Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 6 March 2018 to Question 121054, for what reasons the Government did not appoint Sir Brian Langstaff to head the public Inquiry before Christmas 2017.

As required by the Inquiries Act 2005, the Lord Chief Justice was asked to recommend a judge who, in his view, would be best suited to the Chair the Inquiry. The Lord Chief Justice recommended Sir Brian Langstaff: a highly respected and hugely experienced High Court judge. I accepted the Lord Chief Justice’s recommendation, and Sir Brian agreed to accept the position. It was not possible to complete this process before Christmas.

Sir Brian and his Inquiry team launched a consultation on the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference on 2 March. The deadline for responses is 26 April. Sir Brian will want to listen carefully to the voices of those that have suffered before making a recommendation to me on what the scope of the Inquiry should be. The Government will ensure that the Inquiry has the resources that it needs to complete its work as quickly as a thorough examination of the facts allows, so that victims and their families can have the answers they have spent decades waiting for, and lessons can be learned so that a tragedy of this scale can never happen again.