Over the past two weeks, more than four years after its first hearing, the Grenfell Tower inquiry finally heard from senior government figures responsible for housing and building regulations in the years before the disaster.
Eric Pickles, the secretary of state for housing under David Cameron from 2010 to 2015, made the headlines for telling the inquiry to use its time “wisely” as he had an “extremely busy day”. He also managed to offend survivors and the bereaved by getting the number of victims wrong during his closing statement, in which he also concluded that changing his actions as minister “wouldn’t have made any difference whatsoever”.
