BEREAVED families, lawyers and politicians called for the creation of a new body today to ensure state bodies and corporations cannot ignore life-saving coroner and public inquiry recommendations.

Deborah Coles, chief executive of the Inquest charity, called on the government to set up a “national oversight mechanism” at a Labour Conference fringe event jointly hosted by legal firm Leigh Day.

The mechanism would be an independent public body responsible for collating, analysing and following up on recommendations arising from investigations into state-related deaths.

Ms Coles said: “What we have been really frustrated and angered by is seeing multiple deaths where coroners, investigators and inquiry chairs have raised the same issues or concerns.

“There’s a cyclical pattern of deaths going back decades of repeated state or corporate failure to act on concerns — concerns that organisations have been warned about and knew about but did not act on, and as a result preventable deaths have occurred.”

She said there is a “really shocking and quite shameful lack of accountability and transparency in action that is indeed not being taken for what are life-saving recommendations.

“Labour really have an opportunity to show they are committed to human rights, to treating people with dignity, which also means listening and responding to this call because this is not just in the interests of bereaved families, it’s in the interests of us all.”

Grenfell United chair Natasha Elcock backed the proposal, saying “we have to do everything in our power to ensure that the 72 lives we lost that night… their deaths are not in vain.”

Richard Caseby, whose son Matthew died following neglect at the Priory Hospital, said: “Bereaved families know only too well this black hole of emptiness to the mantras ‘lessons will be learned’ — I’m one of them.”

Attorney General Richard Hermer KC said Labour is determined to use its time in government to improve society “systematically.”