A flawed inquiries system

’Never look into anything you don’t have to. And never set up a public inquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be.’ Three decades have passed since this was enumerated as a ‘basic’ premise of government in the enduring BBC satire Yes Minister. Yet, despite the benefits ultimately conferred by inquiries since, popular cynicism has intensified.

A generalised decline in deference is partly to blame. Lawyers might consider detachment, even aloofness, a desirable characteristic for service on the bench. But Sir Martin Moore-Bick, compelled to go walkabout as chair of the Grenfell Inquiry amid cries of ‘establishment stitch-up’, might attest that detachment works less well in this very different milieu.

The weakness of the inquiries system perhaps lies in its quintessential Britishness. It is ad hoc, opaque, reflexively non-inclusive and circumscribed by 2005 legislation that gives ministers veto powers (see p14). Too often, follow-up is desultory, with reports left to yellow.

One report that ought not to yellow is December’s Institute for Government study. This found that £639m has been spent on inquiries since Yes Minister aired, but government has not done enough with their recommendations. At the very least, it is surely time to look again at the case for a permanent inquiries unit in the Cabinet Office to bring some consistency here.