Grenfell Tower inquiry expert a 'champion' of cuts and deregulation that could have led to tragedy, says fire brigade union

Former Manchester fire chief should stand down, says barrister Martin Seaward

Flames and smoke billow as firefighters deal with a fire in the Grenfell Tower apartment block in West London, Britain, 14 June 2017 (Reuters)

A key expert on the panel of the Grenfell Tower inquiry should stand down or his alleged support of deregulation and cuts to emergency services, the Fire Brigade Union (FBU) has said.

Steven McGuirk was “inevitably conflicted” in giving advice on the tragedy, Martin Seaward, a barrister representing the union, told an inquiry into the tragedy which killed 71 people in June,.

The former Greater Manchester Chief Fire Officer had been “at the forefront of deregulation in the fire service from 1999 to 2015,” Mr Seaward alleged.

“He has been a champion of the change and transformation that’s taken place in the fire service and that has led to cuts and closures," Mr Seaward told the inquiry which is led by former Court of Appeal judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick.

“The fire brigade union has opposed those changes all the way along and Mr McGuirk has consistently been at the opposite end of the table.”

The union is asking the inquiry to consider the effect of deregulation, closures and cuts on the response to the fire.

“That’s part of the big question of how this happened in London. We are concerned that Mr McGuirk is conflicted in advising the team on that issue,” Mr Seaward said, adding that he had been the principal adviser to local authorities.

“The FBU fears that instinctively he will strive to show that deregulation, cuts and closures were irrelevant to what happened at Grenfell Tower."

He should replaced by a senior officer from Scotland, he suggested.

The emergency services were also victims of the fire, Mr Seaward told the inquiry: “Those who attended and those who took the harrowing calls are victims who were exposed to trauma.”

His comments came as bereaved families delivered a 16,000-name petition to Downing Street, calling on Mrs May to act to "build public trust" in the inquiry, amid concern that the retired Court of Appeal judge lacks first-hand experience of the complex cultural factors underpinning the tragedy.

It also emerged that Kensington and Chelsea council has made more than 1.5 million documents available to police as part of the criminal investigation into the blaze.

James Maxwell-Scott QC, representing the local authority, said it was committed to its duty to be "open, transparent and fully co-operative" and not attempt to "defend the indefensible".

The council ensured that all its stored data was "duplicated to create a stable copy, meaning the data could not be changed or modified" after being asked to retain files by the Metropolitan Police less than a week after the fire, he said.

Some 1,516,427 documents were uploaded to an online review platform by November 8, all of which were made available to the police.

He said none of these documents had been "redacted, altered or tampered with in any way".