:00:00. > :00:17.The speaker is required to have remarkable qualities.
:00:18. > :00:26.Welcome to the programme. The saddle enquiries into the bloody Sunday
:00:27. > :00:35.shootings in 1972 to 12 years, interviewed 500 witnesses and cost
:00:36. > :00:40.?100 million. This could accomplish faster according to my guest, and he
:00:41. > :00:53.has also looked into the public enquiries which are in danger of
:00:54. > :00:58.being hijacked by lawyers. He has chaired an enquiry all to himself.
:00:59. > :01:04.What are they expected to do, how are they different to a trial? Very
:01:05. > :01:12.simple indeed. They are inquisitions, not adversarial. They
:01:13. > :01:15.are to explain why it happened, how it happened and what, if anything
:01:16. > :01:19.went wrong with the system that was being employed, and the services
:01:20. > :01:27.that are there to support the system. No prosecutor, no defending
:01:28. > :01:34.counsel or anything like that? Absolutely not. Lord Bingham said
:01:35. > :01:42.they are akin to anything unlike the court of law. They are not intended
:01:43. > :01:48.to have witnesses. They are to enquire into the circumstances and
:01:49. > :01:52.are part of public administration and very important too. The idea is
:01:53. > :01:57.to tell the public and the Government what went wrong, take
:01:58. > :02:02.apart how it happened rather than say, he is to blame? Absolutely. The
:02:03. > :02:07.question of who is to blame and who is to be liable for it is a format
:02:08. > :02:15.for the ordinary courts, the civil and criminal courts. But these
:02:16. > :02:21.enquiries are not about that. Our recent political history is dotted
:02:22. > :02:26.with big public enquiries. There has been the Chilcot Inquiry, the Hutton
:02:27. > :02:30.enquiry, dealing with aspects of Iraq. If we look back there was a
:02:31. > :02:36.Scot enquiry in the arms to Iraq affair. There have been various
:02:37. > :02:41.enquiries into child abuse cases over the years. DD successfully to
:02:42. > :02:47.the public what happened in the end? Do they work? I think the answer
:02:48. > :02:53.lies in what Sir Edward Heath said in 1992 when they were setting up
:02:54. > :02:58.the Falklands Islands enquiry. He said we have never been able to find
:02:59. > :03:06.a satisfactory way with dealing with national scandals and public
:03:07. > :03:11.disasters. That was in 1982. The problem is people like me. I have to
:03:12. > :03:21.confess I'm a convert. When I first did public enquiries in the 1980s,
:03:22. > :03:29.Beckford, Carlisle, the cases of people who died, children who
:03:30. > :03:36.died... The Salmon commission demands that witnesses should be
:03:37. > :03:39.represented by lawyers and that they should first make their statements
:03:40. > :03:46.before making their evidence. I was one of the people who thought that
:03:47. > :03:52.was the right system until I did my own enquiries and I began to think
:03:53. > :04:01.they were not the right way, and of course, ultimately, in the 1990s,
:04:02. > :04:07.Lord Scott did the arms to Iraq Inquiry and he had no legal
:04:08. > :04:11.representatives at all. All the questioning of witnesses were done
:04:12. > :04:17.by him and his own counsel. You trace the history of how we got
:04:18. > :04:25.here, and the wrong route involving bloody Sunday. If you go back a
:04:26. > :04:28.century, David Lloyd George, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer got
:04:29. > :04:38.into trouble with shares dealing, the so-called Marconi scandal, but
:04:39. > :04:44.it didn't work very well? Because these enquiries were dealt with by
:04:45. > :04:49.Parliament, there were party lines. Whichever party was in Government,
:04:50. > :04:55.they determined the results of the enquiry which was very
:04:56. > :04:59.unsatisfactory, but the principles set up the modern system worked for
:05:00. > :05:08.different reasons. At that time, they were more concerned about the
:05:09. > :05:11.proper enquiry getting the evidence or the documents it needed to see
:05:12. > :05:19.and the oral evidence of the witnesses. It was about the right
:05:20. > :05:24.procedure, and it adopted that of which the court adopted. One of the
:05:25. > :05:28.things that happened was that they would be a judge residing over them,
:05:29. > :05:30.but it isn't the same thing residing over an enquiry like this compare to
:05:31. > :05:48.a court case? the 20th century were dominated
:05:49. > :05:54.reason for that is nothing to do reason for that is nothing to do
:05:55. > :06:25.with the status of the judge, it is because lawyers are familiar with
:06:26. > :06:25.see whether it is credible, see whether it is
:06:26. > :06:26.reliable, and they are very good for reliable, and they are very good
:06:27. > :06:27.sifting out the factual material, sifting out the factual
:06:28. > :06:27.and that is why very often they do cheer enquiries, although I think
:06:28. > :06:28.now, Sir John Chilcot did the now, Sir John
:06:29. > :06:28.that was done without any lawyers that was done without any
:06:29. > :06:32.being involved. In fact, he did not being involved. In fact, he did not
:06:33. > :06:41.even have his own lawyer to appear to ask questions. He and his panel
:06:42. > :06:47.members did all the questioning. Lawyers seem to become dominant in a
:06:48. > :06:51.lot of these enquiries, and is that partly because if you're a witness
:06:52. > :06:57.in an enquiry and that enquiry might end up accusing you of incompetence
:06:58. > :07:02.that led to people being killed or being a spy or complicit in child
:07:03. > :07:08.abuse or even of killing someone unlawfully, don't you rather need a
:07:09. > :07:12.lawyer, aren't you entitled to protection in those circumstances?
