What’s the point of a Public Inquiry?
There is a scene in Armando Iannucci’s comedy ‘The Thick of It’ in which an errant lying MP waits to hear how the Government will deal with his case. Suddenly there is fist pumping, high fives and much celebratory jubilation. It has been announced that there will be a Public Inquiry.
This neatly reflects many people’s expectations that the process will be so slow that most will have forgotten about it by the time findings are delivered and that those findings will likely relate to some ‘systemic failure,’ a euphemism for no individual being responsible.
It’s a perfectly pitched piece of comedy but, like much satire, its real-life equivalent is not at all funny. This is strikingly clear when looking back at some of the events that have been subject to Public Inquiries in the past — the Aberfan disaster in 1967, the Dunblane shootings in 1996, the phone tapping press abuse in 2012 and the Iraq dossier in 2016.
An Inquiry for public concern
Public Inquiries are called where an event has caused “public concern” and there are understandably many more requested than granted. The British Journal of Political Science neatly summarises the likely criteria used — “the political decision to appoint inquiries into public crises is strongly influenced by short-term blame avoidance considerations, media salience and government popularity” — in other words, they can be good for the appearance of doing something and for swerving any blame in the midst of media and public clamour for it.
As an instrument however, a Public Inquiry DOES have teeth. The Inquiries Act 2005 governs all Statutory Inquiries and it — a) requires proceedings to be held in public, b) can legally require witnesses to give evidence (including the power to fine or even imprison those who refuse to provide documents or who conceal/destroy them) and c) can limit the degree of Government ‘discretionary control.’ Most importantly, whilst initiated and funded by Government, Inquiries are run independently.
Their output is usually a set of published recommendations to “improve the management of Government or public organisations” — this is first given to the Government then published for the public.
This output is important. The position of the Ministry of Justice is that the Government’s primary reason for operating a Public Inquiry is to look at the issue being considered in order to prevent a recurrence. To do that of course, three questions have to be answered — firstly, what happened?, secondly, why did it happen and thirdly, who was to blame?
For most of us ‘blame’ equals accountability and accountability equals sanctions. Not here though. Public Inquiries cannot determine guilt — either criminal or civil — and, though it’s conceivable that an Inquiry’s findings could lead to other actions that might, no one would bet on it.
If then we — the public — see a Public Inquiry as being about truth and justice, we are going to be disappointed.
This seems to represent the main dilution of an Inquiry’s power but there are others. For instance, a Non-Statutory Inquiry is not subject to the Inquires Act and cannot even require/compel someone to participate — their involvement is voluntary.
The cost and duration of Inquiries also suggest that there can be a mismatch between what is spent and what is achieved. It’s estimated that at least £639m was spent on Public Inquiries between 1990 and 2017. On average they take 2.5 years (there is no set expectation or requirement so they could well take longer — the Bloody Sunday Inquiry took 12.) With such a huge bill and resource commitment you would hope that they deliver change (even when they can’t deliver justice) but that is by no means certain.
Despite this there is no let-up in the appetite of successive Governments to run them — there were more than double the number (68) launched in the 27-year period from 1990 to 2017 compared to the 30 years prior (30.)
Finding the truth then leaving it behind
It’s hard to think of an issue that better defined “public concern” than the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster which caused 97 deaths. The 31-day Official Inquiry by Lord Taylor reported just four months after the event and found that “the main reason for the disaster was the failure of Police control.” It was, by most people’s reckoning, a positive example of swift and clear independent oversight and, though the Government’s response of instigating a ban on standing was not popular (the report stated that terracing was “not intrinsically unsafe”), people generally accepted that it met the Inquiry criteria of “preventing recurrence.” Safety first.
The truth may have been found but justice did not follow. In fact what did follow was 32 years of to-ing and fro-ing causing even the known truth to be obscured –
- A 1991 Inquest, far from acknowledging the Taylor Report’s findings on policing, returned a verdict of “accidental death.” A huge step backwards.
- It took 21 years for that backward step to be rectified when the 2012 Independent Panel report vindicated the victims’ families’ views of responsibility and those of the Taylor Report (as well as finding evidence of witness statements being altered to remove or change negative comments about the Police and that a local Conservative MP passed inaccurate and untrue information from the Police to the press.)
- Also in 2012 the High Court quashed the 1991 Inquest findings.
- In 2014 a new Inquest was established and its verdict of “unlawful killing due to gross negligence manslaughter to a criminal standard of proof” (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) seemed to finally redress the balance — regarding the truth at least.
