Report

by the Comptroller
and Auditor General

Cabinet Office

Investigation into government-funded inquiries

HC 836 Session 2017–2019 23 May 2018

Our vision is to help the nation spend wisely.

Our public audit perspective helps Parliament hold government to account and improve public services.

The National Audit Office scrutinises public spending for Parliament and is independent of government. The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), Sir Amyas Morse KCB, is an Officer of the House of Commons and leads the NAO. The C&AG certifies the accounts of all government departments and many other public sector bodies. He has statutory authority to examine and report to Parliament on whether departments and the bodies they fund, nationally and locally, have used their resources efficiently, effectively, and with economy. The C&AG does this through a range of outputs including value-for-money reports on matters of public interest; investigations to establish the underlying facts in circumstances where concerns have been raised by others or observed through our wider work; landscape reviews to aid transparency; and good-practice guides. Our work ensures that those responsible for the use of public money are held to account and helps government to improve public services, leading to audited savings of £734 million in 2016.

Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General

Ordered by the House of Commons
to be printed on 22 May 2018

This report has been prepared under Section 6 of the National Audit Act 1983 for presentation to the House of Commons in accordance with Section 9 of the Act

Sir Amyas Morse KCB
Comptroller and Auditor General
National Audit Office

21 May 2018

HC 836 | £10.00

Our interest in government-funded inquiries was triggered by the prevalence of inquiries and the public funds spent on them. We investigated the framework for conducting inquiries and the responsibilities for establishing and managing inquiries across government.

Investigations

We conduct investigations to establish the underlying facts in circumstances where concerns have been raised with us, or in response to intelligence that we have gathered through our wider work.

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11705-001 05/18 NAO

The National Audit Office study team consisted of:
Damian Angelis, Helen Holden and Rachel Kift, under the direction of Lee Summerfield.

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What this investigation is about

1 After an event which gives rise to public concern the government may decide to hold an inquiry. Inquiries can fulfil multiple purposes including: establishing the facts, determining accountability, learning lessons and making recommendations. Inquiries are intended to be independent of government. However, they are funded by government and are accountable to Parliament for their expenditure. The government has spent more than £200 million on the 26 inquiries we have identified that have been established and reported since 2005. We also identified 11 ongoing inquiries and, while we did not focus on those inquiries that have yet to conclude, the findings may be equally relevant.

2 Inquiries investigate events which are often complex and multi-faceted. Matters for investigation may relate to one-off incidents or multiple incidents of public concern. In this way, the nature, size and subject matter of inquiries varies significantly. While all inquiries are different, they all face the common challenge of maintaining public confidence and achieving the purpose for which they were established, while concluding within an acceptable timescale and cost. Public confidence in inquiries may be affected by issues such as:

the choice of the chair and terms of reference for the inquiry: if those impacted by the inquiry do not have confidence in how it is established it is unlikely to be able to successfully address issues of public concern;

the cost of the inquiry: inquiries can cost significant amounts in areas such as legal fees and staff costs;

the time taken for the inquiry to conclude: where inquiries last for considerable amounts of time there is a risk that their impact can be lost or their findings become irrelevant; and

the extent to which the government addresses the findings of the inquiry: when the government is not transparent about how it intends to address the findings of the inquiry this can undermine the inquiry process.

3 Given the prevalence of inquiries, the frequency with which the government uses them following high-profile failures, their importance in relation to the public’s trust of authorities, and the public funds spent on them, we have conducted an investigation to establish:

what framework exists for establishing and managing government inquiries;

the cost, duration and scale of inquiries established since 2005; and

how inquiries are managed in practice.

Our investigation does not seek to evaluate the value for money of inquiries which, by their nature, seek to address issues of complexity. Rather, we seek to present the facts relating to the costs and duration of the inquiries within our sample and the framework by which they are managed.

4 We undertook our investigation between November 2017 and May 2018, and carried out fieldwork between December 2017 and January 2018. For the purposes of our investigation, we have defined inquiries as government-funded inquiries, announced by a minister or the Prime Minister to investigate issues that have caused public concern, or circumstances that could give rise to public concern. We are aware that various other types of inquiry and investigative mechanisms may be commissioned and undertaken across government in response to similar issues (paragraph 1.3), such as Parliamentary inquiries undertaken by select committees. Like government-funded inquiries, select committee inquiries are often set up to examine issues of public concern and will hear evidence and make recommendations. While the scope and objectives of government-funded inquiries and select committee inquiries may differ, there are similarities in that both types of inquiry rely on the collection of oral and written evidence, report to Parliament and government is expected to respond to their reports.

