Committee urge government to set up a Central Inquiries Unit
Peers have delivered a devastating verdict on the public inquiries system.
The Lords Select Committee on the Inquiries Act 2005, which reported this week, said the current system wastes expert knowledge and makes inquiries longer and more costly than necessary. It called for a Central Inquiries Unit to be set up to assist public inquiries and pass on best practice.
Lord Shutt of Greetland, chair of the Committee, said that when new inquiries are carried out “it’s as though previous ones had never happened” and that a Central Inquiries Unit would enable new inquiries to “hit the ground running”.
He added: “We really need to make the most of any lessons learned from past inquiries, and make the most of our collective knowledge and proficiency in this field.”
The report found that inquiries are set up with “inadequate powers”, and are often non-statutory rather than set up under the framework of the 2005 Act. Recommendations should be formally accepted or rejected within three months, it said.
Ashley Underwood QC of Cornerstone Barristers, who was counsel to the Mark Duggan inquest, says: “There is no systematic approach to the decision when to establish a public inquiry and, if so, whether it should be statutory.
“Accordingly, new inquiries should be statutory, unless there is good reason. Ministers should give reasons to Parliament for a decision not to hold an inquiry when invited to do so by a regulatory body or where an investigation by a regulatory body has been widely criticised.
“There is no use made of the expertise gathered by individual solicitors and secretaries to inquiries. A new unit should be established to take responsibility for setting up inquiries, for ensuring that lessons are learned, that guidance is updated, that protocols are shared and that experience is pooled.”
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