Contribution
My Lords, coming towards the end of this debate, I will not repeat points made in the truly excellent speeches we have heard across the House. I am going to focus on a slightly different aspect, which is none the less very relevant to the spirit of the Bill and merits becoming part of the letter of it. The Bill will impose a duty on authorities to
“act with candour, transparency and frankness in their dealings with inquiries”.
They will be statutorily required to act with accountability and openness. The Bill applies to government Ministers and government departments, but there is one respect in which the Government will not be required to act with such candour, transparency and accountability, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. Despite the vast sums of taxpayers’ money spent on statutory and non-statutory inquiries, the Government are not required to be open with the public or give reasons if they decide not to implement inquiry recommendations.
The UK has spent at least £1.5 billion on completed inquiries since 1990, with active ongoing inquiries continuing to cost taxpayers upwards of £200 million a year. These are eye-watering sums of taxpayers’ money. How can a Government be free to spend millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, of pounds of taxpayers’ money on an inquiry initiated because of “public concern”, and then be under no obligation even to give reasons to the public for rejecting its recommendations? The NAO has estimated that 55% of inquiry recommendations are not accepted by the Government, or, somewhat equivocally, are “accepted in principle” but with no recorded follow-up. This is extraordinary when an inquiry’s recommendations are made on the basis of months or years of painstaking evidence-gathering to establish the facts and hear from experts.
For the Government then to be able to hold back the reasons for declining to accept the inquiry’s recommendations demonstrates a lack of accountability which is entirely at odds with this Public Office (Accountability) Bill now before us. Let us compare recommendations in prevention of future deaths reports issued by coroners. The Government are under a statutory duty to respond within 56 days and to give reasons if they choose not to implement them. Like inquests, inquiries are also often initiated because of events which have resulted in fatalities, so there is no good reason why there should be this disparity with coroners’ prevention of future deaths reports.
Our Solicitor-General seems to be of a similar mind. At Report in the other place, just a week or so before he was appointed, he tabled amendments to the Bill requiring a review of the merits of a new independent oversight body to collate, analyse and follow up on the conclusions and recommendations of inquiries and inquests to improve implementation of them. He said,
“At present, there is a critical gap in accountability between the issuing of a report or recommendation and its eventual implementation … There needs to be candour and transparency in how public authorities respond to, and act on, findings and recommendations … otherwise, these costly, lengthy legal processes are futile”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/7/26; cols. 824-25.]
In 2024, the House of Lords Select Committee on inquiries, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, made a similar recommendation and suggested a new Joint Select Committee of Parliament which would publish inquiry reports and government responses and monitor the implementation of recommendations. It is a point mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy. That committee also recommended that the Government be under a duty to give reasons for not implementing inquiry recommendations. In a Bill about openness and accountability in relation to inquiries, the duty to give such reasons should be front and centre. The public should at the very least be entitled to know why the Government have not implemented particular recommendations. It is not asking much.