Image: Dreamstime/Alex Danila
The lawyers for several key witnesses at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry have requested privilege against self-incrimination to protect them from future prosecution.
Inquiry chair, retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick said the request from counsel for Harley Façades, certain employees and ex-employees of Rydon, installer Osborne Berry, cladding designer Kevin Lamb, and the tenant management organisation (TMO), as coming as “something of a surprise”.
“Privilege against self-incrimination is a rule of law that protects a person from being required to answer questions, if to do so truthfully might expose him or her to a risk of prosecution. It’s a very broad principle, and will extend to any answers which might assist in or lead to a prosecution,” Moore-Bick explained.
“What they are asking me to do is to apply to the attorney general, for an undertaking that nothing said by a witness in answers to questions in the Inquiry will be used in furtherance of a prosecution against them, thereby giving them complete freedom to tell the truth without any concern for the future,” he added.
Michael Mansfield QC, counsel for the bereaved relatives of those who died in the Grenfell Tower disaster, as well as survivors, said the timing of the application was “highly reprehensible and highly questionable” on the eve of evidence due to be given next week.
“There has been plenty of time for this to have been considered, as it does normally in inquiries and inquests, with many weeks to go before you actually get to the evidence. So we have a major question over why it’s been done today, because it has caused…immense anxiety, distress and anger, at a time which has come throughout a much longer period of waiting after this disaster, of waiting to get to the point of accountability , as it were to be almost thwarted at the doors of the court.”
