WILL the Grenfell Tower survivors or the loved ones of the victims ever receive justice? Of course, at one level, they never can.

No-one is going to bring back their loved ones. Survivors will always be scarred by the inferno both physically and mentally.
 
Therefore any talk of justice must be founded on two other key issues. The first is how, separately, the victims and the culprits are treated. The second is the response to ensure that this really can never happen again.
 
Ultimately, both of these issues require a fundamental change in how government, both nationally and locally treats its citizens and how it regulates business. This is because, in the final analysis, the entire tragedy was created in Downing Street, and we cannot tolerate either a legal framework or a government which allows anything like a recurrence.
 
A “global settlement” of £150 million has been reached with survivors and families. As this is an agreed settlement it is inappropriate now to challenge its terms, although some have criticised both in levels of individual compensation paid and who funded it.
 
But there is also the question of bringing the perpetrators to justice. That means both the companies involved as well as the politicians. To take just one example, Arconic supplied cladding that it knew was faulty and combustible.

Rather than withdraw the product, it concealed evidence of the fatal flaws and its commercial policy was to focus on countries with lax regulatory regimes like Britain. Cameron and Osborne threatened a “bonfire of red tape” and 34 years after Thatcher, Britain fitted the bill perfectly.
 
Under current law, the manufacturers and installers of the cladding, along with the architect firms, could be charged with corporate manslaughter. But the punishment for corporate manslaughter if found guilty is usually a fine. Jail or even fines and being barred from being a director are very rare.
 
At the same time, in other cases, firms have simply dodged their responsibilities by siphoning off their liabilities to another company, or by takeover or even bankruptcy (Studio E, one of the architectural firms that ignored safety regulations has been clocked from being wound up). This cannot be allowed to happen.
 
We need a change in the law that allows the relevant directors of the companies convicted to face unlimited fines and jail time if they presided over corporate manslaughter. That ought to be a sufficient incentive to prevent a repeat of this type of knowing cover-up. Criminal investigations should be speedy and charges should follow.
 
But anyone hoping that companies will simply correct their own bad practices is ignoring one of the key lessons of the entire scandal. In effect, under the Thatcherite ideology of laissez-faire economic policy, the companies were asked to regulate themselves. The result was catastrophic.
 
One key way in which these companies were able to operate so disgracefully is because the deregulation agenda had morphed into complete regulatory capture, with the companies setting the terms of the product testing, and providing and verifying their own results.
 
In addition to all of this was the attitude of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) Tory council and their tenant management organisation. It was nothing short of contempt for their own residents. Although the report ignores it, the victims are overwhelmingly black or Asian, and the discrimination and racism they have faced is persistent.
 
As you can imagine, most of RBKC is a wealthy area, but historically the area around Grenfell is not. I grew up not far from there and know it quite well. The Tory council has long opposed council housing in principle. Even though some of the Grenfell flats had been bought by residents, as far as the majority of councillors were concerned, they had an outright hostile attitude to all of them.
 
Tory councillors ignored all well-documented pleas and arguments against the cladding, and everything to do with fire safety and the comfort and wellbeing of the residents. They accused residents of being misled “by militant troublemakers.”
 
The building control department knew little about the risks of cladding and cared less. They broke the law in failing to ensure refurbishment work complied with safety regulations and the council itself did the same in failing to identify the frail or vulnerable who would need assistance in the event of a fire.
 
Much was made after the publication of the first Grenfell report into the failure of the London Fire Brigade. In the media, this soon became a disgraceful attack on firefighters themselves. Belatedly, the balance of the second report goes some way to addressing this.
 
Yet the contentious “stay put” policy which was operated then continues to be policy. In many blocks of flats, there are not two different stairwells, so a rising fire can sometimes leave residents and firefighters alike with dreadful options.
 
As an expert from the FBU explained, “stay put” is still the best option in most cases — but only on condition that all other appropriate fire safety measures are already in place. Key among these is to stop covering our residential buildings in petrol and then praying they will not catch fire. But there were a host of other fire safety failings.
 
The remedial progress for the thousands of tower blocks nationally that still have this cladding has been glacially slow. For a government that wants to boost the construction industry, this should be an obvious and immediate priority.
 
The role of government is central in all this. Thatcherite ideology believes that, freed from regulation, businesses will innovate and invest. Forty-four years later this has still not happened. Instead, Grenfell teaches us that, freed from regulation, firms will race to the bottom. They will lie and endanger instead.
 
One of this government’s claims is that deregulation of the homebuilding sector will spark growth more widely. This is strikingly similar to the Cameron and Osborne notion prior to 2014, when the Grenfell cladding was attached. We have seen the disastrous results.
 
Justice for Grenfell includes many things. But among them must be a genuine commitment to “No More Grenfells,” and an end to the legislative, regulatory and cultural environment that led directly to disaster.

Any such commitment is completely incompatible with a deregulatory agenda. Grenfell itself shows that tighter regulation and stricter enforcement are required. This must be combined with a proper pursuit of all the guilty parties in a timely fashion.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Follow her on X @HackneyAbbott.