5 Our investigative approach and methods are set out in Appendix One. Our investigation focuses on 10 of the 26 statutory and non-statutory inquiries that have started and concluded since 2005. This sample equates to two inquiries by those government departments that have sponsored the most inquiries during this period (Cabinet Office, Department of Health & Social Care, Home Office, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Justice). We did not seek to evaluate the value for money of inquiries but to present facts on the cost and duration of the inquiries in our sample. We also undertook a more detailed examination of one inquiry sponsored by each of these departments. Figure 1 lists the inquiries included in our sample. We supplemented our examination by selecting 10 select committee inquiries (Figure 13), and analysing the level of evidence underpinning both inquiry processes so that the reader can compare data on the size, scale and depth of evidence considered by these different inquiry mechanisms.

Summary

Key findings

On the establishment and framework for inquiries

1 Since 2005, we identified 26 government-funded inquiries that have concluded, of which 15 were carried out under the Inquiries Act 2005. The Inquiries Act 2005 and the Inquiry Rules 2006 set out the legislative framework for conducting inquiries. Through the introduction of a framework the Act aimed to improve the administration of inquiries and encourage a focus on managing costs and improving transparency (paragraphs 1.2, Figure 12).

2 There is no legal requirement for inquiries to be set up under the Inquiries Act. This decision is made by the relevant minister when they establish the inquiry. Non-statutory inquiries can vary in their format and powers. They are not bound by procedural rules and therefore have greater flexibility in regard to how they are conducted. However, they do not have the same powers as statutory inquiries, including the power to compel witnesses to attend and to require the release of documents (paragraphs 1.3 and 1.8).

3 Ministers set the terms of reference for inquiries and are under no obligation to consult publicly on these. The Inquiries Act 2005 requires ministers to consult with the chair before setting out the terms of reference but they are not obliged to consult other individuals or groups and will determine whether or not to do so based on a range of factors. Of our detailed examination of five inquiries, only the Baha Mousa Inquiry consulted widely on its terms of reference. Each of the subjects of the five inquiries that we looked at in detail had previously been subject to another form of investigation, such as an inquest (paragraphs 1.9, 1.11 and 1.12, Figure 3).

On the cost, duration and scale of inquiries

4 The government has spent at least £239 million on the 26 inquiries concluded since 2005. The cost of the 10 inquiries that we examined ranged from £0.2 million to £24.9 million. The largest component of the cost of these inquiries was legal staff, which accounted for an average of 36% of the costs, ranging from less than 1% for the Morecambe Bay Investigation to 67% for the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry. Other significant costs included running costs, consultancy and other staff costs (paragraphs 2.2 to 2.4, Figure 5).

5 The average duration of the 26 inquiries that have concluded since 2005 is 40 months. The duration of the 10 inquiries we examined ranged from 16 months (for the Harris Review and the Leveson Inquiry) to 84 months (for the Iraq Inquiry). On average, 5% of an inquiry’s time is spent on the terms of reference and appointing the chair and inquiry team; 10% preparing for the hearings; 40% holding hearings; and 45% producing the report (paragraphs 2.5 and 2.6, Figures 7 and 8).

6 Inquiries typically take evidence from hundreds of witnesses and consider thousands of documents. For our sample of inquiries where information was available, inquiry teams spent an average of 102 days hearing testimony from 200 witnesses and considered more than 52,000 documents. For example, the Iraq Inquiry team considered evidence from 150 witnesses over 130 days of evidence sessions and considered 150,000 documents. The scale of these inquiries (statutory and non-statutory) is much larger than other forms of inquiry, such as select committee inquiries, which, for those in our sample, heard evidence from a maximum of 31 witnesses over six days and considered a maximum of 218 documents (paragraphs 2.9 and 2.10, Figure 9).

On the sponsorship of inquiries

7 No individual department is responsible for establishing and managing inquiries. Government has previously rejected a House of Lords Select Committee recommendation to set up a central inquiries unit, instead wanting to build on and improve the current system of support, whereby several parts of government, including the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Justice and individual sponsor departments are involved in administering and managing inquiries (paragraphs 1.4, 3.3 and 3.4).

