Child Abuse Inquiry

William Cash Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting suggestion, which was proposed to me by another Member this morning. The point of having a panel is that not just one individual or indeed potentially two co-chairs will be undertaking this work. The idea is to have a group of people coming together with different experience and different expertise. Unlike in simple judge-led inquiries where one person leads, it is very much the case that all the panel members will contribute. The chairman’s role is about the management of the inquiry, but the management in this case will be through a team of people brought together to ensure that the work is done properly.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

The Home Secretary is to be commended for the tone in which she has delivered the statement. Is there not a problem, however? If the chairman asked for an Inquiries Act 2005 inquiry—I experienced this when I had to demand the public inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire hospital, which proved to be a significant success—does the Home Secretary realise that she would have to disband the whole thing and go back to square one? Would it not be far better to start off with an Inquiries Act 2005 inquiry, which would allow evidence on oath, compulsion of witnesses and other matters to help us get to the bottom of this as we did with the Mid Staffs inquiry?

[Mrs May]

I hesitate to question my hon. Friend’s comments on such matters, but my advice is that it would be possible to turn the inquiry into a statutory one—namely, an inquiry with the powers of a statutory inquiry to compel witnesses—but for that to happen it would be necessary to have a request from the chairman. At the moment, it is not possible because we do not have a chairman. Once the chairman is in place, they will be able to make that judgment and come forward if they wish to turn this into a statutory inquiry.