NOBLEGIRAFFE: the FCO support available to expats is actually quite limited although they will help you to find support in whichever location you may find yourself in difficulty. To give an example they may be able to point you in the direction of means to be evacuated from a country or visit you in jail to ensure your rights are not being violated (as far as possible) but they certainly don't come along and scoop you up onto the first flight out having "pulled a few strings".
This inquiry is an incident investigation which will be managed and coordinated by the appointed panel, they will have wide ranging authority to appoint further subgroups to pursue the root causes of different issues set out in the Terms of Reference of the inquiry. -
Many of these will be technical (cladding/ building design...) some will be looking at the degradation of fire safety legislation no doubt and surely there must be questions about why so many of the most vulnerable were affected or lost their lives.
A hugely important part in all of this is that a common process has to be followed for each line of enquiry - usually root cause analysis, this requires input from subject matter experts and stakeholders to reach the conclusion (and this is the important part...) the conclusion or root will always define the ultimately responsible party for each issue and the failures at each stage. It is impossible to do so correctly without the necessary stakeholders or their representatives being given a role. Take look at Taproot or Kelvin Topset methodologies for an idea of how this works.
The panel will not be simply sifting through mounds of media reports and then making arbitrary judgements based on their bias - they will be coordinating an enormously complex and difficult process while trying to keep bias as far away from it as possible, they will no doubt then have to be quizzed on their initial findings and content by an all parliamentary committee before publishing their findings and recommendations - hopefully many of which will become enforceable legislation with penalties for failure under corporate manslaughter provision or similar.
The attempt to reduce this action to an argument about race representation is unbelievably crass and by definition the enquiry will have to be as inclusive as possible at all stages. It dishonours the dead, the survivors and those that responded so bravely as well as the communities that pulled together.
My family are mixed race in many permutations and all of this misdirected outrage is starting to make me think that large swathes of us from all sections of British society are losing our rational brains and our humanity. Of course we are angry about Grenfell, why is the attempt to put it right being cheapened before it gets chance to get off the ground?