Reform UK’s chairman faced an intense backlash last night after he said his party will introduce a “total bonfire of all red tape” in the building sector.

The Labour government has just announced a series of new infrastructure projects in an effort to boost the country’s economic growth.

But all of the building work is expected to take years before it’s completed and the most controversial policy, expanding Heathrow airport with a third runway, is unlikely to be completed for at least a decade.

So on BBC Question Time, Zia Yusuf called for the UK to be deregulated in order to speed up progress – although he was quickly reminded by critics that a lack of red tape had led to the Grenfell disaster.

He said: “China builds a runway in a year. They built an entire international airport in Beijing in five years.

“And by Rachel Reeves’ own target, it’s going to take 10 years to take this runway – and we all know what happens when a Labour or a Tory politician gives you a target – look at HS2 – it’ll be massively over budget and it’ll be massively late.” 

He continued: “A total bonfire of all of the red tape that stops the United Kingdom from building.

“I will tell you we have so many incredible engineers in this country who are just desperate to unleash the power of the British economy – and that’s what Reform will do.”

He also claimed that there was too much Labour opposition to the runway – due to concerns about its environmental impact – for it to actually be built.

Yusuf concluded: “Huge amounts of British taxpayer money is going to be wasted and we’re never going to see that runway unless we see a Reform government.”

But the party chair’s deregulation calls prompted a united response from his online critics, who all reminded him of the devastating 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, where years of deregulation and a lack of safety checks led to the death of at least 72 people.

The Grenfell fire started in a fridge in a flat on the fourth floor, but spread rapidly mainly due to the tower’s extremely dangerous cladding.

A report published in September last year said the avoidable deaths stemmed from “decades of failure” by the government, authorities and the building industry.