Lord Norton of Louth (Con)

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken. It has been an excellent debate. I am especially grateful to the Minister for her detailed response. I appreciate enormously what she said about a Joint Committee, and I know we look forward to her updates on the progress of the implementation of the commitments that the Government have made in their response to the committee’s report. I am also grateful to fellow members of the committee, not least those who have spoken today. The report is very much the product of a collective endeavour, drawing on a range of experience and expertise. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, said—the Minister endorsed this—the report demonstrates the strength of this House. I commend the resilience of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, who I believe is speaking in her third debate of the day. I commend the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, on the importance of the independence of the chair of an inquiry. That points to the need for a very effective process for the selection of the chair. I hear what he said about the responsibility of the Commons Select Committees—he would like to give them responsibility for monitoring inquiry report recommendations—but I fear the problem is that the Select Committees in the other place are already overburdened with the tasks that they have to undertake, and I think finding time to do this would be a little too much. My noble friend Lady Finn made some important points about the 2005 Act. As the noble Lord, Lord Carter, stressed, statutory inquiries should not be seen as the gold standard. There is a range on offer and it really is horses for courses, selecting the method that is most appropriate to deal with the particular problem. As I said in opening, reports from public inquiries should be seen as the start of a process, not the end of one, and that applies to Select Committee reports. This report is the basis for action to ensure that public inquiries deliver on what is expected of them. That entails some action on the part of the Government. It also entails action on the part of this House—ideally, as we have discussed, on the part of both Houses, and the Minister will have heard the near-unanimous view of the House on that subject. I think we are agreed that public inquiries need to be more efficient and more effective; I hear the rallying cry of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. We owe it to victims and survivors to deliver these outcomes.