Speeches by Moore.

“All I am hearing, loud and clear, is that if Bradford council wrote to you today demanding to be part of the local inquiry, you could not say yes. Your response is, “Wait six weeks, and wait for our criteria.” That is worrying to me.”

“But if Bradford council sent you a letter today demanding to be part of that local inquiry, what would you say?”

“Crikey. That worries me, I have to say.”

“You said that Oldham was the only council that came forward. If Bradford council wrote to you today, asking and demanding to be part of the local inquiry, would you say no?”

“Have you calculated how many local areas you will be looking at?”

“So will we be looking at new areas being explored?”

“Let me just finish my point. Would it not show some leadership to single out an area that has been referenced by many a person, not just politicians, where there needs to be a spotlight shown, to reinstall that trust quite quickly, that this is a truly independent inquiry? I suppose the question that I want to ask is w…”

“What if it did today?”

“It just happens to be the week before we all go off on recess.”

“Having sat in the House of Lords, I am sure you will know that. The point is that we also need to scrutinise the process. Would it not be a good thing to have announced that? If the local authority today turned around and said, as I have been asking Bradford to do for a long time, “We now demand that we have that inqui…”

“Is there a risk that that could be used against any of the outcomes of the inquiry in three years’ time? Is there any perception of political association that others may wish to use as a narrative further down the line?”

“To really push you on “We believe it is possible” with an envelope of £65 million: the inquiry, as I understand it, has not even announced which local areas it is going to be focusing on, or what the criteria are for which local areas there will be. Surely, therefore, the funding allocation is not known, when we do not…”

“Coming back to my question, how can we be confident about the funding? As a follow up, I hope the funding envelope would not restrict how many local areas can be explored, and which ones are explored. I want to push on the £65 million.”

“I want to stay on the theme of local inquiries, if that’s okay. Zoë, you mentioned and you repeated this point that you have all the information available and you are going back into areas to be able to ascertain those key themes. “Themes” has come up quite a few times, but what worries me—my saying this will not surpr…”

“I am struggling to understand. The only reason you are looking at Oldham, as far as I understand it, is because the previous Home Secretary announced over 18 months ago, in January ’25, that Oldham would have a local inquiry.”

“The reason I ask is that some concern has been expressed about the fact that you were sitting in the House of Lords as a Labour peer. Therefore, I ask how we as a Committee, and others, can seek reassurance that the appointment is completely independent, not aligned with political appointments, or anything like that, s…”

“You may have done. But you have to do that because the Home Secretary instructed the inquiry to do that. We are now 18 months after the original announcement was made on local inquiries. Why are you not able to right now, on day one, announce that the Bradford district will be included and looked at? I ask because the …”

“I personally do not think that is good enough. You are saying “if you are judicially reviewed”. Why is it not a good case to show some real leadership and independence with this inquiry?”

“Thank you all for your time this afternoon. Baroness Longfield, I want to pick up on the appointment process, as a supplementary. You said at the start that you are on a leave of absence from the House of Lords. Is your intention to go back in as a Labour peer after this inquiry?”

“I am keen to understand how you will be able to receive information from whistleblowers, or from individuals who do not yet trust the system but are able to feed into you in the confidential way that you would expect.”