WHAT MAKES AN EFFECTIVE PUBLIC INQUIRY?
15 September 2025
WHAT MAKES AN EFFECTIVE PUBLIC INQUIRY?
Public inquiries have proliferated in recent years. There are currently over 20 underway in the UK. That is twice as many as in 2005 when the Inquiries Act came into force. The four new statutory inquiries initiated so far in 2025 cover a diverse range of subjects: the horrific attacks in Nottingham in 2023 and Southport in 2024, the long-running grooming gangs’ scandal, and the infamous Battle of Orgreave in 1984 in which violent clashes occurred between striking miners and the police.
For some, the enduring popularity of public inquiries is wholly unwarranted. Their cost is eyewatering. The Institute for Government has estimated that the UK and devolved nations spent at least £1.5bn on completed public inquiries between 1990 and 2024. How can that be justified when the country is broke and its public services are in such desperate need of repair?
The short answer is that most, if not all, inquiries continue to serve a valuable political purpose that cannot readily be achieved by other means. This was neatly articulated by the Government in its recent response to the 2024 House of Lords report, ‘Public inquiries: Enhancing public trust’:
[Public inquiries] are widely considered to be an independent, legitimate and trusted method of investigating complex issues of deep public concern. They have shown to be a way to shed light on injustices of the past, provide a means for victims and survivors to finally have their voices heard, and to help rebuild trust in national institutions.
But what makes an effective public inquiry? Three key things in my view.
First, the inquiry’s terms of reference must be sensible and workable. Inquiries function best when they investigate events, actions, decisions and policies that have arisen over a short period of time. Where the matters under scrutiny stretch beyond one or two years then inquiries lose their coherence and become a collection of concurrent or consecutive mini inquiries, each with its own legal teams, participants and hearings. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse suffered from this, as does the ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry, which is now into its 10th year and shows no sign of finishing.
The same problem arises even where the timeframe under investigation is relatively short but the issues under consideration are too disparate. This has happened in the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. Its terms of reference are admirably ambitious but are cast far too widely. As a result the inquiry is caught in a time paradox: its multiple modules are proceeding at a breakneck speed that does not do justice to the complexity of their individual subject matter, while the overall inquiry is proceeding too slowly to satisfy public and political pressure for swift answers to what went wrong and how to stop it happening again.
Second, from the start the inquiry’s chair and counsel must identify the most proportionate way to discharge its terms of reference. Inquiries that seek to investigate every issue with every witness rapidly become overloaded with participants, witnesses and evidence. As this happens, the number of lawyers, administrators, policy experts, media advisers, IT staff, etc, increases. Hearings that should have taken six months end up taking years. Momentum is lost, costs spiral, and disillusionment grows, publicly, politically, and within the inquiry itself.
The best way to avoid this is to ask at the beginning of the inquiry and throughout its duration: what is the most practical and cost-effective way to understand and investigate these issues? In some cases, the best way will be to choose a limited number of case studies that exemplify particular issues or problems. This approach has been successfully followed in the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Another, more proactive and inquisitorial, approach is to use the inquiry’s counsel or solicitors to take statements rather than requesting them from the witnesses’ own lawyers. As shown in the Rosemary Nelson Inquiry, this can be a very effective means of ensuring that witness statements directly address the key issues, without the obfuscation or defensiveness that would otherwise necessitate protracted oral hearings.
A further and even more obvious option is to have public hearings only where it is essential to do so and then to mandate that they focus on matters that clearly advance the inquiry’s investigations. If, at the end of an inquiry hearing day, no significant new points have been made by the advocates in their speeches or no fresh information or opinions have been provided by the witnesses in their oral evidence, then that day has been wasted. Vast amounts of time and money can all too easily be squandered on hearings that go nowhere and repeat points and evidence that are already clear from the available documents, including the reports of earlier investigations. This is one of the reasons why the terms of reference for the Nottingham Inquiry explicitly mandate that the inquiry must “avoid duplication” and instead “use and build upon” the work of five previous reviews by state bodies.
Third, it is essential that the inquiry chair, counsel, and solicitor each have a genuine aptitude for the task. Public inquiries present new and unceasing challenges whose answers draw as much on political acumen, emotional intelligence, and an interest in public policy as they do on forensic skills and legal judgment. How should the inquiry investigate the key issues without it taking years? How can it keep its vulnerable and aggrieved participants on board and balance their many competing demands? How can it navigate through unfamiliar policy areas where so many others have failed? How does it deliver findings and recommendations that the government and the public will take notice of and act on?
Senior judges and lawyers will all have experience of marshalling high volumes of evidence and analysing complex facts and issues. But it should not be assumed that they will be a successful inquiry chair, counsel, or solicitor. Their personalities, interpersonal skills, and interests may simply not be right for the job. So the early recruitment process for those central posts is critical. Ministers need to vet and test potential chairs carefully before appointing them. Chairs need to vet and test their counsel and solicitors carefully before instructing them. Thought also needs to be given to how well the inquiry chair, counsel, and solicitor will work together as a team. Happy inquiries tend to be effective inquiries and (predictably) vice versa. Leaders must be able to get on with each other and with the teams they manage. They are all in it for the long haul.
15 September 2025
Peter Skelton KC is a barrister at 1 Crown Office Row.
