Labour is weaponising public inquries
The UK has a record number of public inquiries, but the government appears to approve them selectively — embracing those that blame ideological opponents while delaying or resisting those that might implicate current ministers, writes Eliot Wilson
Do you know how many public inquiries are currently taking place or agreed in the UK? I’ll tell you: the consensus is 25, of which five have been announced this year alone. This s a record, but since 1997 there have never been fewer than five inquiries in progress, and the past 20 years have seen the creation of 60 new investigations. So it is not unreasonable to ask what is going on and why this is happening.
There are two principal kinds of public inquiry, statutory and non-statutory. The former, which accounts for all but three of the current crop, operates under the provisions of the Inquiries Act 2005 and the Inquiry Rules 2006, giving it the power to compel witnesses to attend and making a presumption that its proceedings will be public. The act attempted to rein in the potential scope, duration and cost of public inquiries, after the Bloody Sunday Inquiry ran for 12 years with a bill of £180 million.
There are — or should be — two basic purposes for a public inquiry. One is to scrutinise the event to determine accountability and responsibility: who got things wrong? The second is to understand how things went wrong to learn lessons for the future. Both of these are important: public authorities will always make mistakes but should not make the same mistake twice, and inquiries are a vital part of preventing that.
Legislation means that public inquiries can only be set up with ministerial consent. And that is where things get interesting, especially over the last year or so.
There are some inevitable subjects. The Covid-19 pandemic was significant enough to justify not only a probe into the UK government’s response to the disease, chaired by Baroness Hallett, but also Lord Brailsford’s inquiry into Covid-19 in Scotland. Equally, public outrage at the Post Office Horizon IT scandal demanded that an inquiry was set up in 2020.
The ability to allow or refuse an inquiry means we should look carefully at ministers’ decisions. The current administration agreed to an inquiry into the circumstances which led to Valdo Calocane, a patient suffering from mental illness, killing three people in Nottingham in 2023. That was not on Labour’s watch so might be considered safe territory.
The inquiry into the “Battle” of Orgreave fulfilled a Labour manifesto commitment: the clash between police and striking miners is one of the Thatcher government’s many sins in the left-wing parable of the Miners’ Strike. Looking again at the murder of Patrick Finucane, a Belfast solicitor killed by Loyalist paramilitaries in 1989, reflected the government’s willingness to see almost any offence against Nationalists or Republicans re-examined, despite its studied lack of curiosity about the crimes of the IRA and other Republican terrorists.
Easy wins
These inquiries were all easy wins for the government: no blame, no accountability. Others have been more challenging.
An inquiry into the July 2024 Southport stabbings was not agreed until after the murderer, Axel Rudakubana, was convicted in January 2025; this is more sensitive as the attacks took place under Sir Keir Starmer, and the government was heavily criticised for how it handled the tragedy. Days after the announcement, then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper attacked the part played by social media, already widening the circle of responsibility.
Then there is the horrifying case of grooming gangs. Starmer rejected calls for a public inquiry for months, before eventually allowing an “audit” by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. It was not until this June, when Casey concluded there should be a national inquiry, that the Prime Minister gave his approval; two candidates for its chair withdrew after criticism by victims’ groups; and the Minister for Safeguarding, Jess Phillips, fell foul of some survivors, and she did her cause no good with a series of aggressively defensive public responses to criticism.
The government has given the impression it would rather do anything than see this inquiry get underway. One theory is that ministers are uncomfortable with questions being asked about the ethnicity of alleged abusers, another that many of the offences happened in areas with Labour local authorities. The delays and confusion have done nothing to dispel this sense of reluctance.
In August, the Prime Minister refused to grant a public inquiry into the 1994 Chinook helicopter crash on the Mull of Kintyre which killed 29 people, including almost all of the senior intelligence experts on Northern Ireland. The cause is unknown, and in October the Chinook Justice Campaign presented a petition signed by more than 50,000 people to Downing Street.
The government clearly has no principled objection to public inquiries. A lingering sense remains that it is happy for them to happen if they will find fault with others or satisfy left-wing campaigns, but has been more resistant concerning issues which might involve current ministers or which garner few plaudits in progressive thought. Do striking miners make better “victims” than dead spooks?
Keir Starmer is an astonishingly blank politician, almost impossible to read. So we have to judge him by his actions and inactions. The suspicion that Labour might be weaponising inquiries to demonstrate virtue and resisting them to evade accountability comes from choices he has made. But it is no way to run a government.
Eliot Wilson is awriter and historian; Senior Fellow for National Security, Coalition for Global Prosperity; Contributing Editor, Defence on the Brink