Independent Cultural Review of the London Fire Brigade

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti on initiating this short debate about this important matter. I have an interest or two to declare. I am Labour’s women and equalities spokesperson and I declare another interest in that my husband, John Carr, was the chair of the GLC staff committee in 1981 and led the successful fight to have women and people of colour admitted into the London Fire Brigade. At the time I was chair of the Labour London Women’s Committee, and I recall that the London Fire Brigade and the Fire Brigades Union resisted the admittance of women as firefighters and, in some fire stations, did not make black and ethnic minority firefighters welcome either. Indeed, one of the first women admitted in the early 1980s, Lynne Gunning, undertook a formal disciplinary complaint about the initiation ceremony she endured at the Soho fire station, with urine thrown over her, indecent exposure and other horrible indignities. As I recall, one of the defences mounted by the FBU at the disciplinary hearing of one firefighter was that staff had not been trained to work with women. So it was with some depression that my husband and I read, 40 years later, the recent report about the culture in the London Fire Brigade.

As my noble friend said, the report was precipitated by the suicide of Jaden Matthew Francois-Esprit, who took his own life, tragically, in August 2020. It reflects long-standing issues with poor culture and behaviour in the brigade that were revealed, and that the many attempts to address these issues had not met with success. I wish to place on record my thanks to the commissioner, Andy Roe, who took the time, as my noble friend said, to come to meet us and who impressed me very much with his determination to lead massive change in the London fire brigade with regard to racism, misogyny and homophobia. I congratulate him, as well as Sadiq Khan, the mayor, and our new colleague, my noble friend Lady Twycross—Fiona Twycross, deputy mayor for fire and resilience at the GLA—on commissioning this thorough report, chaired by the excellent and independent Nazir Afzal, and for accepting its findings in full. I also congratulate the Fire Brigades Union on its welcome of the report and its encouragement of the participation that has made it such an important report.

It is important to note that this review is a thorough examination of the culture at the London Fire Brigade. There is no hiding place, therefore. I also note what Nazir Afzal said on Twitter when the report was released:

“Before you rush to judge #LFB please ask your organisation to look in the mirror.”


I reflect on our workplace, this Parliament, as justifying that comment. Afzal goes so far as to recommend national inquiries into other large public institutions, such as the NHS and the military. In response, the Secretary of State for Transport told Sophy Ridge on Sunday that he did not want lots of organisations

“setting up inquiries all over the place.”

I ask the Minister: is this an accurate summary of the Government’s position on wider investigations?

A brief search will reveal, for example, the case of a black fire commander in the West Midlands called Warren Simpson, who was called Frank for seven years by his colleagues, after Frank Bruno; in other words, demeaning and belittling and denying someone their name. He eventually sued for race discrimination for being passed over for promotion year after year. In 2015, the Fire Brigades Union took a motion at its conference from women firefighters which said:

“Conference is disgusted at the treatment some of our women members in the UK Fire and Rescue Services have experienced and continue to experience. Since the coalition Government came to power and abolished equality targets, we have seen an increase in discrimination and unwanted behaviour towards our women members. Our women members have been forced to raise grievances or pursue complaints over pregnancy discrimination, bullying and harassment, sexual harassment and sexual discrimination.”


I have to say, as an aside, that some of us told the coalition Government at the time that abolishing quality targets would lead to discrimination, and the women’s organisation in the Fire Brigades Union was absolutely correct.

However, the issue I wish to highlight, which is a challenge to all our uniformed services, is that in recent times we have seen reports of sex discrimination, misogyny, racism, racial discrimination and homophobia in our uniformed services in the UK—the Army, the Navy, the police and the fire brigade. All these are services we depend on to keep us safe and to be there to defend and protect us. All the people who work in them are prepared to put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of others and our society, and we are grateful and applaud their bravery and steadfastness every day and all the time. But, as this report points out, as well as the comradeship, interdependence and trust that are required for these necessarily hierarchical uniformed services to do their job, whether on their watch, in their unit or in their regiment, these wonderful and vital qualities also seem to produce, sometimes, a misplaced loyalty which covers up and does not challenge bad and sometimes illegal behaviours. This is not only counterproductive and undermining of their service and reputation but, as we have seen in recent times, it causes huge personal anguish. Surely this is the challenge which all of them face and the reason why Andy Roe’s leadership in embracing this report, which he admits was dreadfully painful to read, is so important and wide reaching. It is a start.

The reaction of the London Fire Brigade to this report—a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination, introducing new external complaints and investigation services, reviewing its HR processes, and making it easier and quicker for staff to access help—are all very important, but it will not be marking its own homework; it will be creating an independent audit committee to measure its progress. I think that is vital, but it is just a beginning. It is an important beginning, not just for the London Fire Brigade and for fire brigades across the UK, but for all our uniformed services.