Grenfell - justice delayed (again)
The latest delay to the long-awaited inquiry report is just the latest step in a long line of disappointments for those impacted by the blaze.
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Last week, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry announced that it would miss its self-imposed deadline to complete its long-awaited second phase report before the seventh anniversary of the fire on June 14 this year.
The inquiry’s update did not say when the report will be released, but it leaves a very narrow window for them to get it out before the Parliamentary summer recess begins on 23 July.
Since the report is ultimately provided to the prime minister, who then decides when to actually publish it to the general population, it seems likely that it wouldn’t be published during recess.
This would then mean an autumn publication, which raises the prospect of it hitting during the Purdah period leading up the general election, which then means it would ultimately be published by a new government.
This news is obviously going to be very upsetting to the Grenfell community, who have endured a completely inappropriate wait while the inquiry gets its work done.
For those who have lost track of the timeline, the inquiry was announced by prime minister Theresa May the day after the fire in 2017. We now know it was recommended by Melanie Dawes, the permanent secretary at the department responsible for building regulations and social housing policy, after she became aware of some of her colleagues’ failures to act in the years before the fire.
In September 2017, the newly appointed chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick said the inquiry was aiming to get its first report (covering the events of the night of the fire) out by Easter 2018.
But in the event, the hearings did not even begin until June 2018, with the evidence for the first phase taking us all the way through until December of that year.
As he closed this part of the inquiry, Sir Martin announced further disappointing news for those who had hoped for a quick process: the inquiry’s second phase (crucial in establishing who was to blame for the conditions of the building on the night) would not even begin until 2020.
We then got the first phase report in October 2019 - which revealed a devastatingly detailed picture of failure by the fire services to recognise the need to evacuate the building or to manage the rescue of those trapped. It came complete with recommendations to the fire service and to government, which prime minister Boris Johnson promised to implement in full.
Then in January 2020, we did start the second phase - with a timetable setting out the conclusion of hearings in April 2021. We then heard opening statements which revealed devastating new insight into the extent of knowledge of the danger of the cladding materials among the companies responsible.
But as soon as it started, it had stopped again - this time to consider an application for protection against self-incrimination from some of those set to give evidence.
We started again in March 2020, but quickly stopped once more due to the national lockdown and outbreak of COVID. We began again in summer 2020, but were quickly out again for a long summer break, started again in the autumn but paused once more when the second lockdown came into effect, and began again in early 2021, this time using remote hearings.
With all of this strife, and many witnesses simply taking longer to finish than expected the inquiry had slipped hugely behind its original timetable for the second phase. It never recovered this time, with hearings continuing for the duration of 2021 and into spring 2022, finally concluding with evidence into the individual deaths in July 2022. After another pause, we heard closing statements in November 2022.
To put this process in scale, I had missed the very opening weeks in 2018 due to the tail end of paternity leave for my first son. I was then a bit late filing my report on the closing statements because I had to pause the live stream for 45 minutes to pick him up from primary school. And his brother, born during the inquiry’s first pause for COVID in May 2020, will likely have to spend a morning at his primary school breakfast club if the report does slip into the autumn.
This same sense of time passing has been true for the victims. Children who survived the fire have grown into teenagers, teenagers into young adults. Families told the recent testimony week of the sadness they feel imagining how the children who died would have grown up. And some older members of the community have died without seeing justice.
In the meantime, Boris Johnson’s original pledge to the community that the report would be implemented in full has been broken. Following pressure from industry lobbyists, key measures on evacuation plans, arrangements for those with disabilities in high rises and block-wide communal fire alarms have either been quietly dropped or booted into the long grass.
But the delay matters particularly because it delays what many of those who were impacted by the fire are so desperate to see: justice. The police investigation will not progress to arrests until the phase two report is released, and detectives will need some time to consider its conclusions before they press on.
My view remains that we will see some form of criminal prosecution for Grenfell. Whether it will be strong enough, or whether it will be the right people in the dock, is up to the police. But the weight of the evidence and the obvious culpability for certain key actors mean some prosecutions feel quite simple to make out.
There is no guarantee of this of course, and every year that goes by adds more doubt that it will ever come to pass. The old mantra about justice delayed also rings true.
My views about the inquiry also remain as they were. This was a forensic and fearless process which dragged jaw dropping evidence and major concessions from a group of evasive and combative corporations, politicians and other actors with an awful lot to lose. No other process could have shone as much light on what happened and why, and those who worked hard to achieve this deserve that not to be forgotten.
We also saw the danger of not having an inquiry after Lakanal House, when the police investigation failed to hold anyone to account, critical information was deliberately withheld from the public domain and the real reasons for the disaster were widely misunderstood. The result was no justice, no change and a repeat on a bigger scale eight years later.
But the process has also always taken too long, especially given the resultant delay to prosecutions. It has also made a bad habit of breaking its own promises about timing, which is careless even if it has not always been specifically to blame for the delays.
The one scrap of positivity I can find in the latest delay is that there might be some advantage in the report being published by a new government. With clear political water between the new politicians and the failures under scrutiny, as well as energy and parliamentary power there might be a higher chance of the small window of public attention resulting in some actual change.
But this remains to be seen. Some of the changes we need (sprinkler retrofit for example) cost money, and no political party with a chance of forming a government is willing to provide that. Other changes will require standing up to the building industry, and the current leader of the opposition is on record promising to “cut red tape” to get them building - a nasty echo of the language which the inquiry report is ultimately quite likely to savage.
But all of these debates pale into the background compared to the long and heartbreaking wait for justice those who have already suffered so much are having to endure. It has already been far too long.
My book on the Grenfell fire, Show Me The Bodies, is available here