8 The Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Justice have not acted on recommendations to improve the way inquiries are run. Since 2014, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Justice have committed to various actions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of inquiries originating from two parliamentary select committee reports. These include updating and publishing its inquiry guidance for Inquiry Chairs, secretaries and sponsor departments; reviewing the Inquiry Rules relating to the Representations Process which allows individuals criticised in inquiries to review and comment on extracts from the report; and requesting and sharing lessons learned reports from inquiries. None of these commitments have been fulfilled (paragraphs 2.8, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.5).

9 The Home Office has developed its own bespoke processes for running inquiries. The Home Office has been responsible for six inquiries since 2005 (four of which are still ongoing). The frequency with which it found itself responsible for inquiries prompted the Home Office to establish its own inquiry sponsorship team in April 2017. This has been tasked with developing bespoke processes to give inquiry teams more support and make the Home Office’s sponsorship of inquiries more consistent, including by developing its own guidance (paragraph 3.7).

10 Departments were unable to provide us with evidence that they have consistently monitored and overseen the cost and progress of inquiries. While departments provided evidence which confirmed that budgets had been fixed for four of the five inquiries in our sample, only one of these included supporting information on how estimates of cost and time had been calculated. We saw very little evidence of sponsor departments collecting regular financial information from inquiry teams or carrying out regular monitoring of spending and progress, or scrutiny of propriety and regularity (paragraphs 3.12 to 3.13).

11 Not all inquiries make recommendations and the government is under no obligation to accept those that are made or explain the reasoning behind its decision. The publicly available responses we reviewed did not often explain why government had chosen to accept or reject individual recommendations or set out its intended actions in relation to the recommendation. Eight of the 10 inquiries we reviewed made a total of 620 recommendations, ranging from 290 for the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry to one for the Litvinenko Inquiry. We estimate that of these 45% were accepted by government, a further 33% were ‘accepted in principle’, ‘partially accepted’ and ‘subject to wider reform’, 7% were explicitly rejected, and no clear response was given to the remaining 15% (paragraphs 3.15 and 3.16, Figure 10).

12 Departments vary in the extent to which they are transparent about action taken in response to recommendations. Of the eight inquiries we reviewed which made recommendations we found readily accessible information on progress in relation to four. For other inquiries, the minister gave general updates to Parliament but did not give specific detail on action taken in response to each recommendation. There is no organisation across government or Parliament with responsibility for monitoring and tracking whether recommendations have been implemented and ensuring that inquiries have the intended impact (paragraphs 3.17 and 3.18).

Part One

The establishment and framework for inquiries

1.1 The government may decide to hold an inquiry to investigate matters of public concern. Inquiries can fulfil multiple purposes, including establishing the facts, determining accountability and responsibility but not liability, learning lessons and making recommendations. Inquiries are intended to be independent of government but are funded by government and are therefore accountable to Parliament for their expenditure.

The legal framework for inquiries

1.2 The Inquiries Act 2005 came into force in June 2005. Before this, statutory inquiries had been carried out under a wide variety of different legislation.1 The Act provides a statutory framework for ministers to establish an inquiry with full powers to call for evidence and witnesses. It aimed to improve the administration of inquiries by encouraging a focus on managing costs and improving transparency. The Inquiries Rules 2006 set out rules intended to cover matters of evidence and procedure in relation to inquiries.2

1.3 Not all inquiries are established using the Inquiries Act. Alternative forms of inquiries include:

statutory inquiries under other subject-specific legislation;

non-statutory ad hoc inquiries which are not bound by procedural rules;

inquiries by a Committee of Privy Counsellors, which allow secure information to be seen;3

parliamentary inquiries undertaken by select committees; and

Royal Commissions, which are normally used to consider matters of broad policy rather than to investigate a specific incident.4

Responsibilities for inquiries across government

1.4 No single department is responsible for the running of inquiries across government. However, the Cabinet Office is the department with the widest range of roles in respect of inquiries. These include:

ensuring that the Prime Minister is consulted in good time about any proposal to set up an inquiry under the Inquiries Act;5

acting as a liaison point between the lead departments on the inquiry and the centre of government;

advising departments on the relationship between them and the inquiry; and

providing advice and guidance on establishing an inquiry to inquiry chairs, teams and sponsor departments.6

1.5 Other parts of government also have responsibilities in respect of inquiries:

The Ministry of Justice has policy responsibility for inquiries legislation and advises other departments on the application of the Inquiries Act and the underpinning rules.

