Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Inquiry into the recommendations of the Infected Blood Inquiry (Stage 1), HC 113
Tuesday 30 June 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 30 June 2026.
Members present: Simon Hoare (Chair); Richard Baker; Charlotte Cane; Sam Carling; Peter Lamb; John Lamont; Richard Quigley; and Luke Taylor.
Questions 103 to 148
Witnesses
I: Sir Brian Langstaff, Chair of the Infected Blood Inquiry, and Jenni Richards KC, Counsel to the Infected Blood Inquiry.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Sir Brian Langstaff and Jenni Richards KC.
Q103 Chair: Order. Good morning, colleagues, to this session of our Committee, where we are looking into the recommendations of the infected blood inquiry. We are grateful and pleased to be joined by Sir Brian Langstaff, the former chair of the infected blood inquiry, and Jenni Richards KC, former counsel to the infected blood inquiry. We are very grateful to you both for finding the time to appear before us this morning.
I put on the record, on behalf of the Committee and Parliament, if no other Committee has done so, our thanks for the work you did on that inquiry. You will know from the testimony you heard how important it is to so many constituents up and down the country. That was an important piece of work, and we thank you for all that you did.
I will kick off the questions, first to Sir Brian and then, Ms Richards, please chip in. What is you overall assessment of the balance of the different types of inquiries, their efficacy and the number being held? Do you have any thoughts on ways to make them leaner, meaner, faster and more focused? Anything in that sphere would be enormously helpful to us.
Sir Brian Langstaff: I read—I can’t remember the source—in the past few days that the breakdown between statutory and non-statutory inquiries, just limiting it to that sort of inquiry, was about 80% statutory and 20% non-statutory.
Of course, that does not deal with other forms of inquiry that populate the landscape, such as those of coroners and ombudsmen, to the extent that they get involved in something that might be called an inquiry. Or take the recent rail crash, where the investigations branch of the rail industry is there and active, producing a “reasons why” statement fairly quickly.
There are all sorts of different inquiries. What I think you are focusing on—tell me if I am wrong—are the two types, the statutory and the non-statutory inquiry. The best way to start is to say that no one size fits all. Whatever may be most appropriate to the issues in question is the better model. I was interested in what Lord Norton had to say to you about the difference.
I am not convinced myself that there is necessarily a greater formality about statutory inquiries. True it is that they are governed by the Inquiries Act 2013 and the inquiries rules. They give a lot of flexibility but a degree of prescription. What they prescribe is, generally speaking, in the area of fairness. Fairness is essential for any form of inquiry.
What has been criticised for taking time—and it does—is the iteration between the chair producing a report and the people who may be criticised in that report towards the end of the inquiry in a process that used to be called Salmonisation. That is now statutory for a statutory inquiry, but it is essential for fairness. If you are going to criticise someone in a public arena, where they have no opportunity afterwards to answer back, where your word is likely to be taken as the last word, they need to have a chance to put their side of the argument. It is only fair to do so. I don’t see any easy way of getting out of that.
A feature of statutory inquiries is that they tend to be the bigger ones. It is difficult to think, for instance, that you could possibly have run the infected blood inquiry as a non-statutory inquiry. What made the difference in the findings that we were able to make and the findings, for example, that Lord Archer of Sandwell had tried to make in the early decade of the century was that we could command access to documents.
We could command the presence of witnesses, absent only for good reasons that I need not go into; they are obvious. There may be reasons why a witness is no longer—probably because of the effects of time—available to give reliable evidence. You couldn’t really envisage that being done in a non-statutory way, and I think those who were centrally involved in the inquiry were encouraged by the thought that they had the framework in the statute to rely on.
I think also that it is a mistake to think that a non-statutory inquiry is so informal that it can, for instance, ride roughshod over the obligations for disclosure, which are contained in various statutory requirements outside the Inquiries Act. But we had to be very sensitive to the revealing of details in documents and for people. The more documents you have, the more risk there is that something slips out that shouldn’t. It will cause—can cause—immeasurable distress and harm.
In summary, I don’t think that you can necessarily say anything about an inquiry in which those participating have access to the chair and panel in a more informal way than those in a statutory inquiry—it all depends on how the chair runs it, and that is essentially looking at the question of engagement. Ideally, all inquiries should place an emphasis on engaging with those affected by them. They should be open and transparent, and part of that is letting people know how things are going and what is happening next—keeping them informed. We had a system for that; not all inquiries do.
Q104 Chair: My next question flows from that. You are an experienced advocate, senior in the court processes. You have chaired this inquiry.
With that combined professional experience and engagement, have you given any thought to how one might arrive at the set of inquiry recommendations back to Government or whomever, but via a different route? So you arrive at the destination, but you use a different route, which is outwith an inquiry, be it statutory or non-statutory, and which could be quicker, less costly, and more timely in terms of arriving at recommendations to then lead on to implementation.
Sir Brian Langstaff: I am hesitating to answer that, because I think it all depends on the nature of what the inquiry is looking at. There are some inquiries where you will want to have a very quick response, because public safety is potentially at risk. For something like the Manchester Arena or Grenfell, you would think that as soon as you are confident enough in the facts that you can see to know that there is a recommendation that can be made, it should be made.
