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Indeed, but, as Mr Mason pointed out to the previous panel, every document has to be looked at. We are trying to conduct this investigation, if you want to call it that, in a matter of weeks as well as doing all the other things that we have to do as MSPs and so on. One issue that the committee is considering is that time does not seem to be much of a factor in these inquiries. Lord Hardie talked about an inquiry that he chaired that lasted nine years, for example. The Scottish Covid-19 inquiry, which you are involved in, Mr Pugh, has already taken three and a half years, and the UK inquiry has taken four years. More than £200 million has been spent in total, with no end in sight. The Australian Covid-19 inquiry lasted a year and cost £4 million. Was what was delivered any less impactful for the people who had concerns about what happened to their loved ones?

What kind of oversight is there of fees? Do people just put in an invoice? Who checks that the invoice is correct, for example?

Ms Dunlop, since 2019,

“the Cabinet Office has run an Inquiries Unit, whose remit is for the whole of the UK, including Scotland, to help share best practice. ”

How has that impacted the sharing of best practice among on-going public inquiries?

Before I open the discussion to colleagues around the table, I have one final question for you, Mr Pugh. The actions of Government departments, public bodies and others who engage with a public inquiry play a significant role and can contribute significantly to rising costs and extended timelines, which undermines inquiries’ effectiveness and public confidence. In the inquiries that you have been involved in, have you experienced that at all?

I am sorry to interrupt. That is what the legislation says, but I have raised concerns in the committee that, in the inquiries that we have been looking into, there does not seem to have been anything to restrict costs, as far as we can see.

In the Scottish Covid-19 inquiry, for example, the senior counsel, whether they were a member of the Faculty of Advocates or a solicitor, was limited to £200 an hour in fees. I do not know what the fees are for the Bayoh case, for example, but we know that it would not be £200 an hour, because the junior counsel would be a lot less expensive. That would involve 85,000 hours of legal fees just for the police. That is like everyone in Hampden being interviewed for an hour, and there would still be 30,000 people left over.

Laypeople looking at inquiries do not see any cost control. They see that things grow arms and legs. They see that that particular inquiry is costing tens of millions of pounds and that it has lasted five or six years. Other inquiries have lasted longer. Where is the justice at the end of that, from whichever perspective you are looking—from the Police Scotland perspective or from the other perspective? It seems to be a phenomenally expensive process. Can there be any possible positive outcome at the end of it, one wonders, relative to how that money could be spent elsewhere, as the police say?

Yes, because that is quite a substantial part of the update that you have provided—your table shows that that element will cost between £97.1 million and £160.9 million a year. We are talking about needing quite a few people.

That is interesting. Thank you.

As I said earlier, I will give each of you the opportunity, as I always do at the end of evidence sessions, to raise any issues that you wish to raise and have not had the opportunity to do so.

Good. Thank you very much. Mr Pugh?

Dr Ireton, do you think that people are wildly optimistic when they set out the timescale and the cost of inquiries? I have rarely seen an inquiry come in at a cost that even approximates what was initially budgeted for in either time or funding. However, that does not seem to be the case in other jurisdictions. For example, Australia, which I do not think is wildly different from Scotland as a country, had a Covid inquiry that began in September 2023, finished 13 months later and cost £4 million, whereas the UK inquiry has cost well over £160 million already and has been going on for four years, while Scotland’s Covid inquiry has cost £34 million and has been going on for three and a half years. Surely we can learn from elsewhere how to deliver these more effectively and efficiently in order to have a less debilitating impact on taxpayers.

Yes, but, in other jurisdictions, how are the inquiries received by the people on behalf of whom an inquiry is established? They are looking for justice, and there is a perception that they have not received it. My understanding is that, if an inquiry drones on for five or 10 years, the initial impetus is lost. As you will be well aware, once an inquiry report is delivered, the Government of the day, whether it is the UK Government or the Scottish Government, might agree to implement a host of recommendations, of which a proportion, at best, might be implemented a year or two—or five years—later.

There surely must be an element of frustration when an inquiry has taken years and cost a fortune and has resulted in an outcome that might not necessarily be better. Do you think that the UK’s approach results in a better outcome than the punchier inquiries that have cost less and been delivered in a timescale that most laypeople—normal people, if you like—think is realistic? If someone says that they are really keen for a public inquiry to look at X, Y or Z, they do not expect to be told, “Okay, we might have a result for you in five or 10 years.” Even though inquiries can drag on for years, people do not think that that will happen at the start; they all think that a public inquiry will come up with an answer perhaps in the next year or the year after.

How do those shorter inquiries deliver? Following the Australian inquiry into what happened during the Covid pandemic, is there still a level of dissatisfaction, or have people put that to bed and moved on with their lives? Do you get what I am trying to say here? What are we getting as a result of our different approach?