Public Inquiries: Enchancing Public Trust (Statutory Inquiries Committee Report)

Baroness D'Souza Excerpts

Friday 25th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness D'Souza (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for his wise, inclusive and perceptive chairmanship. I note the expertise of colleagues on the committee and the truly marvellous committee staff, most especially Andrea Dowsett and Matthew Burton.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton, has already outlined our main concerns and conclusions on the processes and the output of public inquiries. I will focus briefly on the value of setting up a public inquiries committee of Parliament to act on what was one of our most pressing concerns: the lack of implementation of recommendations arising from the House of Lords 2014 Select Committee report on the Inquiries Act 2005. This review, as we have heard, concluded with 33 recommendations, focusing largely on mechanisms to improve implementation.

The setting up of a dedicated unit, preferably within the Courts & Tribunals Service, was a key recommendation, the rationale being that an institutional memory of public inquiry forms and processes was lost following the closure of inquiries. As we know, this did not happen. In the interim, there have been significant ongoing and new inquiries on Manchester Arena, the Grenfell Tower fire, the Post Office Horizon scandal and the long-running use of infected blood, as well as the child sexual abuse tribunals. If the purpose of inquiries, whether statutory or not, is to insist that all measures possible must be taken in future to prevent catastrophic public disasters, the safeguards currently in place do not fulfil this duty. However, it was stated time and again that the failure to capture the experience of a given inquiry with a mandatory “lessons learned” report, preferably by the chair, was a leading factor in what some witnesses have referred to as reinventing the wheel each time and, more problematically, committing the same elementary errors in setting up and running an inquiry.

Many inquiries failed to meet their own aims because the recommendations were not implemented. The main obstacles cited by the majority of our witnesses included the absence of, among others, updated and easily available guidelines, ready advice on the more practical aspects of establishing an inquiry, and a forum especially for chairs to reflect on the long-term successes and failures of previous inquiries.

The committee believed and believes that a joint parliamentary committee should be established, the main purpose of which would be to conduct post-legislative scrutiny on implementation. Recommendations might in turn exert some pressure on government, help to shorten the length of future inquiries and possibly also bring down the costs of inquiries.

The second major recommendation on strengthening public inquiries is to boost support for the existing Cabinet unit, which we all agreed does a good job. There is an obvious need for a repository of good practice, ranging from the practical details of setting up an inquiry to engaging more effectively with expert opinion, including non-governmental experts. Some of the mechanisms might include insisting on a “lessons learned” report on what went well and not so well, commissioning further research, updating the 2012 guide, establishing a forum for chairs, further online promotion of the unit and its services, and liaising with the Civil Service and policymakers to arrive at doable recommendations.

The changes our report suggests are not in themselves radical but more a deepening of what already exists. Improvement in both the efficiency of future inquiries and the outcomes would contribute to the purpose of inquiries, which is to take all measures to prevent the catastrophic conditions that provoke an inquiry in the first place.