The Government Legal Department supports the chair by offering advice on the selection of counsel and solicitors to the inquiry, and provides legal advice and support to government departments.

HM Treasury sets out principles and conditions for the use of public funds (including spending on inquiries) in Managing Public Money.7

The government department with policy responsibility for the matter for inquiry is responsible for sponsoring the inquiry and supporting the chair to resource the inquiry secretariat.

Roles within inquiries

1.6 Inquiries are intended to be independent of government. While not prescribed, there are some typical responsibilities associated with the role of the minister, inquiry chair and sponsor department (Figure 2).

Deciding to establish an inquiry

1.7 The minister of the relevant policy department is responsible for deciding how matters of public concern should be addressed and whether an inquiry is appropriate. Ministers have discretion to decide on the specific type of an inquiry, and whether an inquiry is established as statutory or non-statutory.

1.8 Cabinet Office draft guidance states that departments should seek advice from the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Ethics Team about the different forms of inquiry and the merits of the different options. There are no formal criteria to determine the choice of an investigatory mechanism and considerations are built on precedent. Factors that may influence a minister’s decision on the type of inquiry may include:

the sensitivity of the subject matter: A minister may decide it is appropriate to deal with a sensitive subject through a statutory inquiry because of its importance. Non-statutory inquiries are not bound by procedural rules which enable this type of inquiry to take evidence in private. This means that, on occasion, ministers may feel that this type of inquiry is more appropriate because of its flexibility;

the need for evidential powers: Statutory inquiries can compel witnesses and the release of documents but non-statutory inquiries cannot. For example, it was decided that the Iraq Inquiry could function as a non-statutory inquiry because the majority of people giving evidence were civil servants who did not need to be compelled to appear;

whether an inquiry is a suitable vehicle for establishing the facts or whether an alternative form of investigation may be a better way of addressing concerns; and

the level of public concern regarding the issue: Statutory inquiries have a duty to ensure public access to the documents informing the inquiry but there is no such obligation for non-statutory inquiries.

1.9 Ministers are not required to explain the reasons for their decision on the type of inquiry launched. Of the five inquiries we looked at in detail, the minister had publicly explained the reasoning behind their choice of type of inquiry in two cases (Figure 3). In these five inquiries, another form of investigation such as an inquest, police investigation or court martial proceeding had been undertaken before the decision was made to launch an inquiry.

1.10 There is often considerable time between an incident occurring and an inquiry being announced. Figure 4 shows that the minimum elapsed time between these events is four years, and the maximum, nine years. Influencing factors sometimes include other criminal investigations or judicial proceedings which preclude an inquiry from commencing. For example, an inquest and judicial review took place before the Litvinenko Inquiry was announced.

Setting the terms of reference for the inquiry

1.11 Terms of reference are often announced in the same statement to Parliament as the announcement of the inquiry and the announcement of the chair. The Act states that the minister may later amend the terms of reference in consultation with the chair if he or she considers it is in the public interest, and Cabinet Office guidance states that ministers may, but are not obliged, to consult individuals or groups involved in the events that led to the inquiry. Cabinet Office told us that when considering the scope of an inquiry, and what if any consultation on the terms of reference may be necessary, a number of factors may be taken into account in advice to Ministers including the views of the chair, the nature of the incident or issue under examination, the purpose of the inquiry and the range of interested parties and their views on scope.

1.12 Of the five inquiries that we examined in detail, only the Baha Mousa Inquiry engaged widely with others on its terms of reference. In this case, draft terms of reference were debated at senior levels in the Ministry of Defence, discussed with the chairperson and agreed by the minister before consultation and consideration of comments by the lawyers representing Baha Mousa’s family and others who had been detained and who had been vocal in calling for the inquiry. In contrast, there was no public consultation on the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry and the Detainee Inquiry was criticised by human rights groups and lawyers representing victims, partly as a result of the way it was set up and its terms of reference.8

1 Including the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921; the National Health Service Act 1977; the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974; and the Merchant Shipping Act 1995.

2 Established under section 41(1) of the Inquiries Act 2005.

3 The Privy Council is a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. Its membership mainly comprises senior politicians who are current or former members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords.

4 House of Commons Library, Public Inquiries: non-statutory commissions of inquiry, November 2016.

5 This is a requirement of the Ministerial Code which sets out the standards of conduct expected of ministers.

6 Ministry of Justice, Government Response to the Report on the House of Lords Select Committee on the Inquiries Act 2005, June 2014.

