You’re Telling Us What We Already Know…

What is justice for Grenfell? After seven years of public inquiry we have a 1,700-page report and a cost of more than £200m. We have had investigations, books, plays and more than £100m spent on an ongoing police investigation. Yet so far we have no closure, no prosecutions and no convictions. The word ‘“justice” does not appear in the recommendations of this week’s Moore-Bick report of the inquiry’s findings. Ask any lawyer why, and you will get a knowing smile. Justice means trials, more delays and more fees.

Well I never! You don't say, Simon? And yet, they roll on and on and on. With the bereaved always hoping for change as a result.

The answer is that the “judge-led” public inquiry has become an embedded institution in British democracy. By postponing blame, it somehow softens the guilt and gets a generation of politicians and regulators off the hook. When the Institute for Government (IfG) in 2019 looked back at the 68 public inquiries held in the previous 30 years, it found they had cost a total of £639m.

And why worry about that? After all, it’s only taxpayer’s money. As long as it produces results, right?

The give-away in the IfG report was that one in seven inquiries took more than five years to report, while only six cases produced evidence of a parliamentary follow-up. The public inquiries had served what seemed their hidden purpose, which was to delay blame until those responsible had passed out of sight. That is the only reasonable conclusion for the seven-year Moore-Bick Grenfell enterprise.

Well, they aren’t quite out of sight yet, should Starmer wish to flex his political muscles against a worthy target for once.  

Last month came a breath of fresh air from the new prisons minister, Lord Timpson, with his company’s long record of aiding former inmates. He reckoned that only a third of prisoners should have been locked up. The rest needed the sort of remedies adopted by more progressive regimes such as those in Norway and Germany. In the cases of Grenfell, the Post Office and infected blood, this should surely mean heavy fines, dismissals and restrictions on office-holding. In most non-violent crimes, this should be coupled with various forms of restorative justice.

We’ll have to see if justice is a thing Starmer’s mob really care about as much as they claimed when in opposition, when they never had to actually do anything but snipe from the benches.