After seven long years the Grenfell Inquiry has published its damning verdict: the 72 deaths caused by the Grenfell Tower fire were completely avoidable.
The 1500-page report names and shames companies and government bodies.
In this episode, Andrew Marr and Rachel Cunliffe join Hannah Barnes to discuss the findings of the inquiry and why justice must finally come for Grenfell.
They also review the Conservative leadership race following the first vote which saw former Home Secretary Priti Patel fall at the first hurdle. Andrew and Rachel report on view within Westminster of the remaining candidates, and why one in particular divides opinion among MPs in the Commons tea rooms.
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Selected transcript
The following is a verbatim transcript from key sections of the podcast episode. It has been edited lightly for clarity.
The government must make social housing safer
Hannah Barnes: I want us to reflect on the findings of Sir Martin Moore Bick’s seven year inquiry into Grenfell; the fire that killed 72 people and left 800 others homeless.
I have to confess, I haven’t read the whole 1500 pages yet, but just appalling negligence, dishonesty, deceit. And I guess the thing that is most shocking is that every single one of those deaths was avoidable.
Andrew Marr: I thought there were two figures that we should all remember.
One is, of course, the 72 people who died, and their faces have been all over the media the last couple of days, quite rightly. But the other figure is 585,000. And that is the figure of people living today in tower blocks which are fire hazards. Only one in ten of the 13,000 big tower blocks has actually been fixed.
So there are huge numbers of people living right now in very, very dangerous tower blocks. If this report means anything, this is the moment just to really get on and fix those blocks. And the government says it’s got no money for anything, but this money is apparently ring fenced inside the budget.
I think the single most important thing for the government to do now is to move at speed to start to make our housing, particularly a lot of our social housing, much safer.
Criminal prosecutions must follow the Grenfell Inquiry findings
AM: Criminal prosecutions are now absolutely essential and should come much more quickly than the Crime Prosecution Service currently say is possible.
HB: They’re saying 18 months, aren’t they?
Rachel Cunliffe: They’re saying minimum 18 months to bring charges and we’re talking about the end of the decade to actually see those trials taking place.
AM: Why? I don’t understand. I mean we now know the information is out there, it’s publicly printed. We know what happened. I don’t understand why it needs to take so long, and that old saying of, you know, justice delayed is justice denied, was never truer than in this case.
RC: And that is the sentiment of a number of the victims families,
HB: Oh, certainly. And they’re calling for manslaughter at a minimum, aren’t they?
RC: And they’re also saying that it’s taken too long, and while it’s great that we now have this report actually the process has delayed the police investigations.
HB: Max Hill, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, said actually, in this country, we don’t move simultaneously with criminal investigations and this big sort of statutory inquiry process. You have to wait for the inquiry to complete for some reason.
AM: Nobody can say that the inquiry was pointless now. Nobody can say that it was anything other than a really, really useful public act, really.
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