7 HM Treasury, Managing Public Money, July 2013.

8 House of Lords Select Committee on the Inquiries Act 2005, Written and corrected oral evidence, 11 March 2014, page 125.

Part Two

The cost, duration and scale of inquiries

2.1 This part sets out government spending on inquiries since 2005, and includes analysis of the cost and time associated with our sample of inquiries. It also compares information on the scale of government-funded inquiries to select committee inquiries, which are often set up by select committees to examine similar types of issue of public concern.

The cost of inquiries

2.2 The government has spent more than £239 million on the 26 inquiries that have been established and concluded in the UK since 2005.9 Of the 10 inquiries that we examined, six were established under the Inquiries Act and four were non-statutory. The reported cost of inquiries ranged from £0.2 million to £24.9 million (Figure 5).

2.3 Detailed breakdowns of cost were available for seven of the 10 inquiries included in our sample. The largest single component of the cost of the inquiries in our sample was legal staff, which accounted for an average of 36% of the costs (Figure 6). Other significant costs of inquiries included general staff (21%), running costs (18%) and consultancy (10%).

2.4 The type of costs incurred by inquiries varies significantly. For example, almost 30% (£7.3 million) of the reported costs of the Al-Sweady Inquiry were associated with consultancy costs for investigative and other expert services. Other inquiries reported minimal or no consultancy costs. Legal costs for inquiries ranged from less than 1% of the total cost for the Morecambe Bay Investigation, compared with £9.1 million (67% of the total cost) for the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry.

The duration of inquiries

2.5 The length of time for conducting inquiries varied considerably, from 16 months for the Harris Review and the Leveson Inquiry to seven years for the Iraq Inquiry (see Figure 7). The average length of the 26 inquiries that have concluded since 2005 was 40 months.

2.6 Our analysis of 10 inquiries shows that the time taken to complete different stages of an inquiry varies. On average, 5% of an inquiry’s time is spent on developing the inquiry terms of reference, appointing the chair and inquiry team; 10% of time preparing for inquiry hearings; 40% holding hearings; and 45% producing the report (see Figure 8).

2.7 The process of producing the inquiry report ranged from 22 days for the Morecambe Bay Investigation to more than five years for the Iraq Inquiry. Those involved in preparing inquiry reports have been critical of the procedural rules governing inquiry proceedings and the impact they can have on the time taken to produce the report. The chair of the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry estimated that rule 1410 (which requires the chair to send a warning letter to anyone significantly criticised in the report and give them a reasonable opportunity to respond and which is known colloquially as ‘Maxwellisation’) added six months to the work of the inquiry.11 Those involved in the Leveson Inquiry similarly said that the process was complex and took an inordinate amount of time to complete.12

2.8 In November 2016 the Treasury Select Committee published a review they had commissioned of Maxwellisation.13 The review found that within common law there is no requirement to give those criticised the opportunity to respond prior to the report being published, provided that they have been given ample opportunity to comment at an earlier stage. The report did, however, note that giving individuals the opportunity to comment had become standard practice probably as a result of caution by those conducting and commissioning inquiries; a lack of clarity about what has been done before; and because the Inquiry Rules had effectively made consultation a statutory duty. The review recommended that the Cabinet Office should maintain an online resource so that when future inquiries are set up, chairs can see what processes have been adopted by previous inquiries. The review also noted that the government had agreed to reconsider a previous decision not to revoke the inquiry rules relating to Maxwellisation. No online resource has been developed or decision reached regarding the Inquiry Rules.

The scale of inquiries

2.9 Inquiries typically consider documentary evidence and hold sessions where they hear evidence from individuals connected to the matter subject to inquiry. We compared the level of evidence underpinning our sample of government-funded inquiries with that underpinning a sample of select committee inquiries. We found that government-funded inquiries typically hear from hundreds of witnesses and review thousands of documents (Figure 9). For our sample of government-funded inquiries where information was available, inquiry teams spent an average of 102 days hearing testimony from 200 witnesses and considered more than 52,000 documents. For example, the Iraq Inquiry team considered evidence from 150 witnesses over 130 days of evidence sessions and considered 150,000 documents.

