Inquiries Act 2005 (Select Committee Report)

Lord Cullen of Whitekirk Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cullen of Whitekirk (CB)]

My Lords, the committee’s report is sound, thorough and constructive. I have an interest in the subject matter of the report in the sense that I have chaired a number of public inquiries, the first being the inquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster, and I gave evidence to the committee.

I welcome the Government’s acceptance of the committee’s recommendation that the Inquiries Act should be amended so that a Minister who wishes to appoint a serving judge should first obtain the consent of, and not merely consult with, the appropriate senior member of the judiciary. I recall that some 10 years ago, during the passage of the Inquiries Bill, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and I were the senior judges of our respective jurisdictions at that time and we spoke in favour of such an amendment. However, it was not to be. It was opposed by the then Government and did not become part of the Act.

The committee’s recommendation on this point is supported by a number of important considerations. It is surely a matter for the senior judge in each jurisdiction to decide, for example, whether a judge should be deployed from the available resources, whether a particular judge is in fact suitable for the task and, perhaps most important of all, whether the subject of the inquiry is one for which the involvement of a judge is appropriate. Where the subject is sensitive in political terms, there is a risk of damage to the high regard in which judges are held and, in particular, their reputation for independence and impartiality. A judge who is invited to take an inquiry but has good reasons for declining, despite his sense of public duty, should know that he can have the backing of the senior judge in his jurisdiction. I trust that, whatever the complexion of the next Government, they will support the amendment proposed and recommended by the committee.

I now turn to other matters. I am less than happy with the Government’s treatment of other recommendations by the committee and propose to mention two of them. The first concerns the appointment of counsel to the inquiry—an appointment which is likely to be needed in almost every inquiry under the Act. The role of counsel to the inquiry is of crucial importance: overseeing and preparing evidence; questioning witnesses, if necessary robustly; advising the inquiry; and potentially representing it in the event of its being challenged. In my experience, it is essential for counsel not only to be competent for the job but to have a close working relationship with the chairman, interpreting and fulfilling his aims and enjoying his respect and confidence. This is even more important today when counsel to the inquiry has an increasing influence on the scope of the questioning of witnesses and hence on how the inquiry is perceived. I also agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has said about the important assistance which counsel can give to the parties.

The rules define counsel to the inquiry as,

“the qualified lawyer or lawyers, if any, appointed by the chairman to act as counsel”.

The committee considered that it should be put beyond doubt that the Minister had no say in the appointment, so it recommended that solely the chairman should appoint counsel to the inquiry. The Government rejected that recommendation, because,

“Ministers will want to retain control of such issues which affect departmental budgets and the terms of reference of an inquiry”.

What does this exactly entail? Does it mean that, where the chairman and the Minister are not in agreement about an appointment, the Minister should have the right to override the chairman and direct him as to who should be appointed, or at any rate veto the chairman’s choice? Either way, that is a poor foundation for what should be a confident and productive relationship. If the Government are concerned about the cost of leaving the choice of counsel to the chairman, one has to bear in mind that, under Section 17(3) of the Act, the chairman has to act with regard to avoiding any unnecessary cost. It was also one of the committee’s recommendations that the chairman should consult the Treasury Solicitor in order to ensure that counsel is appointed on terms which give good value for money. As for the Government’s reference to the terms of reference of the inquiry, I find their relevance to the choice of counsel obscure and, in any event, unconvincing.

Secondly, I turn to warning letters. One might expect that the chairman of an inquiry should judge what warning should be given, as a matter of fairness, to a person—that includes a body corporate or incorporate—that is liable be criticised in the report of the inquiry. Nevertheless, the Inquiry Rules prescribe what must be done. To put it briefly, rule 13 states that the report must not include any “explicit or significant criticism” of a person without sending that person a warning letter and giving the recipient the opportunity to respond. The rule has to be read along with rule 15 which prescribes the content: it must state the criticism; the facts which substantiate it; and the evidence supporting those facts. Since my inquiries were before the Act came into force, I have not had any direct experience of working under these rules. But I can readily envisage the difficulties, which were clearly illustrated during the course of the evidence given to the committee.

First, the rules take no account of the considerable differences in the nature of various inquiries and the events or conduct with which they may be concerned. It has often been said that every inquiry has to adapt the procedure to meet its own circumstances. No doubt there are some cases in which there is a need for a detailed warning, for example in the case of a person who is faced with very serious allegations, or a person who has not been represented at the inquiry. However, at the other end of the spectrum, the position may be entirely different. Parties who are represented throughout the proceedings will have heard the evidence and the submissions, and will also have taken steps to challenge them. They are already aware of the issues—as it were, they know the score. Yet rules 13 and 15 require the inquiry to issue detailed warning letters, as defined, and to take into account responses which may simply repeat, or seek to embellish, what they have already said during the inquiry proceedings.

Secondly, literal compliance with the rules and the handling of responses can prove so complex, demanding and time-consuming as to add greatly to the time taken by the inquiry to produce the report. It would be a mistake to think that a warning letter would set out what was required in a few pages. I understand that a warning letter and its response can amount to hundreds of pages. No doubt an inquiry team would be anxious to avoid overlooking what could be a “significant” criticism, but where should it draw the line? Sir Robert Francis, whose name has been mentioned already and who chaired the inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, gave evidence that in his experience warning letters could cause quite unnecessary alarm and a lot of time was spent on people responding to things that were not in fact on the mind of the chairman. He said that the process of warning letters and responses to them extended his inquiry by at least six months.

I also see from the committee’s report that Sir Brian Leveson explained to it that, in his inquiry into the conduct of the press, the prescription set out in rule 15 led to his adopting a different approach in which he ventilated possible criticism by means of a generic letter. He said that, had he sought to comply in terms with the requirements of rule 15,

“I need never have finished because they were all very specific”.

Even so, his leading counsel Robert Jay, now Sir Robert Jay, spoke of that rule causing,

“huge grief and a huge amount of work and incurring of public expense”.

The committee’s recommendation with regard to these rules has been mentioned in earlier speeches. I am not saying that what the committee recommends is a perfect solution. Others have suggested that it might be practicable to modify the rules to set out what should generally be done, giving the inquiry chairman some discretion, without courting the risk of judicial review.

The Government’s response to the committee’s recommendation was to reject it. Having referred to the structure of rule 13, it merely stated,

“The Treasury Solicitor's Department has advised that the drafting of rule 13 is not defective”.

It said nothing about rule 15. It did not address the committee’s concerns as expressed in its report in the light of the evidence before it. I urge the Minister the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and his colleagues to think again and to give serious consideration to introducing flexibility and proportionality to the rules so that fairness can be achieved without loss of common sense.