Former Appeal Court judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick has been appointed to head the Public Inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire.
The Inquiry will be established under the 2005 Inquiries Act, with full powers, including the power to compel the production of documents, and to summon witnesses to give evidence on oath.
Prime Minister Theresa May said the Inquiry will be held in public. "In relation to the appointment of the Chair, the Lord Chancellor asked the Lord Chief Justice for the name of a judge who, in his view, would be best suited to the task and available to start work immediately so that we can get answers to what happened as quickly as possible," she said.
"The Lord Chief Justice recommended Sir Martin Moore-Bick: a highly respected and hugely experienced former Court of Appeal judge. I have accepted the Lord Chief Justice’s recommendation.
"I am determined that there will be justice for all the victims of this terrible tragedy and for their families who have suffered so terribly.
"The immediate priority is to establish the facts of what happened at Grenfell Tower in order to take the necessary action to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again. But beyond that immediate focus it is also important that all the wider lessons from both this catastrophe, and the inspections of other buildings around the country that followed it, are identified and learnt.
"Before the Inquiry starts Sir Martin will consult all those with an interest, including survivors and victims’ families, about the terms of reference. Following that consultation he will make a recommendation to me. I will return to Parliament with the final terms of reference once this process has taken place. Then the Inquiry will begin its work.
"We must get to the truth about what happened. No stone will be left unturned by this Inquiry, but I have also been clear that we cannot wait for ages to learn the immediate lessons and so I expect the Chair will want to produce an interim report as early as possible."
Roger Bibbings MBE, partnerships consultant and former occupational safety adviser at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), welcomed the start of what he described the "vital process" of the inquiry.
He said: “The role of inquiries into disasters is to establish clearly not just what happened, when, where, how and with what consequences, but crucially to ask ‘why?’ Asking ‘why’ enough times and at each stage of the inquiry process is necessary to understand both the immediate and root causes.
“For it to be able to go deep enough it will be important that the inquiry’s terms of reference are not too restrictive and that suitable technical assessors are now appointed.
“And, if the negative atmosphere surrounding health and safety created by more than a decade of deregulation and ‘light touch’ risk management and enforcement played a significant part in this awful tragedy, then the inquiry should not shrink from examining this in some detail and laying bare the facts.
“We all owe it, not just to the victims of Grenfell Tower but also to the countless others who could well be harmed by accidents due to the same underlying ‘safety pathogens’, to get this inquiry right.”