For us in the infected blood inquiry, the interim recommendation that we made, about paying £100,000 as an interim payment to a particular category of those infected, who were easy to identify, was pretty essential because people did not have long to live.
The inquiry was bound to last a bit longer and people, in the interim, were dying. So I couldn’t, in all conscience, let it go. I think you will find that most inquiry chairs would have the same feeling. The inquiry is for the public, so if something arises where the public can be helped here and now, they should be.
The other side of that coin, by the way, is that the Department that calls the inquiry—and obviously, if it is the Cabinet Office, the Cabinet unit—will be following the inquiry, and they too should be alert to anything that they think needs to be adjusted for the time being. Time should not stand still while the inquiry is waiting—they should be getting on with reality.
Q105 Chair: You are persuaded that there are mechanisms to arrive at interim solutions—yes, super. Ms Richards, do you have any thoughts on that?
Jenni Richards: One of the reasons our inquiry took the length of time that it did was that it was taking place over two decades later than it should have done. One of the matters that will enable inquiries to be quicker and to produce recommendations more quickly is if they are set up in a timely fashion, and if decisions are taken when they should be, nearer the key event. That would be one factor.
I agree, in relation to the distinction between statutory and non-statutory inquiries, that everything depends upon the subject matter of the inquiries. There will be plenty of inquiries that lend themselves perfectly well to being non-statutory and to having a greater degree of flexibility, but there will be others that, by their nature, will require a statutory inquiry for the process of hearings taking place in public in the interests of transparency, delivering justice and answering questions.
Q106 John Lamont: You recommended that if there is sufficient support within Parliament, there should be a mechanism by which a question is put to PACAC—this Committee—to consider whether the inquiry should proceed or not. How do you envisage that mechanism working in practice?
Sir Brian Langstaff: In terms of the calling of the inquiry?
John Lamont: Yes. In terms of how we would go from somebody calling for an inquiry, that coming to Parliament and arriving with the Committee, and what sort of factors we might want to consider.
Sir Brian Langstaff: Sometimes there is a set of facts that calls out for an inquiry—it is difficult to define, but it is not difficult to recognise when it happens. It is to do with the scale of the harm, the scale of the event that has happened and the degree of surprise that is reflected.
As parliamentarians, you will be aware that a number of MPs will be raising issues that may create a groundswell of opinion that something should be investigated. You will have to look at that and ask whether it could or should be dealt with a lot more quickly, to take the Chair’s point, by another means.
An inquiry is not really suitable for issues that are purely policy or can be debated, where the facts are known. More usually, it happens where the facts or the conclusion drawn from the facts are so surprising that they need some explanation, and the existing systems—the courts, parliamentary debate, the media or whatever—cannot provide those answers. It is an essential part of justice to have an inquiry to establish the facts, look at the circumstances and come to answers. As part of the sense of when an inquiry is suitable, I would hope that people would have in mind whether the inquiry is likely to be in a position to make recommendations.
Not all inquiries make recommendations—the Baha Mousa inquiry, for instance, concluded that nothing went wrong, except in the case of a solicitor who was defrocked as a result. That inquiry served the function of satisfying people that justice had been done, although no recommendation came out of it.
Normally I would expect that the Minister setting up the inquiry would have in mind that there should be scope for doing things better as a state and, in some inquiries, preserving public safety better, which is after all a central—if not the central—function of Ministers and Government.
Q107 John Lamont: Under the current system, it is at the discretion of the Minister and the Government whether an inquiry happens. Under your proposal for PACAC, for this Committee to consider it, would it need to be more formalised in terms of the thresholds, outcomes and the different scenarios you described?
Sir Brian Langstaff: There is a danger in having guidelines that are criteria. Guidelines should be guidelines, not tramlines. It is possible to identify guidelines and the sorts of events that might suit an inquiry—suit a judge-led, rather than a non-judge led, a statutory or non-statutory inquiry. The important thing to recognise at the outset is that inquiries are of very different sorts. My evidence is naturally framed in one of the largest, potentially evidentially most difficult, inquiries that there has been. It is not representative of all inquiries, which has to be borne in mind.
Q108 John Lamont: Ms Richards, do you have any thoughts on this?
Jenni Richards: One way of formalising the process a little more than simply having groundswells of support among Members of Parliament, might be an expectation that, if a Minister says no to an inquiry, whether statutory or non-statutory, there is a requirement and expectation that they set out a reasoned explanation why they are saying no to that particular inquiry.
That could serve two functions. One would be to ensure that those victims, families, supporters and survivors understand the reasons and can make representations through their Member of Parliament. The other could be that such written refusals come before this Committee. That would enable this Committee at least to take an initial view on whether there is something to see here—something further to look at and ask questions about—or whether it seems a clear and straightforward explanation of why a Minister-convened inquiry is not though appropriate. That would be one way this Committee could be seized of the matter.
Q109 John Lamont: So that would not be the power to reverse the decision, but the power to scrutinise more closely the reasons behind that decision.
