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In his written evidence, John Sturrock KC suggested that

“some sort of oversight and support”

for public inquiries might be necessary. He continued:

“The balance between chair independence from external interference and value for public money is a delicate one.”

There is potential to have an oversight function. Could that be carried out by an independent organisation, such as Audit Scotland, or by somebody who is independent of Government but maintains reference to the public purse?

In her submission, Dr Ireton states that one of the core elements of cost effectiveness is

“Transparent cost and timetable management”.

If you will forgive me for asking a question that relates to you personally, Lord Hardie, Transport Scotland was very resistant to the figure of the fee that you were paid for chairing your inquiry going into the public domain. Did it consult you on the issue, and do you think that that meets the requirement of transparent cost management that Dr Ireton mentioned? The matter should not have needed to be taken to the Scottish Information Commissioner before that information about money being used from the public purse entered the public domain.

Would that have been good enough reason not to have put that important information into the public domain?

I think that you are making the point that it is unnecessary. Let us look at one element that will happen, which is the creation of the national social work agency. There are quite significant costs in relation to building the organisation and creating dedicated human resources, finance and business management functions. On a point of clarification, the financial memorandum notes:

“The costs will be met by repurposing the existing budget allocated to the Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser”.

Are you saying that all the costs will be met by making a saving from the office of the chief social work adviser, or do you anticipate the creation of the new body incurring additional administrative costs?

Footnote 11 says that the estimate is based on a

“Scottish government calculation of replacement care and hospital days avoided”

that used data from between April 2022 and March 2025. However, it then says that the estimate also used results from 2014 that are set out in “Weaver et al”. A lot rests on that modelling, but, if you look up the Weaver study, you see that it involves data that was gathered in Switzerland between 2004 and 2007. Therefore, effectively, the savings estimate is based on census data from Switzerland in those years. From talking to people in the care sector, I know that, since that time, there have been significant changes in, for example, models of care, treatments, the need for hospitalisation and technology in relation to care. Going back to an earlier point, that does not give us much confidence in the estimate. The central element of the proposals is that, presently, unpaid care in Scotland saves £14.3 billion, but that estimate rests on data from Switzerland in 2004, so we should not have a huge amount of confidence in that number.

The other element in relation to value for taxpayers’ money is what is done with an inquiry report. In your submission to us, you argued that, effectively, the reports can

“sit on ministers’ shelves gathering dust”.

What could be done in the future, either by the Parliament or by an external body, to ensure that the lessons that should be learned are acted upon?

Dr Ireton, are there international examples of Governments putting in place a better mechanism to ensure that lessons are learned and then implemented?

Did I hear you correctly? Did you think that it was unreasonable that Transport Scotland did not release the figure or that it was unreasonable that the figure was released?

This question has partly been answered, so I will not dwell too long on it. Ms Dunlop, you identified public inquiries as becoming “the gold standard”, but there is an issue now. Even in relation to the tragic events in Liverpool last night, we can see that levels of public distrust, scepticism and anger are at a relative high, historically. The British social attitudes survey last year showed that the level of trust in Government and institutions is at a historic low.

Is there a case for going back and looking at the Inquiries Act 2005 or the guidance on when the act can be used to trigger a public inquiry in order to find a way that can perhaps better serve the public, rather than the public asking in this atmosphere of distrust for a public inquiry because that is the gold standard? As you rightly identified, we could look at John Sturrock’s review of NHS Highland or Lord Bonomy’s report on infant cremation, for example. Do we need to level with the public and say that there are better ways of doing this, or is it time to go back to the original legislation and the guidance to set a new threshold for the triggering of a public inquiry?

I hate to dampen your optimism, but the other problem is that, when we look back at other Parliaments and other public inquiries, we see that they, too, carried out retrospective analyses that identified the shortcomings that we are identifying here.

For example, the Thirlwall inquiry looked at past recommendations on healthcare issues and found that many had not been acted upon; subsequently, we have seen the same issues happening. The Grenfell tower inquiry recommended that there be

“a publicly accessible record of recommendations made by select committees, coroners and public inquiries”,

which the Government was to use to track the progress of implementation or, otherwise, explain why it had failed to implement recommendations. That has not happened. Moreover, only last year, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee held an inquiry similar to this one, which came to some of the same conclusions that we will, rightly, come to.

One element, which you identified in relation to Jersey, is the scepticism about Government engagement with public inquiries once they are established. However, there should not be a similar level of scepticism about parliamentary engagement in oversight. We do not want to make work for ourselves or be accused of a power grab but, on the basis of your experience so far—not that I want to short-circuit our inquiry—do you think that the Parliament is the solution to some of the problems that we see here? Instead of the Government being in the driving seat, once an inquiry was established, the Parliament would have oversight and an on-going commitment to observing what was happening.