:07:13. > :07:18.Well, it is rather like a comments made about lawyers, I express it by
:07:19. > :07:22.saying they should always be on tap and another on top. They should
:07:23. > :07:36.always be available to advise you and help you, but lawyers tend to
:07:37. > :07:42.dominate, and they have done in the past in relation to enquiries. They
:07:43. > :07:47.are not judicial enquiries, the government ministers, who are
:07:48. > :07:52.responsible for the event, for example Bloody Sunday, the Ministry
:07:53. > :08:02.of Defence was responsible for the Army and Northern Ireland in the
:08:03. > :08:06.1970s, but... They were responsible for everything they did, but it is
:08:07. > :08:13.not a question of finding guilt or innocence. That is a matter for the
:08:14. > :08:16.courts of law, an enquiry is an inquisition into why and how it
:08:17. > :08:26.happened, and to make sure it does not happen again. If individuals are
:08:27. > :08:34.not criticised over an enquiry into something, whatever that is, should
:08:35. > :08:37.you take that on the chin? But fearless is still an important
:08:38. > :08:42.the should be able to give evidence the should be able to give evidence
:08:43. > :08:50.in the enquiry and answer any alleged criticism against them, the
:08:51. > :08:58.enquiries act of 2005, which is now the law, and as a satisfactory piece
:08:59. > :09:04.of legislation, has moved. -- has moved the question of fearless from
:09:05. > :09:09.that stage, from allegations against the person that fearless demands
:09:10. > :09:21.that when the person who chairs the enquiry has drafted his report, if
:09:22. > :09:29.he is criticises him, there is a general duty as a matter of
:09:30. > :09:33.discretion, to tell that person, this is what I think I have to say
:09:34. > :09:41.about your activity. What answer do you have? That is why Sir John
:09:42. > :09:46.Chilcot took nearly two years after he drafted his report asking
:09:47. > :09:57.questions to people who he might have criticised. This is the
:09:58. > :10:02.so-called Maxwellisation process? It is an ugly word. It is simply
:10:03. > :10:08.justice, you're entitled to be told about it if you are to be
:10:09. > :10:12.criticised. Is one law just said years ago, it is like being stated
:10:13. > :10:22.in Parliament that you have misbehaved yourself. You have to
:10:23. > :10:30.suffer the damnation of it but it does not lead to any injury. Let us
:10:31. > :10:46.apply all this to the case of the Jimmy Savile entirely. Why did
:10:47. > :11:10.They came to the conclusion that there should be all these
:11:11. > :11:12.principles, and it became the law as far as practitioners were concerned.
:11:13. > :11:15.I was one of the people who did it, but we became converted very
:11:16. > :11:19.quickly, but it was a great mistake that that was treating these
:11:20. > :11:26.enquiries as if there were some -- they were some offshoot of the legal
:11:27. > :11:33.system, whereas the not akin to any court of law. You did having these
:11:34. > :11:40.enquiries throngs of very expensive lawyers mostly being paid for by the
:11:41. > :11:46.public? There is that to it, but apart from paying for the lawyers,
:11:47. > :11:52.because a lot of expense, a lot of enquiries are conducted in that way.
:11:53. > :12:01.The is just a tonnage of paperwork that is automatically generated?