Jenni Richards: Absolutely—to provide independent oversight and scrutiny. In our inquiry, individual MPs had raised faithfully their constituents’ concerns over decades, but the reasons given were “defensive and uninformative”, which is a direct quote from Sir Brian’s report. There was nowhere else for those infected and affected to go, other than judicial review, which offers limited opportunities for challenge.
If those people had that reasoned decision, this Committee could advise, analyse, call the Minister before them and, yes, bring a degree of independent oversight and scrutiny, rather than necessarily vesting the power to decide on the holding of an inquiry on to this Committee. That would clearly require a substantial amendment to primary legislation.
Q110 Chair: You just mentioned judicial review. Is there a risk, if there were to be the formalised system you just set out, of perpetual application for judicial review from those who did not support the Minister’s decision? That is presuming the Minister’s decision was negative: “I am not going to have an inquiry of any type.”
The system we have at the moment may be imperfect—I don’t think many people would argue that it is perfect—but is there a risk that one just creates another hamster wheel going round and round?
Jenni Richards: I do not think that is very likely. Under the pre-existing system, a group of individuals could still choose to judicially review a decision not to hold a public inquiry, albeit they might not have very clear reasons that had been explained to them. Judicial reviews are difficult; most people will not be eligible for funding and they have to be brought promptly, or in any event within three months, so it is unlikely.
Q111 Chair: Does that risk go up, or the unlikeliness become potentially more likely, if a Minister has had to set out in writing—let’s say in a written ministerial statement to Parliament—“I, the Minister, have decided not to, and the basis for my decision is: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.”? That is a decision that could then be cross-examined through this Committee directly, with the Minister having had to set it out, rather than what we have at the moment—you are a KC; I am not—where there must be a greater risk of a judicial review.
Jenni Richards: I would have thought that if PACAC, or indeed another Committee, is performing an oversight and scrutiny function, the prospect of a judicial review would be reduced, because that would be seen by the courts as an alternative remedy, and probably a more appropriate way of holding Ministers to account.
Q112 Chair: Even if the applicant for the JR was challenging the factual basis upon which the Minister had based their decision?
Jenni Richards: It is very difficult to challenge the factual basis of a decision in judicial review—very difficult indeed.
Chair: That is very helpful—thank you.
Q113 Richard Quigley: You have further recommended that this Committee consider recommending to Ministers that an inquiry be held if there is sufficient concern to justify one. How do you think this Committee could make the assessment that there is sufficient concern? What do we need to be capable of seeing?
Sir Brian Langstaff: You have to be alert to what is being said around Parliament. Parliament itself will no doubt reflect what is being said to parliamentarians from their constituencies, or members of the House of Lords from their general experience. There will be a sense that something has happened. Normally you know, because people do know if there has been a disaster of some sort that may require investigation, such as Piper Alpha or Aberfan; or a situation comes to light where it looks as though people who have had babies have not been treated appropriately, which in turn may lead to one of a number of inquiries that have taken place.
There will be a sense, I think, but if you are looking for guidelines, as I think you are, you need to have a sense of the scale of the harm and the importance to the public, because this is a statutory public inquiry. Public means “in public”, but it also means “for the public”, and points to the role it serves for the public in identifying and putting right things that have gone wrong in the public sphere. Public administration is what links it in particular to PACAC. You would also have in mind what would make it not appropriate, because that is the counterfoil. What would make it not appropriate would be if the matter looked much more suited to a court case or an individual report, or simply to policy debate.
Those are the considerations that will be in the mind of any member of the Committee. A matter is ripe for discussion, and if PACAC forms the view that this is something on which the Minister should be invited to have an inquiry, it will do so—or at least it will ask the Minister to—and if he or she gives a response, you will then be in a position to say, “Well, let’s examine that response.”
Q114 Richard Quigley: Thank you for that. Do you think this Committee would need any expertise in particular? Would there be something like the Sir Brian test to say, “This has met a threshold for inquiry”? The danger is that we would all identify a series of emails and we might say, “Yes, we’ve all got 40 on this particular subject,” but Ms Cane might have one issue that we have not heard of, which we might feel is worthy of an inquiry. I am concerned that we might get carried away when it becomes the Committee’s responsibility.
Sir Brian Langstaff: I think you would be in a good position to judge if too many inquiries have been called for, which I think may be the underlying fear. In a sense, in the situation that we are talking about PACAC is acting as something of a gatekeeper. It may be of assistance to developing trust in politics that there is a body independent of the decision makers and administration that may be called into question in an inquiry saying that something is not appropriate for an inquiry.
Q115 Richard Quigley: Committees already bring issues to Ministers, and I think that the Chair of this Committee has done a very good job of doing that.
Chair: I will send you that fiver later, Richard.
Richard Quigley: Only a fiver? Crikey, it is not the 1960s.
Sir Brian, are you suggesting a different approach from the current one? That is not a trick question, but do you feel that the current system of just highlighting issues to Ministers is insufficient?
