Chamber and committees

If you want to compare apples with apples, have you taken into account the wider costs for the Scottish Covid inquiry? With regard to the point about the Scottish Covid inquiry costing less than the Sheku Bayoh inquiry, I thought that it was important to put the actual figures on the record.

Those are all important points, but I thought that it was important to put the actual figures on the record.

I certainly think that there are lessons to be learned. I accept that point, which is why I believe that there needs to be action, and we will take into account the committee’s recommendations. Maintaining public consent for inquiries really matters. If there is a breakdown in consent for inquiries, we have undermined the very purpose of having an independent, thorough review of the facts.

As you will know, there are currently five public inquiries going on in Scotland. There is the child abuse inquiry, the hospitals inquiry, the Sheku Bayoh inquiry, the Covid-19 inquiry and the Eljamel inquiry, and there is the proposed Emma Caldwell inquiry. In all those inquiries, it is for the chair to determine how they proceed, but the terms of reference are all quite clear.

You will appreciate that, a few months ago, a request was made to me to extend the terms of reference for one of those inquiries. I have a duty to consider such a request, so I engaged in an exercise to ascertain the views of core participants and I came to a conclusion that I would not extend the terms of reference. My point is that one cannot simply add to the terms of reference—there is a set legal process by which to do so.

That is a very difficult question to answer, because there was widespread consensus on the value of an independent review. I often wonder what a public inquiry into other national traumas over the past century would have looked like. There was a commitment from both the Scottish and UK Governments to be open and transparent and to accept an independent review into their work. As somebody who has now supplied the Covid inquiry with several written statements and who will shortly give evidence to it, I am certainly making myself open to questioning by that inquiry.

In my conversations with the Covid bereaved, they have made it clear that they value the ability to retrospectively ask questions in order to understand in greater detail what happened and, ultimately, to avoid its happening again. As someone who made decisions during that time, I know that if I had had hindsight, my job would have been much easier.

There could be. Again, there would be a different approach for different inquiries. I appreciate that that answer probably does not satisfy the committee, but I think that some recommendations will be primarily for the Government, and the Parliament can already scrutinise whether the Government has implemented a recommendation. There will often be recommendations for other public bodies, and they, too, are accountable to the Parliament.

With regard to scrutiny of the implementation of recommendations, I think that whatever format or structure the Parliament wishes to see could be developed. That is perfectly feasible, and we already see that to some extent with ministers having to account for how recommendations from module 1 of the Covid inquiry have been implemented.

Some recommendations will be for us all, as a society, and it will be harder to pin those on one organisation or body.

The terms of reference are the primary area where a minister can set the direction of a public inquiry. Once they have established the public inquiry and set the terms of reference, the chair alone is then responsible for deciding how the inquiry should operate. The importance of the terms of reference therefore cannot be overstated, so I agree with you on that.

I mentioned earlier that I have had a very recent experience of receiving a request to extend an inquiry’s terms of reference. With regard to the process that I went through and my ultimate decision not to extend the terms of reference, I will not exhaust the reasons here, but I encourage the committee to look at that recent example and take some confidence from the process that we undertook and our decision, despite there being very conflicting views in the public domain as to whether we should or should not extend the terms of reference. We followed our process and I am confident in the decision that we came to.

Good.

It is useful to hear members’ thoughts on that. Many of the chairs are coming towards the end of their careers and they do not actually have to do this job, so I commend our chairs for taking up the mantle in chairing inquiries into some very difficult, thorny issues.

With regard to the committee’s findings and recommendations, which I look forward to reading, I caution against—if I can be so bold—any suggestion of chairs having ulterior motives. The important thing is that, when a very important issue presents itself and requires a public inquiry, we are able to find the best person for the role. I think that that will at times, but not always, require it to be a judge. For that judge to be able to make a decision—because it is entirely for them to make the decision—there needs to be an environment in which they know that we will be able to work constructively with them to get to the conclusion of the inquiry. I think that it has been a challenging period for some chairs.

I apologise for not sending you the guidance on a more timely basis. I do not know whether any of my officials have anything else to add, but my apologies for not drawing your attention to that guidance earlier.

I think that there are three questions there, and I want to answer them all.

You started by saying that the public do not realise, when they ask for a public inquiry, that it may take five or 10 years. I would be astonished if the public are not aware of how long public inquiries take, because it is quite obvious, if we look at any recent examples, that such inquiries are not quick—