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David Cameron should appear before the Grenfell Tower inquiry after making comments that were “ridiculing” health and safety in the years before the fire, a lawyer has said.

The former Prime Minister made speeches regarding red tape and regulation that had effectively relegated citizens to “a bonfire”, said a barrister representing some of the bereaved and survivors.

Michael Mansfield QC told the public inquiry into the 2017 blaze, which claimed 72 lives, that Mr Cameron should appear at a hearing to explain what he meant by his words.

In 2010, Mr Cameron had said he wanted to “scrap health and safety rules that put people off”, Mr Mansfield said, and followed this the year after by saying “the shadow” of health and safety was holding people back, adding that this was not “how a great nation was built” and that “Britannia didn’t rule the waves with arm bands on”.

Mr Mansfield said such speeches were “ridiculing, humiliating health and safety, and relegating citizens, as it were, to effectively a bonfire”.

He needs to be here to answer what he meant Michael Mansfield QC Mr Mansfield said: “We say he needs to be here to answer what he meant. Because if it’s going to be sent through his proteges, through his ministers, whatever, that he didn’t mean what he said, well let him come and say that.

“But this is what he did say, ‘to kill off the health and safety culture for good’.”

Mr Mansfield, still quoting Mr Cameron, added: “I want 2012 to go down in history not as just the Olympics year or Diamond Jubilee year, but the year we banished a lot of pointless time-wasting from the economy and British life once and for all.