Sir Brian Langstaff: Highlighting issues is something which, as Ms Richards was pointing out, happened in our inquiry over a long time and the responses which came back were defensive and unhelpful. Indeed, that reflected a lot of the civil service approach at the Department of Health, which came in for criticism in the report, as you will have realised. There you had different Ministers—because it was not party political—who were presiding over a Department that just did not want to know.
How PACAC would have dealt with that—had it had the power to do so in this counterfactual world—would have been to look at the degree of concern being expressed and to ask the Minister to reconsider. If the Minister said no, then you would want them to come to the inquiry and explain why. In that way it is public, transparent, open and there is accountability.
You are also in a position to say, “Well, thank you for that, but we think those reasons are thin,” and you can say that in your report. Alternatively, you may say that the reasons are sound. Either way, people out there will realise that the Government have been properly held to scrutiny by Parliament, which is part of the function of PACAC.
Q116 Richard Quigley: Thank you for that. It is a concern of ours that we miss a Horizon or an infected blood scandal because so much information comes before this Committee. I suppose it is a question of what guardrails you can put in place to say, “Look, it does not really matter what the Department is telling you, this is a serious issue, and we are going to take the bull by the horns.” Is there any advice you would give on that?
Sir Brian Langstaff: It is difficult to give advice in a vacuum without knowing what the situation is. There are some conclusions that I think you are almost bound to reach when looking at the facts. The touchstones—the guidelines—may be that it is something that has had a really serious impact and that the public are concerned about.
It may be that you are responsive to what is been put in the media—which can be a good judge of where public opinion is. They may have particular views of their own, which you will recognise as singular. However, where a lot of the media are united in saying, “Look, something has gone wrong here, and we really need to know what and why,” which is effectively what happened with infected blood, you might decide that you should have an inquiry.
It is worth noting that in America there was a form of congressional inquiry held by the Institute of Medicine in 1995; in Canada there was a commission of inquiry that reported in 1995. Those were two countries, of course, where a lot of the product that caused harm in many cases was produced. There again you would say, “Well, they’re having an inquiry. This is something of the same problem, although it is a different nation and a different culture, we may have different infection rates and so on. Why aren’t we having one here?”
Jenni Richards: On your first question about what kind of criteria or guidance you might be looking at, I absolutely agree that the nature and scale of the harm will be a critical factor, but also whether there are potential unanswered how and why questions. How did this harm of this nature and scale come to occur?
Why has this state of affairs arisen? Those were the questions that were never really asked until 2017-18 in relation to infected blood. This Committee would not require great technical expertise to be able to ask itself those questions and see the quality of the answers it has been given. In answer to your latter question, a more formal role for this Committee would have the benefits of transparency and openness, but also would provide great reassurance to the public.
Q117 Sam Carling: The House of Lords Statutory Inquiries Committee recommended that a new Committee of Parliament should scrutinise a Minister’s decision not to hold a public inquiry. We have talked about PACAC potentially performing that role. Could you give us a sense of what you think are the pros and cons of that approach?
Sir Brian Langstaff: The pros are that you would have access to a larger membership or a larger human resource, potentially, to deal with the issues. It would require, as I think they were envisaging it, a stand-alone inquiry dealing with this sort of issue. The cons would be that you have here a Committee that is used to calling into question how things are done—the process, if you like, by which decisions are made.
You look at a recommendation, for instance, and you may want to say to a Minister, “This recommendation has been accepted. When are you going to put it into effect? When are you going to take steps? What is the timetable? How are you going to measure success? We need to know this in order to be able to chart progress. When are you going to come and tell us how things are going, and how are you telling the public?”
That is purely a process issue, but it has a really important effect. It does not call for scientific or medical expertise in the particular area, although if that is needed other groups that can be accessed to come and give evidence and provide some. Essentially, it is something that PACAC is well used to doing: looking at parliamentary and constitutional affairs and scrutinising the way things are being done.
Jenni Richards: Deficiencies in public administration are a common feature across almost every public inquiry that I have ever had any involvement with. This Committee brings with it an established expertise, a reputation and a standing that a new Committee would not have. That is not to say that a new Committee could not perform the role—I am sure it could; you are better placed than we are to judge the feasibility of establishing a new Committee.
Sir Brian’s recommendation in part was led by knowing that this Committee existed and, in the inquiry’s view, as an existing Committee it had the skills and experience to do the job.
Q118 Chair: Ms Richards, you mention the fact that it is usually a fault of public service delivery that has occasioned the circumstances of some egregious impact on people’s lives, and then a public inquiry is triggered. It strikes me that often a lot of work—not our Committee work, but work in general—is very siloed.
Nobody really picks up any cross-cutting themes, or says, “This started, we did it, it is published—oh, but 10 years ago there was a similar thing and we came to similar conclusions there, didn’t we, or there was a similar reason?” Thinking back particularly to the work that the Lords Committee did, have you any thoughts on whether this Committee is a good one, or the right one, to do that sort of cross-cutting inquiry work to see whether structural themes are emerging that seem to be stubbornly irreconcilable?
Jenni Richards: Absolutely. That would be a reason for having this Committee rather than a subject matter specialist Committee, albeit that there may be inquiries the nature of whose recommendations are such that you will think that you have done as much as you can, and perhaps the Health Committee, the Justice Committee or another Committee would be better placed to carry on that work. Having a single Committee charged with that responsibility would increase the likelihood of picking up on those cross-cutting themes.
