Chamber and committees

But they do not necessarily think that that is going to happen with their inquiry. They think, perhaps, that theirs will be an open-and-shut case.

A lot of people think that an inquiry is a silver bullet, but obviously it is not.

In giving evidence, Thompsons Solicitors said that inquiries do not always have to be led by judges. Indeed, they are not always led by judges in other countries. Thompsons said that a judge does not have to be involved in a bricks-and-mortar inquiry—the trams inquiry being one example, which was led by a judge, although it did not necessarily have to be. That is an obvious area where a judge does not have to be involved. What are your thoughts on that?

A judge sits for 205 sitting days and deals with 34 trials in that time, on average. If there are three judges sitting on inquiries, as is the case now, that means that more than 100 trials are being delayed. There is an opportunity cost. Justice for one individual or group of individuals through a public inquiry could come at the cost of several hundred other people getting justice in other areas of Scottish life. I do not ever hear anybody say that, including ministers. I do not think that the public are aware of that, and I certainly was not aware of it before this committee inquiry started. It is a question of balance, and I am not convinced that we have that.

There is no requirement, but there seems to be considerable pressure for them to be a judge.

We heard the same point even from people in the legal profession who gave evidence, who, one would argue, clearly have an interest.

Another issue is transparency about the costs of inquiries. John Sturrock wrote:

“There is insufficient transparency and scrutiny in particular around control over timescales and costs.”

We were also told:

“there is no consistency in the way inquiry costs are recorded making meaningful comparisons very difficult.”

I go back to the Sheku Bayoh inquiry again. I understand that significant compensation was paid to members of the family. I do not know whether it is in the public domain how much was paid out or who it was paid to, but surely that should be in the public domain, because it is taxpayers’ money.

That is not connected to the inquiry, but was it not as a direct result of the inquiry that it—

Of course, and, sometimes, changes are made before inquiries even start. One argument that Police Scotland made was that some of the concerns that were raised about, for example, the Emma Caldwell inquiry had been addressed, with changes being implemented, before the inquiry even began. That is one of the reasons why the police are harrumphing about that particular inquiry.

Fatal accident inquiry recommendations have to be responded to within eight weeks. Would it be sound if something similar were introduced for public inquiries? Even if that were not done through a legalistic mechanism, it would be good practice if Governments of whatever shape and size responded to recommendations within eight weeks. They would not necessarily have to say that they will implement every recommendation—although that would be great for those on whose behalf the inquiry had been set up—but it would certainly be good if the Government had to respond to Parliament within eight weeks.

Thank you for that. That concludes our evidence taking on the cost-effectiveness of Scottish public inquiries. We will consider all the evidence that we have received as part of our inquiry, and publish our report next month.

That concludes the public part of our meeting, and we move into private session.

Yes. To clarify, the committee’s role is not to make recommendations on the merits or otherwise of individual public inquiries. It is to look at how such inquiries can be delivered much more effectively and efficiently, and in particular in a cost-effective way, and at whether the reasons for taking forward such inquiries are consistent, shall we say.

The point is, though, that the Sheku Bayoh inquiry, as Michael Marra pointed out, covers only a small number of people in one town and a certain incident, whereas the Scottish Covid inquiry covers a lot of people—the whole of Scotland—but so far the latter is still less expensive than the former. I make that point with regard to the purpose of the work that we are doing as a committee.

From the figures that I have seen, the cost of the Sheku Bayoh inquiry is over £51 million and rising. Even if it was £10 million, that would still, to me, seem like an awful lot of money for one specific incident in comparison with the complexity of Covid—although, even if we consider the Covid inquiry in that context, we might note that the Swedish Covid inquiry cost less than £2 million and took only a few months. The people of Sweden appear to be content with their inquiry, which concluded four years ago, and they are certainly more content with how Covid was handled.