Darrah Singh, the boss of JobCentre plus, has been announced as a the chair of a community panel which will look into the causes of this summer's riots in Britain. His appointment was announced by Nick Clegg, who promised "a grass roots review".
"We want to know what happened at street level, not from afar and only from the perspective of those affected," said the Deputy Prime Minister, who is was visiting Tottenham on Wednesday.
The other panel members will be Simon Marcus, Heather Rabbatts and Maeve Sherlock. Simon Marcus is the founder of the Boxing Academy, based in north east London. He stood as the Tory candidate for Barking in east London at the general election last year.
Heather Rabbatts is a barrister who used to run two London authorities before going into the City. Maeve Sherlock was appointed as a life peer in 2010 and previously ran the Refugee Council.
The government says the committee's aims are to investigate why people chose to riot and whether the authorities' response to them could have been handled differently. The committee is expected to report back to the government in March of next year.
Ed Miliband welcomed the announcement, saying: "We must never excuse or justify the behaviour we saw in the riots.
"But we owe it to the communities affected to listen to them about why it happened and look at the deeper causes of the criminal behaviour.
"The temptation for politicians is to reach for simplistic solutions to the issues we face as a society.
"That would be a dereliction of duty to the vast majority of law abiding people in those communities. After going out and understanding the point of view of those on the ground, the task of this commission is to make recommendations which can help tackle the complex causes of what we saw."