Chair: So the collective, corporate wisdom builds up.
Jenni Richards: Exactly.
Chair: Thank you, that is very helpful.
Q119 Luke Taylor: In the infected blood inquiry, the Cabinet Office had oversight of the compensation authority and funding. Is it enough to address the concerns about independence and departmental conflicts of interest?
Sir Brian Langstaff: The compensation authority was set up as an independent body precisely because of the concern that it needed to be independent of the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Work and Pensions, which had been administering the schemes beforehand. That has been its remit.
Some of those who were infected and affected felt that it was too tightly constrained by the way in which the regulations that governed the compensation had been drafted, to the extent that the decisions were made by the Department putting regulations before Parliament, and the way in which the law had been expressed was not particularly helpful to easy understanding of what the position might be in a number of cases.
There were problems with the scheme. I have not closed the inquiry; that is why I had a second set of hearings last year to examine what might be done to make the compensation faster, as it needed to be, and fairer. We made recommendations that have all been accepted. Some are subject to consultation; they are really recommendations to be consulted about with a view to taking a different approach. That has been done.
That is as far as the inquiry went. Have I answered your question?
Q120 Luke Taylor: In a way. It is more about the fact that the centre of Government—the Cabinet Office—has that role and, I guess, the broader question of whether that approach of having central Government playing a bigger role in the oversight and funding of inquiries was effective. Could that be a model that is used more broadly in inquiries?
Sir Brian Langstaff: In short, yes, because there is a real danger that when people ask a Minister to have an inquiry, the Minister may be a Minister in the Department of State that is thought by some, rightly or wrongly, to have had a hand in what happened, which they object to—it looks like somebody marking their own homework. You do not get that if you have another part of Government doing it.
It is, after all, Government collectively who, in a sense, have to respond, even though the Minister is the Minister of the Department responsible. There is a proper case for the Cabinet Office to look at it, provided that the Cabinet Office itself is not the body thought responsible for what might be happening.
Q121 Luke Taylor: Are there any downsides to this approach? Do you lose any skills or any particular relevant departmental knowledge by having that oversight come from the Cabinet Office?
Sir Brian Langstaff: I don’t think that you can lose any departmental knowledge. As to downsides, I don’t think so. I would expect the Department most concerned—from our inquiry, there are perhaps a number of Departments concerned—to keep an eye on the inquiry and see what needs to be improved in the way its services are delivered to the public. That does not involve any loss of knowledge.
I would expect them to be confident that, if the body sponsoring the inquiry is independent, the inquiry will be seen as independent, and any recommendations it makes will therefore, to that extent, be properly independent recommendations. It would satisfy the public that the matter has been properly looked at and they have not been fobbed off by a departmental response, putting it in colloquial terms.
Q122 John Lamont: How do you think victims, survivors and families could be better taken into account when considering whether to allow an inquiry?
Jenni Richards: Their views and expertise—they are usually the experts in what has happened to them—are absolutely fundamental. In our case, if they had been listened to at an earlier stage, the inquiry would have taken place at a much earlier stage.
There should absolutely be a role. Whether it is the Minister, this Committee, another Committee or another body, there should be some formal means of ensuring that the views of those who have been most affected—the victims and survivors—are taken into account. They clearly cannot be compelled to participate, and they should not be, because that would be an additional and unnecessary burden, but our experience was that most people were desperate to explain their position and say why they thought an inquiry was necessary.
Q123 John Lamont: Sir Brian, in your report into the infected bloods, one of your recommendations was that members of the community should be an integral part of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority board. In practice, a separate panel has been created. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that undermines that principle, given how victims and the wider community feel about how they have been incorporated into the process, which is obviously directly connected to your own inquiry?
Sir Brian Langstaff: My initial view was that the design of the scheme should involve people first and last, and it did not because, when it was being designed, the Government took advice from a committee that it set up itself, without input from those infected and affected, and did not permit it to have direct contact with those infected or affected. The chair himself, Sir Jonathan Montgomery, has commented adversely on that on a number of occasions since: his hands were tied by the way he understood he had been asked to conduct the matter.
The effect was that it was designed without the involvement of those it most concerned, and it needed to be designed with their involvement. There has since been an attempt to do what one can to remedy the damage that flowed from that early approach. In a sense, it fits this Committee quite well, because at the time the Government were conducting the design of the scheme.
The day after I reported, on 20 May 2024, the Government produced a scheme. None of those infected and affected had had any input into it, as they saw it, apart from what might have been said by them during the inquiry, which was picked up by those designing the scheme. They felt that this was an example of Government proceeding without their involvement, and that was terribly harmful to them.
That is partly why there ended up being so many complaints and concerns expressed to an ongoing inquiry, which had as its terms of reference the nature, adequacy and timeliness of the Government response. Plainly, the nature and adequacy of the response were up here for consideration, for me to call for further evidence.
