Personal View: Are public inquiries losing their independence?

Public inquiries have played an important part in the NHS in recent years. Several major failures in our healthcare services have been subjected to independent, public investigations, and the reports from those inquiries have had a wide ranging impact on health policy (Health Affairs 2004;23(3): 103-11 and BMJ 2002;325: 895-900 [PubMed]). Just before the UK elections in May 2005, the Inquiries Act 2005 slipped almost unnoticed on to the statute book. The government presented the act as primarily an exercise in legislative housekeeping—replacing the outdated Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act of 1921 and provisions for inquiries in various sector specific legislation like the NHS Act 1977, with a single, clear, and coherent set of provisions for establishing and undertaking public inquiries. The new Inquiries Act gives government ministers unprecedented powers In reality, the new Inquiries Act gives government ministers unprecedented powers over the initiation, conduct, funding, staffing and direction of public inquiries. Ministers now set up inquiries by order (they used to have to seek a resolution in both Houses of Parliament); ministers appoint the inquiry chair and panel, and can add to or change appointments at any time; ministers write the inquiry terms of reference, and can change those terms of reference at any time; ministers can suspend inquiries, or terminate them early; ministers control inquiry funding and can withhold funding from activities that they consider to be outside the inquiry's terms of reference; ministers can restrict public access to inquiry hearings; and ministers (rather than inquiry chairs) are responsible for publishing inquiry reports and they can withhold parts of those reports from publication.​publication. Figure 1 Inquiries are likely to be more cautious and narrowly focused Credit: PHIL NOBLE/PA/EMPICS Overall, these changes seem designed to reduce the independence of future public inquiries, and to provide the government with a host of mechanisms for controlling inquiries at every step. This is a considerable departure from past practice, in which the government took the decision to establish an inquiry and set its remit but then played absolutely no part in its subsequent development and progress, which were wholly in the hands of the inquiry chair. Will this make for better public inquiries? It has been proposed that inquiries have six main purposes—establishing the facts, learning from events, providing catharsis for stakeholders, reassuring the public and rebuilding confidence, making people and organisations accountable, and serving the political interests of government (Political Quarterly 1999;70(3): 294-304). It seems that the new Inquiries Act certainly fits that final purpose, but at some cost to the others. It may be more difficult to find senior people with the skills needed to chair public inquiries, given the constraints now placed upon them. Inquiries are likely to be more cautious and narrowly focused affairs, less able to pursue important issues which arise during the inquiry but which are not explicitly part of their original remit. Stakeholders are less likely to trust in the impartiality of inquiries when government ministers are able to influence proceedings from behind the scenes, and so it is less likely that inquiries will produce cathartic exposure and closure for people who were involved or affected. The most fundamental and important characteristic of public inquiries in the United Kingdom has been their independence. By owing no allegiance to any stakeholder and especially not to the government that sets them up, and by having the freedom to investigate openly and impartially and to report without censorship, inquiries have been able to build consensus and command widespread support for their findings and recommendations. It remains to be seen whether this government, by taking so many new legislative powers to control and direct public inquiries, has stripped them of the independence and impartiality that was so central to their purpose.