:12:02. > :12:05.Absolutely, the automation was extremely good in the enquiry, and
:12:06. > :12:12.the evidence was accumulated, and huge amounts of it, but I think most
:12:13. > :12:21.people reckon it would have taken two or three years, not 12 and a
:12:22. > :12:26.half. One of the things about the enquiry was you were going over old
:12:27. > :12:30.ground, there had been an enquiry into Bloody Sunday which was
:12:31. > :12:33.condemned by a lot of people as a whitewash but got the evidence
:12:34. > :12:38.together at the time. So did that enquiry need to read collect the
:12:39. > :12:46.evidence and revisit the whole thing, or could it have taken the
:12:47. > :12:58.evidence and examined it again? Bloody Sunday was unique. The
:12:59. > :13:05.killing took place in 15 minutes after a civil march of three and a
:13:06. > :13:11.half hours, every Tom Dick and Harry of the media was there, journalists
:13:12. > :13:19.galore, television cameras, there was a huge amount of documented the
:13:20. > :13:25.material available, and one of the things I want to see very strongly
:13:26. > :13:31.in the book is we do not pay enough attention to memory. It is quite
:13:32. > :13:40.great that what you saw with your eyes and ears and nose at any time
:13:41. > :13:49.is very important, but as time goes by, it gets distorted. Evidence
:13:50. > :13:53.tends to show, forensic psychologists have shown, that after
:13:54. > :13:57.time it becomes distorted. You hear facts about the event, years later,
:13:58. > :14:05.and Bloody Sunday must've been talked about constantly on the
:14:06. > :14:16.streets of Londonderry in the 1980s and 90s. So giving evidence 40 years
:14:17. > :14:29.after the event, there is a great danger of the evidence being
:14:30. > :14:32.unreliable, you cannot act upon it, and there was evidence from soldiers
:14:33. > :14:37.who were on the march that day, so there was no need to go over all
:14:38. > :14:52.that again and ask those people to give evidence which had been given
:14:53. > :14:56.or not given 30 years ago. If it had been done quicker and more
:14:57. > :14:59.effectively, is there a lesson there for future enquiries? There will be
:15:00. > :15:01.disastrous, miscarriages of justice, scandals, more public enquiries in
:15:02. > :15:11.the future, what should they learn from this? I do hope there is
:15:12. > :15:16.something. One lesson I gather that is very important that the Minister
:15:17. > :15:27.who sets up the enquiry says specifically what he wants. The
:15:28. > :15:30.terms of reference and important. In the Bloody Sunday one, they were
:15:31. > :15:34.asked to look at events and circumstances that took place on the
:15:35. > :15:41.streets of Londonderry that they. They were very unspecific. That is
:15:42. > :15:53.why I think Lord Saville's was minded to do was scurrilous, I think
:15:54. > :15:58.it was a great mistake. In terms of reference -- terms of reference and
:15:59. > :16:07.important, and while Hillsborough is very important, the enquiry held in
:16:08. > :16:11.1989 for four or five months, was extremely good, and that is because
:16:12. > :16:16.Lord Taylor who did the enquiry has given very specific terms of
:16:17. > :16:27.reference concentrating on the control by the police of the crowds
:16:28. > :16:32.at the Sheffield ground. But it did not get to the forged evidence?
:16:33. > :16:36.Interestingly, he reported the failure of the police to control the
:16:37. > :16:41.crowd, then he made one observation, that the police had behaved very
:16:42. > :16:47.badly, and indicated there should be a further examination of police
:16:48. > :16:54.behaviour, but there was some confusion about the notes he wrote,
:16:55. > :16:58.the Home Secretary wrote to Margaret Thatcher and said, why should we
:16:59. > :17:06.welcome the report? There was nothing done about it for 27 years.
:17:07. > :17:13.Some fascinating lessons from the protracted enquiry in the bloody
:17:14. > :17:24.Sandy Case. Thank you again. We will be backs -- in the Bloody Sunday
:17:25. > :17:42.enquiry. We will be back again soon. Thank you again.
:17:43. > :17:49.It is what happens when the Speaker needs MPs to vote on something, a
:17:50. > :17:58.know. Let us just say I was an MP. know. Let us just say I was an MP.
:17:59. > :18:05.If I wanted to vote against whatever was being proposed, I would head to
:18:06. > :18:11.the no lobby. Or that we have I wanted to vote