Page 26 - When Things Go Wrong

to remember where your primary loyalty is”. We anticipates that building in
51
a “buffer period” of secondment immediately following a public inquiry could
provide members of the inquiry team with some certainty of destination and
lessen the chances of them finding themselves in an invidious position on
return to their “home” Government Department(s).

2.19 We recommend that Civil Service Human Resources works to ensure that
such a period is recognised as a valuable element of civil service career
progression.

Functions

2.20 While the Working Party does not consider that the Cabinet Office’s
responsibilities in this area could or should eclipse the role of individual
inquiry teams, we think that the Central Inquiries Unit should advise
inquiry secretariats on best practice in the set up for both public inquiries
and our recommended special procedure inquest (see paras 2.40-2.85 and
Annexe). This will involve updating and maintaining publicly available
‘Inquiries Guidance’ for use by sponsoring Departments, chairs and inquiry
teams.

2.21 We consider that the Central Inquiries Unit should also have a role in ensuring
that “lessons learned” papers are completed by inquiries secretaries and
that it should analyse and disseminate core findings from completed
lessons learned papers.

2.22 We also consider that the Central Inquiries Unit would be particularly well-
placed to conduct standardised procurement exercises, obtaining a set of
contracts covering, inter alia, electronic systems for document management
and transcription of live evidence before the establishment of any particular
inquiry. This would help avoid the inconsistency of approach that has
beleaguered previous inquiries, with some having “bought new custom-made

51 Public Administration Select Committee, supra note 44, para 160.
19