Throughout
the twentieth century, administrations have wrestled with allaying public
concern over national disasters and social scandals. This book seeks to
describe historically the use of public inquiries, and demonstrates why their
methods continued to deploy until 1998 the ingrained habits of lawyers,
particularly by issuing warning letters in order to safeguard witnesses who
might be to blame. Under the influence of Lord Justice Salmon, the vital
concern about systems and services allotted to social problems was relegated to
the identification of individual blameworthiness. The book explains why the
last inquiry under that system, into the events of 'Bloody Sunday' under Lord
Saville's chairmanship, cost £200 million and took twelve and a half years
(instead of two years). 'Never again', was the Government's muted cry as the
method of investigating the public concern was eventually replaced by the
Inquiries Act 2005, by common consent a good piece of legislation. The
overriding principle of fairness to witnesses was confirmed by Parliament to
those who are 'core participants' to the event, but with limited rights to
participate. The public inquiry, the author asserts, is now publicly
administered as a Commission of Inquiry, and is correctly regarded as a branch of
public administration that focuses on the systemic question of what went wrong,
as opposed to which individuals were to blame.
Here’s the Table
of Contents:
Part I:
Public Inquiries: Introduction
1. Concern
for Scandals and Disasters
2. Early
Beginnings: Corruption and Maladministration
Part II:
The Principles of Public Inquiries
3. The
Royal Commission on Tribunals of Inquiry 1966 (the Salmon Commission)
4. The
Jurisprudence of Public Inquiries
Part III:
Bloody Sunday; Second Time Around 1998–2010
5. The
Wrong Turn in 1998: A Final Dose of Inappropriate Legalism
6. The
Lapse of Time: Assessment of Evidence
7. The
Unexplained Circumstances
Part IV:
The Inquiries Act 2005
8. An
Analysis of the Act of 2005: An Aspect of Public Administration
9. The
Chairing of Commissions: Horses for Courses
10. Counsel
to the Inquiry, Statutory and Non-statutory
11.
Safeguards for Witnesses
12.
Chilcot-Maxwellisation-Saville: The Problem of Delay
13. Model
Inquiries: Hillsborough (1989) and Litvinenko (2015)
Part V:
Final Thoughts
14.
Conclusion
15.
Postscript-Lessons Learned, or Another Wrong Turn?
You can
read more about the book here.
