Bloody Sunday Inquiry (Report)

Debate between Stephen Phillips and Mel Stride

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

One of the criticisms rightly levelled at the Widgery inquiry and report was that the scope had been too narrow. Does my hon. Friend agree that Lord Saville was right to go into all of the circumstances surrounding the events of that dreadful Sunday?

[Mel Stride]

My hon. and learned Friend makes an important point, and I am certainly not here to defend the Widgery inquiry, which sat for just three weeks directly after Bloody Sunday and came out with what most of us now accept was a complete whitewash. However, there is a balance to be struck and on the point that my hon. and learned Friend raises, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, writing in The Guardian on 17 June, said:

“The overriding factor in the expansiveness of the oral hearings was a misjudgment about the nature and scope of public inquiries. The purpose of an inquiry is not primarily to apportion blame on any individual participant in the event under inquiry. Specifically, the tribunal positively may not determine civil or criminal liability; that is for the courts.

The aim is to find out what happened and how it happened, and to learn lessons.”

So one aspect that we need to examine closely is the scope that Saville chose.

We also need to take into account the fact that this happened 38 years ago; the interested-party status that was afforded to a number of people and the legal bills that went with that as a consequence of the wide scope; the various appeals from the Ministry of Defence; the fact that the case was not heard entirely in Londonderry—for a period of 13 months it was heard in London, which alone apparently had a price tag of £10 million—and the use of technology, with the virtual reality reconstruction of Londonderry as it was on that day. All that, bit by bit, incremented the cost to the level that we have heard.

I believe that there was an overarching dynamic at work on the costs, and we have heard about it from the Secretary of State and others. Given the history of Widgery, for the Saville inquiry to be seen as effective, valid and uncompromised it had to be left alone to do its work. The problem is that when that situation is arrived at, and with a judge who is not a business man, the control of the costs is let go. I shall quote one example in this regard. It is very important because, wherever the control of costs might be expected to have lain, the reality is that because of the sensitivities of the peace process and the historical context of Widgery, they inevitably could have lain only with Lord Saville and the tribunal.

I shall quote part of the question that I asked Lord Saville during the Select Committee hearing. I asked:

“would you not accept that, if you have a process––an inquiry––that lasts 12 years and costs over £190 million, it is inevitable that there would have been efficiencies that could be applied––maybe only discovered with hindsight––that could have delivered the same quality of result but at less money and less time? And if you do accept that, what, with hindsight, would those changes have been that would have delivered it quicker and at less expense?

He replied:

“I am not sure I can accept your premise”—

that being the idea that something could have been saved. He continued:

“I strongly suspect that you could have gone and got 10 quid a night off the hotel accommodation costs or something like that, or you might have been able to, but if you are talking about really substantial sums, I am not aware of anything, looking back, where we could…have done better.”

That illustrates the point more powerfully than any other I could make that we had a judge in charge who was not a business man—of course we should never have expected him to have been that. He was a good judge, and he has produced a very thorough and detailed report, but he and his tribunal would never be expected to control costs.

I wish to talk briefly about future inquiries. As the Prime Minister has suggested, we have to draw a line under future inquiries of this nature. If we do not, we will get into the business of some kind of hierarchy of victimhood, involving those who should be given this kind of opportunity and those who should not. We must not go down that road. It is time for Northern Ireland to move on. It is time for Northern Ireland to start focusing on the big issues, such as the economy, rather than the past.