Grenfell impartiality

The inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire in June opened yesterday with a sober and well-balanced statement from the presiding judge, Sir Martin Moore-bick. His task, he said, was “simply to get to the truth with the help of all those who have relevant evidence to give”. The process, he added, “should be seen as essentially cooperative”.

Yet ever since Sir Martin was appointed, there has been more condemnation than cooperation. It has been implied that he is the wrong colour and class to investigate a tragedy that exposed tensions around both. But Sir Martin is the right person to conduct this inquiry precisely because he can set out to discover what happened without the sense of injustice and grievance felt by those directly involved. He was right to turn down a suggestion that a survivor of the inferno should join his team of assessors because it would “risk undermining my impartiality”.

That, surely, is the point of a judge: to oversee proceedings without a preconceived idea of what happened – neutral and detached but fully apprised of the magnitude of the job and the importance of his conclusions. It is, therefore, unfortunate that the proceedings should have continued to attract claims that the inquiry has been designed to deny local people their say. Inevitably, given his association with every

cause célèbre over the past three decades, Michael Mansfield QC was involved in controversy when he tried to speak but would not be heard by the judge.

Mr Mansfield’s well-developed sense of his own importance was evidently piqued by the snub, which was “disrespectful”, he said. What is disrespectful is using such an occasion for grandstanding.