As a result, I think, there were improvements, but improvements in a situation which had moved on to one where time had been lost. Time, throughout our inquiry, was critical. It took time, but I started off with the principle that we should be as fast as reasonable thoroughness permitted. It was very much like what Sir Brian Leveson had to say about what you need being sufficient to make a decision, as opposed to needing everything.
Q124 John Lamont: Again, thinking about the victims and those affected by this, in your 2025 additional report, you recommended that the compensation authority should cease using the invite system, which was designed to control who was prioritised and when, and instead go to a more simple application process. While the IBCA has stated publicly that it has accepted all your recommendations, the reality, as set out in your additional report, is that there are points that have not been accepted. Do you have any reflections on that?
Sir Brian Langstaff: I obviously think that what I recommended should be put into effect. I believe strongly that the people who need to be listened to—that is, listened to properly; not just heard, but listened to—are those who are most concerned by the decisions which have been taken about them. That is why I did not close the inquiry until I was satisfied that there was sufficient of a process in which concerns about what was happening with recommendations could be dealt with—both individual concerns, with the Cabinet Office setting up a system, and IBCA having a better system for responding to complaints and concerns.
When I felt that that was sufficiently advanced, there was no further role for me, and therefore no further role for the inquiry, in looking at the nature and adequacy of the Government’s response. I do not think it is for an inquiry to follow up recommendations itself and see whether they have been implemented. That is a role for a body such as this, which is why I recommended that PACAC should take on that role. That is because it is a process question.
It is for Government to do what Government will do, subject to Parliament, but the process needs to be clear. What are you going to do? When are you going to do it? What effect do you expect? How are we going to measure it? When will you report back? And how will you keep people informed?
Q125 John Lamont: I guess I asked that question because, for those affected by whatever the event might be, there may be a feeling that all that energy and investment goes into having the inquiry, and gets outcomes and recommendations from experts like yourself, only for the Government, for whatever reason, not to follow through. Clearly, with the examples that I gave, there were very practical and understandable reasons why you made those points. Ms Richards, do you have any thoughts on those issues?
Jenni Richards: Only to add that the implementation of recommendations—the speed of implementation and the reasons why the Government, or indeed other public bodies, do or do not implement recommendations—is of fundamental importance if the value of public inquiries is not to be lost. It is the very reason for the recommendation that this Committee take on that role.
There is a limit to the extent to which a public inquiry—even one with the breadth of terms of reference we had, which enabled it to stay live for that further year—can continue forever or call Ministers to account before the inquiry. This Committee, or a similar Committee, would potentially be able to discharge that responsibility, and through that ensure that all the effort from those who are affected is not lost.
Sir Brian Langstaff: I should add that it was part of my reasoning in closing the inquiry when I did that you as a Committee had decided that you would look seriously at whether you had a role to play, and what that role should be.
Q126 Chair: All roads in SW1 lead back to His Majesty’s Treasury, and no matter which door of whichever Government Department you walk out of, you eventually end up in the Treasury. I am thinking of the timeliness of the Government’s response to recommendations where there are cost implications—compensatory or other—and envisaging a circumstance whereby a major Treasury event is about to take place, such as a spending review, Budget or autumn statement. The acceptance of a suite of recommendations with a price tag attached would have to be taken into account by the OBR, potentially curtailing or narrowing the headroom of a Chancellor to increase public expenditure one way, or introduce a tax cut the other way, and so on.
Is there a better way? Imagine that the essay question is: “Having identified the root of the problem, how can we compensate or attenuate it through financial recompense, alongside structural reform and improvements in public service delivery?” Have you given any thought as to whether there is another way, or a better way, and whether a separate fund should exist in the Treasury, notionally titled the “general inquiry compensation fund”? If you have not thought about that, it is not a problem; you might go away and think about it, or and drop us a note, if you have. Or, because the inquiry is a special, one-off event for a certain issue, should it be no concern of the OBR, and therefore not appear in its marking of a Chancellor’s homework regarding whether the Budget, autumn statement or whatever it may be, holds water? It could be a real cause for setting the timetable for a governmental response, if the Treasury says, “Slow-pedal this one because everything is looking a bit tight and the OBR will get its knickers in a twist.”
Sir Brian Langstaff: You are right; I had not thought of any alternative model, and I would like time to think about that. An instinctive reaction is that if the Government are going to slow-march on a particular recommendation, they should be saying so, and why. You are the representatives of the public here through Parliament, and the Government should say why they are slow-pedalling on this one. After all, if it is a question of justice, why should justice wait? That will be the question. There may be good answers to it, and I do not at any moment rule out finance being a serious consideration, but it needs to be kept in its place, and not used as an excuse.
Q127 Chair: Do you see any merit in the creation of an inquiry compensation deposit account-type thing—almost held in escrow, as it were—which the Treasury would have as a column in the Red Book and other documentation, so that there is always money available to pay a compensation scheme? Then, new money would not have to be found, which could have a distorting effect on the balance sheets.
Sir Brian Langstaff: Again, my answer is unconsidered—it is just off the top of my head. It would seem rather a pity if the Government were so unsure of their position that they established a fund to deal with matters they were sure they had done wrong on. There might be dangers in doing so, either in limiting the amount of money that was available, when it needed to be more, or in encouraging people to dip into the fund when there was no proper case for them doing so. But those are purely instinctive reactions.
