Is reform of public inquiries now on the horizon?

On 16 September 2024 the House of Lords Statutory Inquiries Committee (“the Committee”) published its report looking into the efficacy of the law and practice relating to statutory public inquiries held under the Inquiries Act 2005. The Committee, with Lord Norton of Louth as its chair, conducted oral sessions and considered written evidence from a selection of individuals and organisations including academics, experts, government officials, former Ministers, former inquiry chairs, secretaries, solicitors, barristers, representatives from campaign organisations and other interest groups.

The report acknowledges that 18 inquiries have been taking place in the UK this year and the Grenfell Inquiry alone cost £173 million. The report states “There is perception that Inquiries are frequently too long and expensive, leading to a loss of public confidence and protracted trauma for victims and survivors.”

This was the second House of Lords Select Committee that had scrutinised this area. An earlier report was published in 2014. The 2014 report made 33 recommendations to the Government. 19 were accepted and 14 were rejected. Of the recommendations accepted by the Government, none was subsequently implemented.

Now over ten years on, this new Committee has looked at inquiries again describing it as an area that sits in “an uneasy space between politics and the justice system.”  It has found that the Inquiries Act 2005 “and the wider governance structure of public inquiries must be improved.” To that end, it has made a number of recommendations relating to (i) implementation of inquiry recommendations; (ii) establishment and conduct of inquiries; and (iii) streamlining the inquiry process.

Implementation

The Committee acknowledges that there has to be better “implementation monitoring” and a process of verifying whether the Government has acted on the recommendations from a public inquiry. The report states:

“We heard from many witnesses that there are widespread problems with recommendations not being implemented. We heard that if the recommendations from the inquiry into deaths at the Bristol Royal Infirmary had been comprehensively implemented, then the events investigated by the Mid-Staffordshire Hospitals Inquiry may have been less likely to have occurred, in the view of an experienced firm of solicitors.  A lack of implementation is not just a problem for statutory inquiries. Witnesses told the Committee that if the recommendations from the inquest into the Lakanal House fire had been implemented, then the Grenfell Tower fire may have been less likely to have occurred.”

The Committee’s reference to the failures to pick up recommendations from a previous inquest dovetails with observations made by the Justice Committee earlier this year in relation to its follow-up inquiry into the Coroner’s Court Service. The calling of the General Election prevented it from finalising a full report, but before ceasing to exist, the Chair set out some observations in a letter to the then Minister for Courts and Legal Services, including a concern  that “no person or body is responsible for judging the adequacy of a response to an individual [Prevention of Future Deaths Report][1], or for the thematic assessment and analysis of all relevant PFDs to identify patterns of preventable death.”

The (Lords) Committee report concludes that “insufficient implementation monitoring has damaged the reputation of public inquiries and made them less effective”. It notes that “currently, millions of pounds are spent on public inquiries, yet too little is done to ensure that the desired outcomes of inquiries are achieved.”  To address this, it recommends: 

• A new, independent committee of Parliament, ideally a joint select committee of MPs and peers, is set up to conduct oversight of public inquiries.
• This committee to monitor the publication of and government response to inquiry recommendations.
• The committee to hold the government to account so that inquiry recommendations it accepts are actually implemented.[2]

Establishment and conduct of inquiries

The Committee notes that decisions taken “during the establishment of an inquiry are key to its subsequent conduct and therefore its overall efficiency and effectiveness”. It makes a number of recommendations to the government in relation to matters that could be included in the terms of reference. These include:

• Ministers should select the legal basis (statutory or non-statutory) and chair of the inquiry “on a case-by-case basis and not feel tied to a particular model”.[3]
• Where appropriate, there should be consultation with victims and survivors about the terms of reference, which should normally contain provisions relating to their involvement.
• Consideration should be given to including an indicative deadline and, where appropriate, a requirement to publish interim reports and updates.

Streamlining the inquiry process

The Committee acknowledges that while the subject matter of public inquiries varies, the underlying principles and processes for running them are broadly similar. These processes relate to the practical/organisational complexities such as planning a budget, procuring a venue and IT system, and recruiting a support team and HR function. This is in addition to the inquiry’s initial tasks of selecting witnesses, planning evidence sessions, creating a timetable for its work and the best way to involve victims and survivors.

The Committee states in its report that “we heard from many of our witnesses that inquiries make too many avoidable mistakes, fail to learn from the experience of earlier inquiries. This causes delay, waste and more trauma for victims and survivors, due to the protracted process.”

Whilst the government set up an Inquiries Unit within the Cabinet Office in 2019[4] in response to one of the recommendations from the earlier 2014 committee report, there remained a perception that new inquiries are continuing to “reinvent the wheel”. The Committee praises the work of the Unit, but 10 witnesses that gave evidence to the Committee seemed to be unaware of the Unit’s existence. Furthermore, “experienced chairs and lawyers told the committee that they had had no involvement in sharing best practice through the unit, despite their involvement in many inquiries”.

To streamline the inquiries process, the Committee recommends:

• Inquiry terms of reference should contain an obligation on chairs and secretaries to produce (at a minimum) a lessons learnt paper (on legal and policy challenges) and a working paper (on logistics) describing what went well for the inquiry and what could be improved in the future. This requirement should be included in the Chair’s terms of appointment so that their full salary cannot be paid until the documents have been presented.
• The lessons learnt document (described above) should also be supplied to the new committee of Parliament to enable them to track successes and failures common to inquiries and monitor improvement.
• The Inquiries Unit in the Cabinet Office should be sufficiently resourced, so it can establish best practice. There should also be a forum for inquiry chairs to share best practice. A form of the Handbook for Inquiry Chairs and Secretaries should also be publicly available.

Taking on board the Committee’s latest recommendations- is reform now on the cards for public inquiries?

We probably will see greater Parliamentary scrutiny over the implementation of inquiry recommendations that have ultimately been accepted by government. The recommended Parliamentary committee to fulfil that scrutiny function could proceed without reliance on the government. Secondly, the new government has evidenced some political will to see reform or change in this area. In his introduction to the King’s Speech, the Prime Minister stated “it is not enough to deliver justice on outrages like the Infected blood scandal and the Horizon scandal – we must take on the work of prevention to make sure this behaviour can never happen again.”

We will of course have to await the government’s response to this latest Committee report.

further information

Should you have any questions about the issues covered in this blog, please contact Natalie Cohen or any member of our Public Law team.

about the author

Natalie joined Kingsley Napley as a Partner in the Public Law team following over 22 years' service as a government lawyer, working within the Government Legal Department (GLD) as a litigator.