2.10 The scale of these inquiries is much larger than other forms of inquiry, such as select committee inquiries. Of our sample of select committee inquiries, the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into Hate Crime and its Violent Consequences held the most evidence sessions, hearing from 31 witnesses over six days; the Health Select Committee’s Primary Care Inquiry considered the largest number of documents at 218. Available data suggest that government-funded inquiries take evidence from 12 times as many witnesses, examine 700 times more written documents, and hold 24 times as many evidence sessions as select committees.

9 We identified a further 11 inquiries that are yet to conclude.

10 The Inquiry Rules 2006.

11 See footnote 8, pp. 81.

12 See footnote 8, pp. 256–257.

13 Andrew Green QC, Tony Peto QC, Pushpinder Saini QC, Fraser Campbell, Ajay Ratan, A Review of ‘Maxwellisation’ for the Treasury Committee, November 2016.

Part Three

The sponsorship of inquiries

Improving the working of inquiries

3.1 As part of its wider role in respect of inquiries, in 2012 the Cabinet Office drew up draft guidance for inquiry chairs, teams and sponsor departments.14 The purpose was to offer “best practice guidance for all types of inquiry commissioned by government whether statutory or non-statutory, public or private”.

3.2 In March 2014, a House of Lords Select Committee that had been established specifically to scrutinise the law and practice relating to public inquiries, and in particular the Inquiries Act 2005, produced its report.15 The Committee criticised what it believed to be some unnecessary time and costs associated with the administration of inquiries. It specifically criticised the Cabinet Office’s guidance as being ‘wholly inadequate’ due to the fact that it contains detail about what needs to be done but very little about how to do it.

3.3 The Committee’s report contained 33 recommendations, including some to improve the administration of inquiries. These included recommendations to:

create a unit responsible for all of the practical details of setting up an inquiry including, but not limited to, assistance with premises, infrastructure, IT procurement and staffing;

ensure that on the conclusion of an inquiry, the secretary delivers a lessons learned paper from which best practice can be distilled and continuously updated; and

review and amend the Cabinet Office inquiries guidance in the light of the Committee’s recommendations and the experiences of inquiry secretaries.

3.4 In its June 2014 response to the House of Lords Select Committee’s report, the government stated that, while it agreed with the spirit of the Committee’s recommendation in relation to establishing a standing unit with responsibility for inquiries, it did not think such a unit was appropriate or necessary, given the relative infrequency of new inquiries and their duration. It preferred instead to build on and improve the current system of support, specifically including strengthening Cabinet Office processes.16 While the minister said that changes would be implemented as soon as practicable, we have not seen evidence of improvements to the system of support.

3.5 The government committed to completing the Cabinet Office’s inquiries guidance and publishing it on the gov.uk website. As at February 2018, the Cabinet Office was consulting with departments on amendments to the draft guidance that has existed since 2012 and has not been published. Cabinet Office told us that it provides ad hoc advice because the complex and varied nature of inquiries means they have to be established according to the particular situation requiring investigation.

3.6 The draft guidance states that the inquiry secretary is responsible for submitting a ‘lessons learned’ report on conclusion of the inquiry. However, this has only been done for three inquiries to date (The Baha Mousa, Azelle Rodney and Al-Sweady inquiries). Eight inquiries have concluded since the government’s response to the House of Lords report was published but the Cabinet Office was not able to give us any examples of lessons learned reports produced as a result of these inquiries.

3.7 The Home Office has been responsible for six inquiries since 2005. The frequency with which it found itself responsible for inquiries prompted the Home Office to establish its own dedicated inquiry sponsorship team in April 2017. The team aims to improve management of inquiries by:

supporting inquiries while protecting their independence;

establishing inquiries, and supporting secretariats in setting them up by helping to connect with specialist support services as required, including human resources, finance and IT; and

helping inquiries to learn lessons from each other and join up on accessing support services, including providing links with other government departments and non-Home Office inquiries.

Safeguarding the independence of the inquiry

3.8 Where a department sponsors an inquiry and is also a core participant in the inquiry, functions should be separated and the inquiry managed in a way that recognises the potential for conflict of interests. However, there is no practical advice available as to how sponsor departments should separate these roles. Cabinet Office told us that there is no formal written guidance, but tailored advice is given in individual situations. Managing potential conflicts may also be further complicated where staff from the sponsor department are seconded to work directly on the inquiry team. Seven of the 10 inquiries in our sample included staff from the sponsor department, typically representing between a fifth and a third of the inquiry team.