Q128 Chair: Okay. If you have any Columbo-type thoughts on that after this session, please feel free to drop the Committee a line.
Sir Brian Langstaff: I do not think that, like Columbo, you will get it as I am going out of the room.
Q129 Chair: No, exactly. Why was the gun in your hand? Sir Brian, we are now showing our collective television viewing, and the younger members of the Committee will have no idea what we are talking about. That is not a problem that Mr Richard Baker will have.
Q130 Richard Baker: No. Indeed, there is one thing troubling me here: the scrutiny of recommendations by public inquiries. Looking at the scrutiny and implementation of recommendations, could you explain the course of action you took with Government at the end of your inquiry, in terms of the expectation you set on them for the implementation of your recommendations?
Sir Brian Langstaff: I have to say I think my first expectation was that the Government would look at the recommendations and either accept or reject them. I did not expect them to reject my recommendations. How could I? I brought them forward having thought they were deliverable and appropriate and having kept the number to a handful, rather than a huge list, because that way it is more accessible to the public and the Government, and you can more easily check off and see what has actually happened.
The way in which the Government have reacted, which is the second thing your question leads to, depends on which Government you are looking at. If you look at Scotland, the Scottish Government—not the Scottish Parliament—created an oversight and assurance group, which meets monthly and produces full minutes that are published and open.
The group is constituted of those directly concerned with managing the Scottish response to those matters that concern Scotland in the recommendations—of course, health is a devolved issue. Importantly, it involves people who are representatives of the infected and affected. The standing membership includes the chair of Haemophilia Scotland and the convenor of the Scottish Infected Blood Forum. The process is that if someone is not able to attend, an alternate will take their place.
This has led to discussions, work and implementation of the recommendations. Professor Marc Turner, who has been the chair of the Scottish blood services—forgive me if I have got his title not quite right—has been important in that. Scotland has been proactive in a way that England has not in setting up this response. It acts as an interesting model, because the Scottish Parliament can see what is being done on recommendations, but the group also reports so that the public can see and reflect any concerns they may have to their MSP, the Health Minister or the Scottish First Minister.
We do not have such a system here; for instance, we have not yet been able to catch publicly, on the Cabinet Office’s dashboard of recommendations and their implementation, the discussions there have now been in the blood service about the use of tranexamic acid. That is currently under discussion, with beneficial results. There are ways of maintaining scrutiny while maintaining an input, essentially by bringing together those who will be involved in giving practical, expert effect to recommendations. I hope that answers the question.
Q131 Richard Baker: It does. You have described what you see as an exemplar model of monitoring the progress towards implementing recommendations. Do you think that captures all the elements of an effective monitoring process, or are there other elements?
Sir Brian Langstaff: Yes. I see PACAC’s role as ensuring that the Government say what they will do, give you an appropriate schedule and timeline when you ask for it and then either stick to it or have good reason not to, and report regularly so that you know what is happening and can chase it up when things do not happen, saying, “Nothing seems to have been done; something seems to have stalled.”
You are right that in some situations, they may say, “This has been dealt with and put into effect,” and the people here will not necessarily be in a position to know whether it has been. Those most concerned with whether it has been put into effect—the people known in our inquiry as the infected and affected—will have to find a route for informing a body or complain to, as I have suggested, the Cabinet Office, which is setting up a system for that, to say that something is not being done as it should be. I do not think PACAC needs to get involved in that; it should take advice from elsewhere, if need be.
Q132 Richard Baker: What do you think of the role of chairs in ensuring that the recommendations of their inquiries are properly implemented? We recognise that not all chairs will be able to play a leading role once their inquiries are closed—for example, judges who return to their judicial function. Should those issues be addressed when we are choosing chairs and setting the terms of reference at the start of an inquiry?
Sir Brian Langstaff: It all depends on the nature of the inquiry and what one expects may be the result, in terms of the nature of the recommendations. Obviously, at that stage, you would look at it very broadly because you do not know what the issues or facts are. It also depends on the desires of the chair.
It is a lengthy process for them and for their family—we do not necessarily live on our own. It depends on the chair and on the issues. I do not think you can say that because a chair is a judge, they will not be available, or that because a chair is a midwife, she will not want to follow up, or that because a chair is a professor and they have duties to go back to, they will not be able to play a part if asked to follow up.
My role in following up, chasing up and giving evidence here is not as chair of the inquiry, but as ex-chair. I am no more than an ordinary person in that sense, although I do have the repository of knowledge and I know exactly—well, pretty well exactly—what was happening during my inquiry from time to time, in matters of process, character and so on.
Jenni Richards: I would just add that what an inquiry, or the chair of an inquiry, is empowered to do is governed by the terms of reference. Our terms of reference were sufficiently broad to enable the exercise that was undertaken between 2024 and 2025, because the response of Government—the way in which compensation schemes or quasi-compensation and financial support schemes had been set up in the past—was part and parcel of what we were investigating. What the chair did between 2024 and 2025 with the further hearing and the further report was not policing the recommendations of the inquiry, but a continuation of the investigative and fact-finding work of the inquiry.
