Chamber and committees

We can see how that would work for the law firms that are involved as part of the prevailing culture of how we do inquiries. Because they are done in that way, the law firms that are most likely to get the work are—guess what?—the ones that can claim previous experience, so it becomes self-perpetuating. Is that correct?

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. We have talked a lot about costs and governance. My first question is for you, Mary, given that you have been involved in a multitude of things across the NHS in your role. Are you involved in any pieces of work that do not have any governance or properly monitor costs in the way that you have set out?

We are aware that other bodies have looked at the running of inquiries. I mentioned the House of Lords earlier, but you mostly face into the Cabinet Office, as you said. From your perspective, is there an appetite on the part of the UK Government to look properly at this? Clearly, things are now completely out of hand. Is there an appetite to look to change it? That would potentially involve annoying some law firms that are on this pretty lucrative path.

I am honoured to speak to my motion on 30 years on from the Bosnian genocide in Srebrenica. In the troubled world of today, it is important to reflect, and I am indebted to the work of the charity Beyond Srebrenica and its programme lessons from Srebrenica. I thank David Hamilton, Sabina Kadic-Mackenzie and all others involved in the charity for the chance to participate in its delegate programme, and I thank the Scottish Government for its sponsorship.

I was rereading a published document from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and it is telling how it, in quite a matter-of-fact way, described the significance of the events in Srebrenica in July 1995. It states:

“The massacre that occurred in Srebrenica in July 1995 was the single worst atrocity committed in the former Yugoslavia during the wars of the 1990s and the worst massacre that occurred in Europe since the months after World War II.”

Some of the evidence that was presented in subsequent court cases was harrowing. In June 2005, during cross-examination of a witness in the case against Slobodan Miloševic, the court viewed rare video footage showing a Serbian paramilitary unit, calling itself the Scorpions, execute a small group of Bosnian Muslim men and teenage boys who were captured after the fall of Srebrenica in 1995. The images of Serbian soldiers tormenting and then shooting the Bosnian Muslim prisoners, whose hands were tied behind their backs and who offered no resistance before being shot, was to prove a telling piece of evidence.

The trial examined evidence of mass executions at a total of nine sites from 13 to 17 July 1995. Dozens of burial sites were created for the mass disposal of bodies, and the evidence showed it to be a lie that those killed were combatants. It was also not a result of some spontaneous revenge killings—far from it. It was a premeditated and planned mass killing operation of men and boys. It was a genocide.

Soldiers were mobilised to guard the prisoners, move them to execution sites and shoot them. Thousands of rounds of ammunition to shoot the prisoners were supplied. A great many vehicles were commandeered to move the prisoners, and bulldozers and excavators were commissioned to dig their graves. The killings were done in a grotesque fashion. One of the rare survivors recounted to the court:

“When they opened fire, I threw myself on the ground ... And one man fell on my head. I think that he was killed on the spot. And I could feel the hot blood pouring over me ... I could hear one man crying for help. He was begging them to kill him. And they simply said, ‘Let him suffer. We will kill him later.’”

This was a case of both genocide and androcide—the systematic killing of males because of their sex as part of a deliberate campaign to eliminate a specific religious and ethnic group. It was a horrific exercise in ethnic cleansing. Besides the thousands of men and boys killed, tens of thousands of women and children were uprooted and removed from the area.

As my motion states,

“54 individuals have been prosecuted to date for their role in the massacre but ... many more were involved in creating the culture and environment, which led to the genocide in Srebrenica, through their use of hate speech, oppression, discrimination and propaganda against the Bosnian Muslim population”.

I should have added “only” before the number 54. The international community failed in 1995. Too many, including the blue helmets of the United Nations, looked the other way.

I would like to offer a personal perspective, after having been invited to visit Srebrenica by the charity last year. It was one of the best organised trips that I have ever been on, and it gave a proper sense of what happened and the extent to which events still rest heavily on those who remain—and rightly so.

Women are always casualties in war, too, and this war was no different. While visiting the cemetery where more than 6,000 bodies have now been officially buried, we spoke with Mejra Djogaz, who lost her husband and three sons in the conflict. Quoted in an article by my fellow delegate Eddie Barnes, she said:

“I would never have returned to Srebrenica if one of my children was alive but since they are all dead then this is the only place I can be near to them”.

We visited the charity the Association of Women Victims of War, which gives voice to many women who were raped during the conflict. It not only collects their stories but attempts to bring about prosecutions of the perpetrators—men who move openly still in Serbian society today. We drove past a warehouse in Kravica, one of the places where more than 1,370 men were shot. The bullet holes have been plastered over, and a wall has been built around it that stops the mothers and wives from laying flowers in homage to their loved ones.

Bosnian politics have long been notoriously complex, and they remain so to this day. Despite promises made, accession to the European Union feels no closer for many of the successor states of Yugoslavia, and the lack of progress continues to lead to irritation and a sense of being let down across the entire region. The shift away from a European focus in the new American foreign policy can only embolden other actors in the region, and I fear that we feel further away than we have ever been from acknowledging what happened and taking the steps that are required to allow for healing and moving forward.

The work of the International Commission on Missing Persons continues. It is still finding remains of the men who were killed, sometimes in multiple locations, as the bodies were buried, lifted and buried again—sometimes multiple times.

I give the final words to Mejra. Speaking to Eddie Barnes, she said:

“Why do we do this? We are fighting for justice and truth to be heard. Our fight is for the truth and justice for our beloved ones who were killed.”

Her fight for truth and justice is a fight for us all.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Good morning and thank you for joining us.

David Phillips, as you are still on screen, I will keep you there. We have talked a lot in general terms about productivity, and I think that we all understand the factors that drive it. However, I am thinking about relative weighting within those factors—for example, economic multipliers in major infrastructure and housing projects. What is your sense of the relative weighting across all the factors that influence productivity? What would give productivity a significant boost?

Bridgette Wessels might like to come in next. In opening out the conversation, I am interested in the historical impacts of low investment in capital projects and infrastructure. That has been a historical issue in the UK for 30-odd years. What are your thoughts about how that has ultimately affected productivity, given that we know that infrastructure projects, even if they are temporary, can often turn things around a bit?

Before the other witnesses come in, I have another question for you. You referred to the use of LBTT. Is the current situation not simply a function of the fact that there are hardly any taxes that Scotland can raise? I completely agree with you about the need to increase the money flowing through the economy, but in some respects, is not LBTT just the low-hanging fruit that the Scottish Government can utilise in the absence of other taxes?

Thank you. Simon, do you have any final comments on the range of questions that I have asked?

I want to pick up on another point. I asked some questions earlier about the potential for conflict of interest. What is your experience of being asked to disclose any potential conflict of interest? Often, as we know, that does not necessarily mean that there is such a conflict. However, where there might be, or where there is even the illusion that there could be, or any hint at all, people will often disclose that information, because propriety is so important.

Are you aware of any processes in inquiries that you have dealt with in which the option for disclosure was given?