Inquiries Act 2005 (Select Committee Report)

Lord Woolf Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woolf (CB)]

My Lords, I begin by disclosing the matters in the register, particularly those with regard to my having conducted inquiries. I also echo as warmly as I can the comments made about my noble friend Lord Tenby. Both when I was Lord Chief Justice and made only very occasional visits to this House, and since I have retired and so have been able to spend more time here, I have found him a great source of wise advice. I always found him willing and generous with his time to give that advice. I know how many of the Members of the House, like me, will miss him as a result of his retirement. I would like publicly to give him my very best wishes.

I also join in the things said about our chairman in respect of this inquiry, which was a rewarding experience to be part of. As the register shows, I was previously involved in another inquiry into inquiries. This recent inquiry was a model of its sort. The first inquiry in which I was involved is coming up to its 25th birthday on 1 April. That was the Strangeways inquiry, which is perhaps worth mentioning only to the extent that it involved prisoners and prison staff from six prisons across the country—indicating the sort of problems that can arise in an inquiry—and the fact that inquiries are of very great importance to satisfy public concerns. They may not always get it right but they are certainly a way in which the public can be involved in the process of achieving justice, which enables many people to feel that justice has been done.

If we are to continue to perform that process, it is very important indeed that the process continually evolves. It is very easy for an inquiry to go wrong on the process—the way in which the matter is handled. That is why I particularly recommend that we pay the closest attention to the idea of having a specialist unit within the Courts and Tribunals Service that will be a repository of the critical information that one inquiry can provide for later inquiries. I can say only that I would have valued that in the Strangeways inquiry. Irrespective of what has happened since, I do not believe that any proper machinery has yet been devised to perform that purpose which has been put into practice by any Government.

The important thing about the proposal in the report in that regard is that it would enable the running of inquiries to appear to be separate from government. Many inquiries involve government, and the difficulty with the Cabinet Office being the repository is, first, that the functioning of the Inquiries Act is a matter of very small importance to the Cabinet Office, although I suggest that it should be high in a table of significance, and, secondly, it means that the inquiry has a link in its management to something absolutely at the heart of government: the Cabinet Office. That differs, of course, from the decision whether there should be an inquiry, which is a matter I fully accept that the Government must be involved in, but the running and management of inquiries is a different matter.

The quality of the Courts and Tribunals Service is that it is used to being attached to an independent body, which is a separate part of government: namely, the Courts Service. The Courts Service is a peculiar service within the Civil Service. We should build on the advantage that we have in having it as a possible repository. Because of that, the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, appropriately inquired whether the courts would be happy to take on that responsibility. Subject, of course, to their being properly financed to do so, they recognised that that is something that they should do. With respect, I say that that is a matter that the Government, or a Government, should look at again, because it would help to give credibility to the inquiry.

I do not want to take up too long a time, but I would like to touch on one or two other recommendations. From my experience, I regard counsel to an inquiry as critical. The great thing about counsel to the inquiry is that he can help to shorten the process. I know of at least one inquiry taking place at this time where the absence of counsel to the inquiry may be very significant in the delays that have occurred.

I should also like to say a word about Salmon letters. One of the witnesses from whom we heard with regard to Salmon letters made it clear that they have a place to play in inquiries, but we do not want rigid rules that they have to be served in all circumstances. In many situations, it is an unnecessary additional procedure to impose upon inquiries to have Salmon letters. Where they help to achieve justice, they have to be served, but where there is no special reason for serving them, in the ordinary process of legal proceedings we do not have Salmon letters, and I can see no reason why we should have them in inquiries unless, if they were not sent, there would be an injustice in relation to a particular witness. Otherwise, we are just prolonging the process of the inquiry.

There is also a danger of not taking advantage of the full use that inquiries can provide to future legal proceedings. There is a recommendation in the report that the evidence at an inquiry and its inclusion should in effect be admissible in subsequent legal proceedings. I confess that it is a great advantage to be followed later by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Cullen of Whitekirk, who probably has the most unique experience of conducting inquiries. He gave evidence before us on that matter and I suggest that he can speak to that matter as well.

Finally, the way we use inquiries in this jurisdiction is exceptional. Other common-law jurisdictions are nervous about the deployment of the judiciary, because that seems to be outside their normal process. We should recognise that our approach, which has worked so well in the past, is going through a particularly difficult period at the moment, but that the value of inquiries is immense and that we should continue to build on what we have learnt already.