Inquiries Act 2005 (Select Committee Report) — House of Lords, 2015-03-19
Topic: Government Operations
David Trevor Shutt (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I invite the House to take note of the report of the Select Committee on the Inquiries Act 2005. I received several wry smiles while undertaking the chairmanship of the committee, when people asked what I was doing in the House of Lords and I said I was inquiring into the Inquiries Act. I believe it has been a useful piece of work to do We are privileged in this debate today to hear the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, give his valedictory speech. We will all be able to say that we were present when the last Lloyd George—for the present, at any rate—concludes service in Parliament. We look forward to his contribution and wish him well in his new life I thank my colleagues who served with me on the committee. We had members who have set up inquiries and members who have chaired inquiries as well as those who have been scarred by inquiries. But we also had an abundance of lawyers. We have been well served by our clerk, Michael Collon, assisted by Emily Greenwood and our special adviser, Professor Carol Harlow. I also thank the witnesses who have given their time and talents, both in written and in oral form, to assist in our work I believe that the committee has produced a thorough piece of work, based on much evidence. We have also had the benefit of our own visit to the only inquiry that was taking place at that time—the Al-Sweady inquiry. We were concerned to take evidence and meet not only people who had chaired inquiries and had been counsel or panel members but also secretaries, solicitors and assessors, co-participants, academics, legal specialists, interest groups and others. We endeavoured to look at all participants in the inquiry process Inquiries are usually set up because of an overwhelming concern at an event, or a series of events, in the public domain that has gone wrong and something serious must be done for confidence in that area of work to return. One of our witnesses, Robert Francis QC, now Sir Robert, set out his summary of the reasons for holding a public inquiry. He concluded that the reasons include: "establishing the facts leading up to a matter of concern; determining the explanations for and causes of things which have gone wrong; identifying those responsible for deficiencies or performance failures; establishing the lessons to be learned from what has happened; making recommendations intended to correct the deficiencies for the future" In our post-legislative scrutiny of the Act we have tried to see how objectives such as those can be achieved Our report contains 33 recommendations which come very much from our consideration of the evidence. These recommendations follow the sequence of the report, and, of course, some are more vital than others. I want to highlight three of the main recommendations The first is that, although we recommend some improvements, the Inquiries Act 2005 is a good Act and should be used. We were surprised to find that, on so many occasions, Ministers had set up inquiries other than under the Act. All our evidence was that, except in circumstances concerning security matters, the Act should be used. We note that since we reported back in March 2014, two new inquiries have been announced under the Act. Perhaps a lesson has been learnt a little, but we hope to learn more about that The second of our recommendations that I would like to speak about is recommendation 12, where we recommend the setting up of a unit. We suggested that it should be under Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and serve as the centre of excellence and expertise for all the practical details of setting up an inquiry. It is the existence of the unit that is important; it may be appropriate to put it somewhere else in government, but we suggested that particular department. The unit would be responsible for making clear the location of premises that could be used for inquiries, their infrastructure and the necessary IT. We heard many stories of inappropriate IT procurement and cost. The unit should also look at staffing and work closely with the chairman and the secretary of each inquiry. We heard much evidence from people responsible for setting up the administration of inquiries. They said that when they had started, it was a matter of reinventing the wheel, as if there had never been an inquiry before. We also believe that the unit should be a place where lessons-learnt papers should be placed so that best practice can be distilled and updated. Indeed, the unit could retain vital contacts for future involvement. We were shocked that that information, which is supposed to be kept somewhere, was just not kept Recommendation 25, which is the third matter that I want to raise, relates to warning letters. The evidence led us to recommend that inquiry Rules 13 to 15 of the Inquiry Rules 2006 should be withdrawn. Several chairmen raised this issue with us and we became aware that the use of these rules prolonged inquiries by several months, with the consequent delay in publication of the inquiry report. We must always remember that when we have inquiries, people are desperate to learn their results and do not want to wait and wait. I am sure that other members—and I am delighted that nine of the 12 of us are listed to speak today—will highlight other elements of the report that they believe are particularly important The report was published on 11 March 2014, now over 12 months ago. I understand that the government response was due within two months. I was asked if the Government could have more time to respond. Being of a somewhat generous disposition, I acquiesced to that request. The response was published on 30 June but, sadly, we found it somewhat disappointing. In his foreword to the report, the right honourable Simon Hughes, the Minister of State for Justice and Civil Liberties, said: "The Inquiries Act potentially touches upon every department of state, and the Government has given careful consideration to the Select Committee’s 33 recommendations, agreeing with the majority of them. We will implement changes as soon as practicable and, where primary legislation is needed, when parliamentary time allows" That was not correct arithmetically. I reckon that 10 recommendations were accepted; four were "accepted, but"; 14 were rejected; and five were "rejected, but". However, we should really look at the weight in terms of importance, and the weight was very much on the rejection side With the good will of the by then former members of the committee and our clerk, the committee met again and sought a meeting with Simon Hughes, which was readily agreed to. We met on 29 October and had a full and frank discussion. The Minister asked that he be given a month to see what he could do about our concerns, particularly the three issues I raised earlier. We have been waiting. Very many inquiries have been made. I was told on one occasion that the Ministry of Justice had concluded its work and matters rested with the Cabinet Office. If there is a government turf war, that is very sad. The latest inquiry, made yesterday, brought news that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, will be addressing concerns today. We look forward to his response. It occurs to me that I am right to ask the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, in the circumstances we find ourselves in, if he will provide a supplementary written response after today I have one further thing that I think it is important to raise, not necessarily for the Minister, but for the Chairman of Committees and the Liaison Committee. Our experience leads me to suggest that once a Select Committee has produced its report, as we did in March 2014, the committee should not be laid down but retained in light dormancy in order to respond to further developments and, indeed, not completely laid down before a final meeting after the report has been debated. I have been reading the Hansard report of a debate I witnessed a week ago on the report of the committee of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, on the Mental Capacity Act 2005. It seems that that committee faced very similar circumstances. It did better than us in that it got a written response from the Minister the day before the debate. Again, it was the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and he said that the Government were taking a slightly different view—a better view as far as the committee was concerned—from that taken in the government response which had been published earlier It has been a privilege to do this work and I commend the report to the House. I beg to move.