Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)

On the first point that my noble friend raises, there is an issue about deregulation, which should always be seen in the context of what is appropriate; it is not about the numbers of regulations that we have. Most importantly, what struck me when reading this report was that, although deregulation was certainly part of the issue, honesty and dishonesty were an even greater part. Parts of the report refer to deliberately concealing from the market the true extent of the danger, systematic dishonesty, how a company embarked on a dishonest scheme to mislead its customers in the wider markets, as well as a deliberate strategy to continue selling those products in the face of a statement about the fire performance which they knew to be false. The scale and depth of the dishonesty there is extraordinary. So regulation is important, but the point about honesty, misleading information and systematic failures runs so through deeply throughout this that there are multiple threads to the failure. On resources, the Prime Minister has made it clear that they should be made available to ensure that prosecutions can be brought, if that is the view of the police and the CPS, and that they will have the resources to do so.