It was almost 3pm on 25 April, a warm Friday afternoon, perfect for a picnic or an outdoor kickabout. But the speakers taking part in the Lords debate on a report from the Statutory Inquiries Committee, Enhancing Public Trust, were not going to let the issues at stake be kicked into the long grass. As Philip Norton put it in his opening words: "We have the potential to ensure that public inquiries more effectively meet the needs of victims and survivors and enhance public trust in the process. It is incumbent on us to realise that potential."
But Lord Norton said the most “notable and troubling feature” of the state of public inquiries is that while recommendations from inquiries are often accepted by government, “there is no means of ensuring that recommendations are acted on – and indeed, no means of monitoring what has happened to recommendations”. Once an inquiry has reported, he continued, “it ceases to exist. It relies on others to act. The problem is that there may be no action”.
Norton noted the committee’s findings that in 2023-24, the direct public cost of UK inquiries was more than £130m and that, of those inquiries that have produced their final report in the last five years, it took an average of five years to produce that report.
The focus of the committee report, Norton said, was “the extent to which public inquiries could be rendered more efficient in process and more effective in implementation”. Underpinning that is an “awareness that public inquiries are not engendering public trust to the extent that they are designed to do”.
“Will Cabinet Office Inquiries Unit staff be spared from the much-publicised staff cuts currently taking place in the Cabinet Office?” Baroness Finn
Responding to Norton’s opening words, Frances D’Souza picked up on the second main recommendation from the committee report on strengthening public inquiries, which she said was “to boost support for the existing Cabinet [Office] unit, which we all agree does a good job”.
Baroness D’Souza said that some of the mechanisms for improving the effectiveness of inquiries might include “liaising with the civil service and policymakers to arrive at do-able recommendations”.
The concept of “doable recommendations” was criticised by Michael Bichard, a former DfE perm sec and former director of the Institute for Government. Lord Bichard expressed “concerns about the committee’s own recommendation that inquiries should ‘use policy-making and civil service expertise to support chairs in making practicable recommendations’ that are implementable”.
Bichard said that “necessary changes in policy and practice do not always look practicable or implementable at the time that they are made” and that sometimes those changes “might even look a bit inconvenient to officials”.
There is a danger, he suggested, that inquiry chairs may feel under pressure “to produce recommendations that are convenient to ministers, officials or even the Cabinet Office”.
Simone Finn, a former Downing Street chief of staff, asked the minister to confirm the proposed additional resourcing of the Cabinet Office Inquiries Unit, asking “how many additional staff members will be allocated to the [unit] to deliver these improvements?” She went on to ask: “Will those staff also be spared from the much-publicised staff cuts currently taking place in the Cabinet Office?”
Ruth Smeeth, responding to the House in her position as Labour government whip, acknowledged that “the response of governments to the recommendations of inquiries has too often been inadequate, incomplete, opaque and slow to materialise”. Smeeth – who is also referred to as Baroness Anderson – added that in some instances, such as that of the Grenfell Tower fire, this “has led to appalling, tragic events”.
While declining to give a timeframe, Smeeth said that “the broader governance structure of public inquiries and the way the government respond to recommendations must be improved”. She also confirmed that the government is “committed to examining potential reforms to enhance the framework within which inquiries are established, operated and concluded”.
Responding to the issue of inquiry recommendations not being implemented, Smeeth made a renewed commitment to publishing a record of recommendations made by inquiries since 2024 and the government’s responses to them. “We plan to quickly develop this public record so that it captures the recommendations made by future inquiries as well as recommendations made by recent inquiries that remain outstanding,” she said.
The record will be updated regularly, Smeeth continued, and will “provide a means of tracking the implementation process so that recommendations can never again be lost or overlooked”.
Noting Finn’s question with regard to costs and staffing, Smeeth said, “the noble Baroness would like to tempt me into areas where she knows I am not going to go. I appreciate the effort. I am sorry, but that is not a matter that I can reflect on and respond to today”.
Smeeth acknowledged that inquiry teams are often placed under considerable stress, and are exposed to “details that are heartbreaking and extremely personally challenging”. She stated the importance of “ensuring resilience by providing an effective duty of care for inquiry teams and the civil servants who work hard to implement the recommendations of inquiries”.
She added: “I thank them for undertaking this incredibly important but challenging work”.