Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. We are having this debate for one reason only, namely the tireless campaigning by the bereaved families and the survivors, and the overwhelming public support they attracted as a result. The e-petition, signed by over 150,000 people, forced this debate, and we should be clear that it forced the Prime Minister’s welcome shift from her previous position on Friday, when she granted a panel of some description in the Grenfell inquiry.

That is testament to the efforts of the bereaved families and survivors, but after everything they have been through, they should never have had to wage such a campaign. Far too often in this country, politics seem to act as a dam holding justice back, rather than helping justice to flow. Hillsborough, Stephen Lawrence and Bloody Sunday are all examples of when the state did not use its great powers to deliver truth and justice, but instead blocked truth and justice for years and years. In all of those cases, the state was accused of a cover-up by those affected. Distrust was sown. We cannot allow Grenfell to join that list.

Race, class and power are at the heart of this. Justice delayed is justice denied, so it is essential that the Grenfell inquiry gets it right first time, but it has got off to a rocky start. Most people will find it frankly unacceptable that to get justice, the bereaved and survivors of Grenfell have had to hold marches and organise rallies, petitions and lobbies, when they are still in shock about the horrific events that they witnessed and lived through, when they have lost everything, and when they are still trying to rebuild their lives and secure a home, as we have heard.

Friday’s decision to grant a panel of some description can be a stepping stone to justice, but for that to be the case, we need to be clear that it is not the end point, but a staging post. It needs the Government to draw the wider lesson. It must win the hearts and minds of those affected by the Grenfell fire.

A public inquiry aims to get to the truth as a key step to delivering justice. No inquiry can ever achieve that if it does not have the trust of those directly affected, and no inquiry can ever assume that it will automatically have that trust, nor can it demand it. Trust must always be earned. That is why the demands for an inquiry panel were important, and why it became a totemic issue for the full confidence of the bereaved, the survivors and the wider public.

From the start, survivors said that they wanted a panel to help to tackle the obvious distrust. It was always a reasonable demand. As we have heard, the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, which marked a watershed in uncovering institutional racism, had a similar type of panel overseeing it. As we have also heard, that panel reflected a wealth of relevant experience. That diversity was its strength, as Lord Macpherson later stated. That legitimacy led to calls for widespread change, which must be replicated with the Grenfell inquiry, but the demand for Grenfell was ignored, misrepresented and then denied. That further damaged trust and confidence.

Trust would have been stronger had the panel been granted when the demand was first made 10 months ago. Trust would have been stronger had the Prime Minister not waited until just days before Christmas to formally reject the panel. Now it has been granted, however, it needs to be a sign that the Government are going to behave differently. The ball is in the court of the Government, and specifically of the Prime Minister, who is the Minister nominated under the Inquiries Act 2005.

The Government have taken a step in the right direction, but lots of questions remain unanswered. I will put those questions to the Minister, and hopefully he can give me guarantees. I will also write to him later and, with the inquiry set to restart very soon, I hope that I will get an answer within seven days. As mentioned earlier, on Wednesday, there is an Opposition day debate on Grenfell and housing. If we do not get answers quickly, there will be an Opposition day debate on the inquiry itself.

Much of the discussion has focused on the panel, but I want to make an important clarification. We are here to debate not just the panel, but the whole petition launched by affected families and backed by 150,000 signatories. That petition is entitled, “Call on PM to take action to build public trust in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry”. As well as a panel, it asks that,

“Legal representatives of bereaved families see all evidence from the start & are allowed to question witnesses at the hearings”.

I would argue that we have had a partial response to one of the petition’s demands. We need answers to much more. Why is the panel going to sit only in phase two of the inquiry? What if the panel members need to revisit issues in phase one? Where are we with the second demand in the public petition about survivors’ lawyers having all the evidence from the start? Just a tiny fraction of the material has been disclosed to lawyers so far. Where are we with lawyers being able to cross-examine the witnesses, as happened in the Lawrence inquiry? The families cannot be expected to negotiate with the Prime Minister through public campaigns and petitions, so we need to know.

What formal mechanisms are there for bereaved family members and survivors to request more panel members? What formal mechanisms are there to guarantee the ongoing confidence of survivors and of the bereaved family members in the inquiry? How do they make formal requests and what is the formal public way of responding? We need greater clarity from the Government on all those things. As one family member said to me: “We must do what is necessary, not what is convenient.” There must be no repeat of the delays and denials we have seen in recent months. The Government must meet all the demands of survivors and of the bereaved.

In bringing my remarks to a close, I will highlight a key flaw in the current inquiry process. We are relying on the Prime Minister, who is the Minister nominated under the 2005 Act, as I mentioned, to do the right thing, but surely justice should not be about the conscience or whims of one person, however powerful. Surely justice should be a right. That is why I urge the Government to press on with the Hillsborough law, which the bereaved Hillsborough families advanced as a way of preventing what happened to them from happening to others. I hope the Government will provide parliamentary time and support for the passage of such a Bill into law. Martin Luther King once said:

“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”

We need to ensure that our laws serve justice and are not seen as a block to justice.