Former fire and safety minister Brandon Lewis snubbed repeated calls to create a building-safety regulator prior to the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, the inquiry into the blaze heard yesterday.

The minister opted instead to leave the industry to self-regulate, despite damning advice that doing so was “risky”.

Lewis (pictured) served as parliamentary undersecretary of state at the then-named Department for Communities and Local Government from 2012 to 2014, before being promoted to the role of minister of state until 2016. He is currently serving as the government’s Northern Ireland secretary.

Lewis was in the fire-safety role as the government investigated the cause of the 2009 Lakanal House fire in south London, where six people were killed. The Grenfell Inquiry has already established that repeat warnings following that fire, which were not acted on, could have prevented the Grenfell Tower fire, in which 72 people died.

A report by Home Office official Louise Upton, which Lewis accepted he would have read, recommended the creation of a national regulator focusing on building safety.

“Without an effective sector-wide, holistic approach to fire safety, it seems that the government’s policy of standing back to allow the sector to fill the space vacated by government is risky,” the report warned.

It stated that there was a lack of certainty on the standards for appropriate levels of safety, concluding that "Pressure grows for legislative change."

But an email from one of Lewis' advisers said he was "not keen on the idea of a national regulator".

When asked why, Lewis told counsel to the Inquiry Andrew Kinnear QC that, while he could not remember the situation exactly, the government at the time was pushing for decentralisation and self-regulation by the sector.

“It was around the wider issue of looking at how to make things efficient and effective with the schemes we already had rather than creating another body for the sector,” he said.

“How do we ensure that it doesn’t become just another layer of regulation that doesn’t deliver anything meaningful over and above what we have got?”

The inquiry revealed documents which showed that coroners for two separate fires that resulted in deaths recommended the establishment of more guidance around investigation of compartmentation, which was partly responsible for the spread of fire.

Following the recommendation by the coroner probing the Lakanal House fire, the government said that it had “no plans to issue new guidance”.

The senior coroner looking into the death of firefighter Stephen Hunt, who died while tackling a fire in Manchester in 2013, also recommended the introduction of stricter building-safety legislation.

In response to the lack of action following the Lakanal House fire, Kinnear said: “The coroner’s recommendations for more regulation was clear and unambiguous, and the review clearly fell short of the coroner’s recommendations."

Following repeated questions on the reason for rejecting the need for a building regulator despite multiple calls for it, Kinnear asked what it would have taken to push the government towards regulation rather than sector self-regulation. The minister said regulation would have been pursued if the government thought it necessary, but that it would not necessarily have helped.

"Persistent concerns were made clear by two coroners," Kinnear said. “Why were you content for the proposal to wither on the vine?”

He also proposed that the minister simply had an “aversion to regulation".

In response, Lewis said the department “was not shy” of developing new regulations. “If you look at the amount of guidance and particularly on fire safety which was put through by the department: so, on carbon monoxide regulations and smoke alarms, for instance, we were very focused on passing regulations when we felt it was appropriate,” he said.

Lewis was the first government minister to give evidence to the inquiry, which is currently assessing the role of the government in letting building-safety regulation lapse. Lord Eric Pickles, who was housing secretary from 2010 to 2015, will give evidence in the coming weeks.