3.9 The Ministry of Defence told us that its role as core participant in the Baha Mousa Inquiry was headed up by the Directorate of Judicial Engagement Policy, and separated from its sponsorship role, which was led by Finance. For the Cabinet Office, Department of Health and Ministry of Justice, lines of separation in the departments’ dual roles were less clear and seemed to be developed on a case-by-case basis.

3.10 The Home Office uses memorandums of understanding to set out the separate duties of the Department in sponsoring the inquiry, and as a core participant to the inquiry in responding to requests for evidence. For any newly established inquiries in the Home Office, new ways of working, procedures, protocols and reporting arrangements aim to give inquiry teams more practical support and improve the Department’s oversight and assurance. For example, the Sponsorship Team has developed detailed procedures on the practicalities of appointing a chair and panel.

Monitoring and oversight of the cost and progress of the inquiry

3.11 In order to maintain their independence, the chair has a significant amount of freedom to run the inquiry as they see fit. They are, however, expected to avoid any unnecessary cost. Government departments that sponsor inquiries are accountable to Parliament for the use of public funds and for ensuring that inquiry teams account for and manage financial, legal and propriety-related risks.

3.12 While documentary evidence confirmed that top-level budgets were set for the Detainee Inquiry, the Azelle Rodney Inquiry and the Litvinenko Inquiry, sponsor departments could not provide any evidence to support the basis for either the budgets or the assumptions that had been made. The reported outturn costs of £2.6 million for the Azelle Rodney Inquiry was more than twice the initial budget and the inquiry took three years longer than expected to conclude.

3.13 While a detailed budget was prepared for the Baha Mousa Inquiry, the Ministry of Defence in its own lessons learned report raised concerns about a lack of management information on work being done, which had made forecasting expenditure against budget very difficult. For the other four inquiries in our sample, sponsor departments could not demonstrate that they had scrutinised budgets and demands for additional funding from inquiry teams. Departments told us that they expect inquiry teams to demonstrate good financial management but we saw very little evidence of any regular financial information submitted by inquiry teams to sponsorship teams, or regular monitoring of spending and progress, or scrutiny of propriety and regularity.

Publication of information about the inquiry

3.14 Each inquiry must set up a website to make information about the inquiry available to the public. There is no guidance on what information should be communicated. Cabinet Office guidance states only that: “The inquiry should assess information and place relevant material on the website.” Websites no longer exist, or do not include accessible information, for three inquiries. Of the other seven inquiry websites that we reviewed, the quality and detail of information available to the public varied. All websites included transcripts and submissions from core participants but only some included cost information or management statements explaining how the relationship between the inquiry and sponsor department would be conducted.

Implementing the recommendations from inquiries

3.15 Not all inquiries are tasked with making recommendations but most will establish facts and reach conclusions. Eight of the 10 inquiries we reviewed made a total of 620 recommendations, ranging from 290 for the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry to one for the Litvinenko Inquiry. Cabinet Office guidance states that government is not obliged to accept an inquiry’s recommendations but will be expected to indicate in its response which recommendations it accepts, and where practical, reasons for not accepting others.

3.16 There is no specific guidance as to how government departments should respond to an inquiry, and the minister has discretion about how to respond. The government’s initial response to the inquiries included in our sample ranged from written or oral ministerial statements to Parliament to published reports. All inquiries were acknowledged in a statement to Parliament but, for those inquiries that made recommendations, varying levels of information were included in the government’s response. This made it difficult to ascertain exactly which recommendations the government had accepted. Figure 10 shows that, drawing from publicly available information sources, we estimated that of the eight inquiries in our sample which made recommendations:

45% were accepted by government;

33% were ‘accepted in principle’, ‘partially accepted’ and ‘subject to wider reform’;

7% were explicitly rejected; and

no clear response was given to the remaining 15%.

3.17 Once inquiries have concluded, there is no central repository or responsibility across government for tracking whether recommendations have been implemented and ensuring that inquiries have an impact. Individual inquiries and departments vary in the extent to which they are transparent about action taken in response to recommendations. For four inquiries – the Azelle Rodney Inquiry, the Harris Review, the Morecambe Bay Investigation and the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry – we found readily accessible information on progress against each recommendation. For three inquiries – the Al-Sweady Inquiry, the Baha Mousa Inquiry and the Leveson Inquiry – the minister gave general updates to Parliament on progress but did not give specific detail on action taken in response to each recommendation.

