A public inquiry?

In the Iraq inquiry openness should be the default position

Public trust in the political process has collapsed in the wake of Expensesgate. If there was ever a time for openness – long established as a principle of good governance – it is now. Transparency is the political watchword of the moment, with all parties committing themselves to full public accountability. Jack Straw last month abandoned retrograde plans for secret inquests. When the government announced its new counter-terrorism strategy earlier this year, Jacqui Smith said that tackling terrorism is ‘no longer something you can do behind closed doors and in secret’. ‘Need to know’ is becoming, rightly, ‘responsibility to provide’.

And yet the Iraq inquiry process, if not the majority of its findings, will be hidden from public view. We are told it will meet in private but publish all except the most sensitive of its conclusions. This is the wrong way around: it should as a rule meet in public and only hear the most sensitive material in camera, where strictly necessary for national security. Openness should be the default position.

In choosing to follow Butler rather than Hutton as its model, the government has made a mistake. The public interest must come first.

How has that public interest been served by the ongoing MG Rover inquiry, initiated by Alan Johnson, which was meant to report, in his words, ‘as quickly as possible’? That inquiry has been conducted in private over the past four years, at a cost of over £14m. It remains unpublished. What use is that to the many in our car industry who have in the meantime lost their jobs?

Let’s put paid to the line that private inquiries are necessarily swifter, or cheaper, than public ones. And let us be honest: a public inquiry held in private is a contradiction in terms.

Andy Hull is Senior Research Fellow in International and Security at the Institute for Public Policy Research

17 Jun 2009 13:32

 

Comments

• Posted by Rachel Briggs on 17 June 2009, 7:25:14 PM This is absolutely spot on. The idea that an inquiry into the Iraq war should be held behind closed doors entirely ignores the reality of security today (i.e. that Government can't do it alone). Our security policy needs to stand up to public scrutiny to have legitimacy - it was in our names that the country was taken into war, and we as citizens therefore need to see and be a part of the inquiry into why our politicians got it so wrong.
• Posted by Stan Rosenthal on 18 June 2009, 2:21:25 PM So the Iraq inquiry is now to be partly in public, as you propose Andy. There will no doubt be mixed feelings in the self-righteous ranks of the anti-war movement. It undermines their charge of a cover-up but gives them the chance to strut their stuff again right up to the election. I'm sure the government will be largely exonerated as it was when other independendent inquiries looked into the matter but enormous damage will be done to our chances of re-election and therefore to the life-chances of ordinary people as divisions in our ranks are exposed on a daily basis (my related comment elsewhere refers). But hey, why should the Left concern themselves about trivial things like that when they have the opportunity take centre-stage again on their favourite issue?