Public inquiries 'too adversarial', Manchester Arena judge tells peers

Public inquiries are too adversarial and can go on ‘forever’ because lawyers ask too many questions, the judge who chaired the inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing has told parliamentarians.

Sir John Saunders told the House of Lords constitution committee yesterday that there was ‘something in the criticisms that are made that they are too long, they’re too expensive and they don’t achieve anything. They’re not entirely justified, but we could do something about that’.

Suggesting a more detailed look at scope before an inquiry begins, Saunders said: ‘When an inquiry is set up everybody says, “it will look, in depth, at absolutely everything”. And then when you start, they complain about the length of time it’s taking for you to look at length and depth of everything.’ He also suggested ‘we shouldn’t have too many lawyers involved because they ask lots of questions’.

A ‘firm believer’ that inquiries should be conducted differently, Saunders said: ‘We’re adversarial. I’ve looked at some of the inquiries going on and I think to myself, as Lord Judge would have said, couldn’t you just ask “why?”, “well what happened next?” or something like that. But actually, the inquiry team have worked out in their own mind what the answer is and then like every good adversarial barrister they ask the question which intends to lead to the answer that they've already formulated it should be. It means sometimes it becomes a bit of a public hanging.

‘It also goes on forever because the questions… they spread over pages and pages and pages. In my inquiry, I had to say to the witness periodically, “I’m sure there’s a question coming any minute now”.’

Saunders said the most revealing thing in the Manchester Arena Inquiry ‘came out of a purely chance question… and suddenly the whole picture changed’.

On recommendations being followed up, Saunders held a hearing withing three months of his first report to track progress. He told the committee that a Home Office witness said they had 'never seen so much activity around Whitehall' in the two weeks leading up to the hearing to avoid public humiliation.