- Criminal proceedings in 2019 and 2021 were instigated in search of justice. However they allowed the unchallenged repetition of long discredited Police accusations against the victims; it was as though we were back to square one. Both cases failed on absurd and tenuous legal technicalities (in the latter case, the Judge said that the offence of “perverting the course of public justice” couldn’t apply because statements made by the accused Police and Police Solicitor were to the Taylor Inquiry which was not a court case and that — as such — the witnesses had no “duty of candour” — i.e. they didn’t have to tell the full truth.) It’s hardly surprising then that the public has such low expectations.
Has there ever been a more disgraceful and immoral failure of victims by the justice system? This is despite the initial Public Inquiry. Despite it.
Finding the truth and telling it like it is
In the case of Hillsborough, finding the truth took very little time but obscuring it and avoiding accountability took decades.
Many Inquiries are criticised for their long duration which is fair but sometimes it represents exemplary diligence. In the Iraq Inquiry (2009–2016) for instance, the late Sir John Chilcot insisted on as much evidence as possible being heard in public and similarly determinedly persisted for over a year in accessing copies of communications between Bush and Blair that would prove essential to determining the truth about the dossier that took us to war. This took time but it got results — albeit after 7 years. In fact, having previously been part of a similar inquiry that gave the Government a clean bill of health, Chilcot might well have been seen as a compliant Establishment figure that would see things their way — the Government miscalculated.
Inquiry Washing?
If Government’s enthusiasm for Public Inquiries is based on an expectation that a positive outcome will head off public disquiet, they have again miscalculated. The fact that the Government chooses and appoints an Inquiry’s Chair raises obvious questions of independence if it’s the ‘establishment’ investigating ‘the establishment’ (although Chilcot and Taylor both demonstrate that this can be unfair.) Two public opinion studies over the last 15 years have shown that reports are only trusted when they are critical of the Government and are actively mistrusted when they give the Government a clean bill of health.
Quite aside from the fact that Public Inquiries seem structurally designed to avoid individual accountability and are mistrusted by the very public for whom they are ostensibly operated, it’s hard to see how much DIRECT action they generate.
Some may be obvious — e.g. tighter gun legislation resulted from the Dunblane shooting recommendations and creation of the Rail Safety & Standards Board and the Train Accident Investigations Branch both came directly from recommendations after the Ladbroke Grove Rail crash; both Inquiries chaired by Lord Cullen.
In many other cases however results can be obscured or negligible. The central recommendations from the Shipman Inquiry (2002) were either partly implemented or rejected; the second half of the Leveson Inquiry recommendations were shelved (although they remain regularly cited as necessary and pressure remains to revisit them.)
As a measure of scale, almost 2800 recommendations were made from 68 Inquiries between 1990 and 2017 but only 6 of these Inquiries have been followed up by a select committee to ensure that Government has acted. Once the report is issued, the spotlight moves — maybe conveniently — elsewhere.
Today and Tomorrow
All of this matters now. If anyone is in any doubt about the importance of the areas of “public concern” into which Public Inquiries are underway, they need only consider just three current examples — Grenfell (launched in 2017), Infected Blood (launched in 2018) and Manchester Arena (launched in 2020.)
In the case of Grenfell there are already disquieting signs that the number of areas in which faults have been identified — from architectural design through maintenance, compliance and procurement to disaster response — means that some form of ‘systemic’ fault outcome seems very likely or even inevitable. It’s notable that more than than 900 bereaved, survivors and firefighters have already filed civil claims against the cladding manufacturers, the main contractor and the Landlord; they are not waiting for the Inquiry output.
Right now too there are huge and inevitable questions to be answered on pandemic action. A recent joint report by two committees of MPs on Covid has already found that poor decisions (including the delay of lockdown) represented “one of the most important public health failures the UK has ever experienced” and that the decision-making process of the British State was an “utter failure.” A Public Inquiry will only start in 2022. How much confidence should we have that, over the coming years, its digging will provide findings any different to these or its apportioning of response and sanction will take us any farther for both truth and justice?
Earlier this year the Institute for Government suggested that “coroners’ inquests, independent panels and royal commissions” could all represent “more cost effective, faster and more streamlined” alternatives to Public Inquiries. Time will tell if the Government puts its effort into the means most effective in delivering results or the one most effective at the cosmetic appearance of action. This should matter to all of us.
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Sources — Institute for Government, Administration & Society Journal, Wikipedia, The British Journal of Political Science, Commons Library (Pariament.co.uk), The Guardian (particularly David Conn re Hillsborough) and The Times.
