Page 105 - When Things Go Wrong

6.31 In addition, the Working Party recommends that Ministers directly
accountable for the implementation of inquiry and SPI recommendations
should, where recommendations are accepted, be required to report back
to Parliament with an Implementation Plan.

6.32 The Working Party recognises that enacting this recommendation may require
amendment to the Inquiries Act 2005. However, we are of the view that this is
worthwhile: where inquiries cannot themselves monitor implementation; the
Legislature must play a greater role in holding to account the Executive for
implementing the recommendations of inquiries it has itself commissioned.
The production of an Implementation Plan, against which a Department’s
actions might then be assessed, would give select committees a meaningful
reference point when performing this function.

Survivor Testimony

6.33 In addition to “establishing the facts”; “learning from events”; “reassurance”;
and satisfying “political considerations”, Sir Geoffrey Howe’s suggested
“functions” for any public inquiry include “catharsis or therapeutic
exposure”. 301 Inquiries, Howe reasoned, provide an opportunity for
reconciliation and resolution, by bringing protagonists face-to-face with each
other’s perspectives and problems.

6.34 Many of our professional consultees suggested that inquests and inquiries can
serve a cathartic function, but the claim that they actually do so should be
treated with caution. 302 As Working Party member Dr Sara Ryan explained to
us:

301 Kieran Walshe and Joan Higgins, 'The use and impact of inquiries in the NHS' (2002) 325 British
Medical Journal 895, summarising Geoffrey Howe, ‘The Management of Public Inquiries’ (1999) 70
Political Quarterly 294.
302 See also Scraton, supra note 2, p. 379: “‘Closure’, particularly in the context of inadequate
investigations, unreliable evidence, flawed inquests and an inconclusive private prosecution…is an
imposed expectation for the benefit of others” and Jones, supra note 16, p. 3: “People talk too loosely
about closure. They fail to realise that there can be no closure to love, nor should there be for someone
you have loved and lost. Furthermore, grief is a journey without a destination. The bereaved travel
through a landscape of memories and thoughts of what might have been”.
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