We said Eric Pickles, the former secretary for communities and local government, told the Grenfell inquiry “that even if he had accepted [the Lakanal House coroner’s March 2013 recommendations] he did not believe it would have made any difference”. To clarify: Pickles’s evidence was that he accepted the key recommendations but believed that, even if he had expressly written to the coroner saying: “I accept the recommendations”, it would not have changed things (“Ministers admit ignoring repeated warnings in the years before Grenfell”, 10 April, p27).
Next month’s local elections will be Anas Sarwar’s second electoral test as Scottish Labour leader, not his first. He was already in office for last May’s Holyrood elections (“Will Scottish Labour’s revival help it to reclaim first ‘red wall’?”, 10 April, p14).
An article about the film Operation Mincemeat said the plot to deceive Germany in the Second World War involved a corpse dressed as a pilot; in fact the body was dressed as a Royal Marines major (“War legend takes on a new identity for our times”, 10 April, p38).