Don’t put a price on our safety

Astonishing as it may seem, there are civil servants who tap on calculators to work out the worth of a human life.

When it was applied to road safety the figure came up as £860,000.

That was how much taxpayer money could be spent for every life saved.

But human life should not be subject to cost benefit analysis because human life is priceless.

It was our own John Prescott who insisted on the introduction of the Train Protection Warning System following the Southall rail crash in 1997 and the Paddington disaster two years later, in which a total of 38 people died and hundreds were injured.

Both tragedies would have been avoided had TPWS been fitted because it stops trains if they pass red lights.

TPWS cost hundreds of millions of pounds, which is why it was not adopted earlier. But thanks to it there have been no similar accidents since. Which goes to show that when you take money out of the equation the human cost goes down.

Yet we do not know there is a disaster waiting to happen until it happens.

Cladding was not thought to be a major fire hazard until Grenfell Tower went up in flames. Now 34 blocks in 17 local authorities across England have been declared unsafe.

Only now do we know that fridge-freezers similar to the one that sparked the Grenfell blaze can burn a kitchen down in 90 seconds. We should have been told that before.

The treatment of Grenfell survivors, and those evacuated from 650 flats in Camden, has been confused and chaotic.

What we need is a National Strategy for Public Safety to deal with all these issues, and all those we have not even thought of yet.

And Theresa May must appoint a Minister for Public Safety who does nothing but think about them. And acts when danger is identified. Money must be no object.

Only then will we sleep safe in our beds again.