3.18 The Department of Health & Social Care told us how it has managed the response to the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry report and its 290 recommendations: the chair maintained dialogue with ministers and the department post-inquiry and weekly ministerial meetings were used to systematically go through all areas of the report and develop the response. The Department set up sub-groups involving arm’s-length bodies and other national partners to think through recommendations and actions. Updates were subsequently provided to Parliament and actions taken to implement each recommendation published on the government’s website, gov.uk.

3.19 The House of Lords Select Committee on the Inquiries Act 2005 made recommendations targeted at improving the accountability for implementing inquiry recommendations and making this more transparent.17 It recommended that:

public bodies should have a statutory duty to say within a specified time whether they accept the inquiry’s recommendations and, if so, what plans they have for implementing them; and

in all cases the response should be published not more than three months after an inquiry report is received.

3.20 While the government accepted the Committee’s recommendations, it did not consider that there needed to be a statutory duty and further set out that a six-month timeframe for publishing the government’s response would be more achievable.18 Of the eight inquiries that have since concluded, the government has published a detailed response within six months to the recommendations made by two inquiries, the Morecambe Bay Investigation and the Harris Review.

14 Cabinet Office, Inquiries Guidance, unpublished.

15 House of Lords Select Committee on the Inquiries Act 2005, The Inquiries Act 2005: post-legislative scrutiny, report of session 2013-14, HL paper 143, 11 March 2014.

16 See footnote 6.

17 See footnote 15.

18 See footnote 6.

Appendix One

Our investigative approach

Scope

1 We conducted an investigation into government-funded inquiries. Our interest in this topic originated from media coverage relating to ongoing inquiries. We investigated:

what framework exists for managing government inquiries;

the cost, duration and scale of inquiries established since 2005; and

how inquiries are managed in practice.

Methods

2 In order to investigate these areas, we drew on a variety of evidence sources and interviewed individuals with knowledge of the legislative framework on inquiries and those involved in administering and managing inquiries in practice.

3 We reviewed the Inquiries Act 2005 and supporting Inquiry Rules 2006 to understand the legislation and its application to statutory inquiries.

4 We reviewed the Cabinet Office’s draft inquiries guidance and guidance information being developed by the Home Office Inquiry Sponsorship team, including their governance and control framework, and compliance procedures.

5 We reviewed published reports and relevant documents for background and context on the role, benefits and challenges of inquiries and commentary on the effectiveness of legislation, including good-practice guidance.

6 We used data on statutory and non-statutory inquiries provided by the Ministry of Justice and the Institute for Government as the basis for developing a list of inquiries announced and funded by government since new legislation was introduced. We identified 26 inquiries that have been established and reported, and 11 inquiries that have been announced but are ongoing and have yet to report (Figure 11 in Appendix Two).

7 We selected 10 inquiries for examination from the 26 inquiries started and concluded since 2005 (Figure 12 in Appendix Two). Our selection was influenced by those government departments that had sponsored (or co-sponsored) the most inquiries over this period: we selected two inquiries sponsored by the Cabinet Office, Department of Health & Social Care, Home Office, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Justice.

8 We examined inquiry websites archived by the National Archives and other published sources to identify data relating to the 10 inquiries. In particular, we wanted to collate and analyse data in relation to:

where costs are incurred;

how inquiries are staffed;

the duration between key milestones; and

the government response to recommendations.

9 We gave sponsor departments the opportunity to validate the accuracy of the data relating to the inquiries they sponsored.

10 We undertook a more detailed examination of five of the 10 inquiries (one inquiry for each of the sponsor departments) and conducted semi-structured interviews with departmental officials to understand the role of the sponsor department and their relationship with the inquiry team. In particular, we sought to understand how inquiries are established, staffed, funded and monitored. We also sought to understand the role of the department once the inquiry report has been published, including the government response to recommendations, and action taken to track progress in implementing recommendations.

11 We selected a sample of 10 select committee inquiries with the specific purpose of analysing the level of evidence underpinning the inquiry process in order to draw comparisons between processes of conducting inquiries. Our sample is included at Figure 13 in Appendix Two.

Appendix Two

Government-funded inquiries since 2005 and our samples

1 Figure 11 sets out information on the government-funded inquiries we identified since 2005.

2 Figure 12 sets out the inquiry population from which we selected our samples of inquiries for examination.

3 Figure 13 lists our sample of select committee inquiries for comparative analysis.

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