, they really do the most

magnificent work. The unsung heroes, really. It is comforting that one

sector of our society does work and work well stop at moments like this

it's good to know that the rescue services work and that is some

comfort in the tragedy. There will be stories coming out highlighting

that. And they will have saved many people. It is terrible for those

they did not save that they will have saved a large number of people

by being there and guiding them to safety. We speak about people

crawling around in the dark because they could not see and when they

were trying to reach the stairs and the emergency services were guiding

them through. Let's mention the community coming together and

donating loads of things. You had the priest talking about it earlier.

That shows humanity. That is something that we should be proud

of. Britain does pull together in an emergency. We have always pulled

together and supported each other in difficult times. People are still

turning up with blankets and food and... Offers of accommodation,

whatever it is, British people really do have that great spirit of

wanting to help when people are in trouble. One more front page on this

story, the Guardian. It has a different angle on that image that

equally stark. It talks, amongst other things, about the families who

are still searching for people who are missing. We touched on that

slightly but it talks about some individuals, particularly, a

12-year-old girl, a family with three children, an 82-year-old man.

Yes stop yes. The 82-year-old man who could not quite walked out of

the lights and said he would stay where he was stop they don't know

where he is now. One cannot imagine the panic and the fear that must

have been going through. At the time. Those people who got out, some

of them did get out with elderly relatives. They must feel so

grateful that they managed to escape. Others may have stayed

behind to look after people. They did not want to leave a relative who

was disabled, whatever. Who could not manage the stairs. One was in

the lifts... I think the 82-year-old had gone down one for the lift and

was told to get out because, obviously, the lift will not be

saved in this situation. -- says in this situation, but he could not

handle the stairs. They do not know what happened to him. The agony will

go on. We don't know for how long, before they find their loved ones.

Let's hope there are some happy and good stories that some people will

turn up, some of the missing. It does happen that somebody runs away

from a tragedy like this and then you find that they are actually OK,

but maybe they did not take their mobile with them which is why they

are not answering. Let us hope we hear some of that. Turning now to

work couple of other stories, one of which in other times would have been

much bigger news and that is the resignation of the Liberal them a

great leader Kim Farren. What do you make of this story? Were you

surprised? -- Tim Farron. It was clearly hoping to create a third

way. Although their seats increased, it is not much of a wave, it is

hardly a ripple in the pond full doc the reason he gave is that you

cannot be a man of faith and lead a party. I find that extraordinary.

Were you convinced by that reasoning? No. Now I was not stop he

can say that he personally would not believe in gay marriage but I will

support anybody, I will not have a law that makes gay marriage illegal.

So a distinction between personal faith and political leanings. He

seemed to think there is a contradiction in that, suggested

that the media made a contradiction when, actually, he should have

resolve the contradiction himself. He should have said these are the

personal beliefs, these are the party beliefs and I will always

support the party policy. More sympathetic? I feel very sad that

this is somebody who really does have strong faith and felt that he

could not marry the face, if you excuse the expression, with being a

political leader. He came under enormous pressure and unfairly so at

the beginning of the campaign when everybody was forcing him to talk

about what he thinks of gay marriage. I agree with you. He

probably did not handle that as well as he could have but it was

relentless pressure that took away from really important issues of

policy and what this party stood for. This party does support gay

marriage. He was the leader of the party, as you say, this personal

believes may be different but he would not have imposed those beliefs

on other people. What he was asked was this own personal belief. They

kept on and on asking him. He did not make the distinction very clear.

He shied away from it but I think that was the issue. He shied away

from saying that he has a personal belief and a party policy and there

is no contradiction because I have come out in politics to do certain

things and I am part of a party that will support these policies, fine. I

will carry them out. He did not do that well enough. All he said was

that it does not want to talk about it. Because he was being criticised

for this personal belief. That is what was happening. When he was

being interviewed he was being criticised for being, if you like,

all, for himself, not willing to countenance the idea that he would

accept a gay marriage. That was the problem. In a way, the line of

questioning, instead of him trying to ride above it are the other

leaders may have done and they sorry, that is not relevant, I am

here as leader of the Liberal Democrats and these are policies,

this is what we stand for. This own beliefs are this own issues, enough.

That is depressing if a man or a woman of AIDS cannot become a

political leader because the political party has views contrary

to that person's religious views. We have come to a very depressing

stage. That's what he was saying in this speech today and that is why I

have see with him because he clearly felt that. He may be a bit more

sceptical and I may be a bit naive but I think he really did feel that

he could not come any longer, be in a position. If they had gotten 50

seats he would not have resigned... Thank you both very much. That is if

the papers tonight. You can see the front pages of the papers online on

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iPlayer a full thank you very