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That raises the question of privacy as against everything being in public. I had had the impression from what we had read that inquiries in Sweden are largely in private, but I now think that that is not the case. They discuss certain things in private and have other evidence in public. Is there any argument for maybe doing more of an inquiry in private? Would people be more open in their evidence if it were in private?

Yes. I will finish on that note.

Thank you for all the evidence so far. It has been most interesting.

If I may start with yourself, Professor Dahlström, I was interested that there was general public acceptance of the Coronavirus Commission and its results—and it was incredibly quick. It started, as I understand it, in June 2020 and completed in February 2022, which was under two years, and cost very little money.

Sweden was very interesting and a lot of people here felt that we should be copying Sweden, instead of the people that we did copy. In one sense, what your country did was quite controversial and yet the inquiry happened very quickly. Was it too quick? Would there have been an advantage if it had either started a bit later or gone on a bit longer?

The answer to your question whether we think that the present system is working is no. We are doing our inquiry because we think that the system is not working. We are certainly keen to learn from other jurisdictions and so on.

As a comment on what you said, we have certainly had evidence that in one or two inquiries in Scotland, the chair has lost the confidence of almost everyone. Then there is no balance and no comeback because the inquiry is entirely based on the one person. You probably know of the current inquiry from which the chair has resigned. We are still to see how that will be taken forward. It seems to me that a lot is based on the one person. However, I take your point about the cost if we start having a bigger panel and so on.

That leads on to what I was thinking of asking you about. Is it a disadvantage that judges are used to court cases that can go on and on for ever? I should say that I am also an accountant. Lawyers, in my opinion, do not seem to operate within timescales. It will take them as long as it takes. We had the impression from the Australian witness that the royal commissions become like courtrooms. There are lawyers supporting the victims. There are lawyers supporting the police. There are lawyers everywhere. Is that a downside, that too many lawyers are involved?

I am also thinking about who is chairing or whatever. Obviously, you need a person as a chair, but we have the impression that both Australia and Sweden often have a panel or a group or however they describe it, that would include experts or different people who are interested. We seem to be very focused on having one person. The problem with that is that, if the one person resigns, we are back to square one—I do not know where we go. That is happening. Have you views on that? Should the chairing of an inquiry be focused on one person?

I understand that, in both Sweden and Australia, commissions have a number of people on them, not just one chair. Our tendency is to have one chair who does everything. Is having more people on a commission an advantage? We had the example from Australia, I think, of where of a commission was split, so it may not have been helpful there, but do you feel that having a group of people as the commission is better than having one person?

I will ask mainly about finance, but I will start by picking up on a couple of points that have been made.

Professor Sengupta, you said that social workers can be good advocates for children and young people and look for what is in their best interests. I accept that, but the counterargument from some of the young people and from groups such as Who Cares? Scotland seems to be that the advocate’s role is not so much about considering what is best for the child as about what the child wants. I do not know whether you have seen that organisation’s video, but it shows a child who wants to be with their sibling, which a social worker might or might not think is in the child’s best interests. Is there not a difference between advocating for what is best for the child and just putting forward what they want?

I will ask mainly about finance, but I will start by picking up on a couple of points that have been made.

Professor Sengupta, you said that social workers can be good advocates for children and young people and look for what is in their best interests. I accept that, but the counterargument from some of the young people and from groups such as Who Cares? Scotland seems to be that the advocate’s role is not so much about considering what is best for the child as about what the child wants. I do not know whether you have seen that organisation’s video, but it shows a child who wants to be with their sibling, which a social worker might or might not think is in the child’s best interests. Is there not a difference between advocating for what is best for the child and just putting forward what they want?

Okay.