If you want to build in some kind of more formal role for a chair, I agree consideration should be given to that at the outset of an inquiry, because that would enable the terms of reference to be drawn with that role in mind. Then, of course, you secure the agreement of the chair at the outset, when they agree to take on the position.
I simply add that if this Committee took on the kind of role that Sir Brian recommended, a very fair expectation would be that any chair, council or anyone else who had the privilege to be involved in a public inquiry came and shared what they learnt with the Committee. I cannot think of anyone who would be unwilling to do that. But if you build in a more formal policing role, it would have to be done structurally with the inquiry.
Q133 Richard Baker: In drafting recommendations, how much effort did you put in to considering how deliverable those recommendations were, and how measurable that delivery would be as well?
Sir Brian Langstaff: A lot.
Jenni Richards: We called for submissions from core participants while the inquiry was still in its fact-finding role, but coming towards an end, so that people could have a clear idea about what kind of recommendations they might want.
We asked for submissions in advance of the closing submissions, specifically on the topic of recommendations. We then looked at those, set up a series of hearings and commissioned evidence solely concerned with the issue of recommendations. When Sir Brian formulated the recommendations in the report, therefore, he did so having had the benefit not only of submissions, including submissions from institutional core participants, but of individuals, and having heard evidence that had been tested in public, which essentially went to the heart of a number of those matters.
Q134 Richard Baker: At the start of your evidence, you said that there is no one-size-fits-all mechanism for inquiries into such a wide range of different issues and incidents. Should there be a difference between how recommendations coming from statutory public inquiries are monitored and scrutinised, compared with those coming from other routes—for example, non-statutory inquiries, prevention of future death reports and investigation bodies? Do you think there should be differences there as well?
Sir Brian Langstaff: I am hesitating to answer, because it seems to me that the first question is about the nature of the inquiry and what those recommendations are, rather than about who made them or how they were made. They have a value, which may differ—whether the author is a High Court judge, a midwife or a professor. I think the question is the quality of the recommendation, not the quality of the person or the perceived status of the process by which it was made.
Again, I would emphasise what people have said to you—I don’t think there is any difference between a non-statutory and a statutory inquiry in the sense that one is the gold standard. It is a question of what suits, and if what suits is non-statutory, the recommendations coming out of it should be treated every bit as seriously as any recommendations would be, whether they are accepted or not.
Q135 Richard Baker: I have come to my final question. Although there are several different forms of inquiry, there is potential for a one-size-fits-all process of monitoring the recommendations of those different inquiries, and you could see this Committee or a stand-alone Committee having the ability to take a standard approach to monitoring the implementation of recommendations. Is that a fair reflection of what you said?
Sir Brian Langstaff: I think it is fair to say that the recommendations are made to a Minister of Government. The accountability of Government for what they do in parliamentary and constitutional affairs is open to scrutiny by this Committee. It has the constitutional function of scrutinising, and it can exercise that function. That function does not depend particularly upon the subject matter that Parliament is looking at—the facts, the science, the technology or whatever it may be that is under investigation. It is a question of what the Government did about it. How did they go about it?
That is quintessentially the field of this Committee, as I see it. That is in large part why I said that this Committee—with its recommendation for independent, proper scrutiny and its familiarity with process, and having been set up for that purpose—is the right body. After all, if someone is going to call Parliament to account, it should not be a national oversight mechanism that is outside Parliament; it should be a body from inside Parliament. You are that body.
Jenni Richards: I absolutely agree: whether it is a statutory or a non-statutory inquiry, if it has been convened by a Minister and is reporting to a Minister, this Committee, if it were to take on that role, should have a role that encompasses both statutory and non-statutory inquiries. The nature of the inquiry should not matter.
There may be different considerations that arise in relation to coronial prevention of future death reports; I absolutely agree with much of what was said by the INQUEST witness in relation to the importance of those reports and the need for some form of oversight of them, but there are hundreds of PFD reports produced each year—I think there were 600-odd in 2025 and 700-odd in 2024—and some of them will be very specific and very local. Others will absolutely have more national or thematic issues. It may be that a separate consideration would need to be given to the role of oversight in relation to PFDs, and no doubt the chief coroner would have observations to make in relation to that.
Richard Baker: That is very helpful; thank you very much.
Chair: Sam, I think you wanted to come in.
Q136 Sam Carling: Yes. Ms Richards, do you think the Government are taking prevention of future death reports seriously enough at the moment? Is there an effective process in place, for the Government at least to be reviewing them properly?
Jenni Richards: Prevention of future death reports can be addressed to such a wide range of bodies that I do not think there is a yes or no answer I can give you. They can be addressed to a prison operator, a Government Department, a regulator such as the General Medical Council, an individual hospital, a private entity, or a private corporation and so on. The range of bodies is enormously wide.
There is a general feeling from those who practise in coronial work, as I do, that it is very hit and miss. You get responses that are timely and thorough and that reassure you that clear, proactive steps have been taken, and then you get PFD reports to which there is either no response or a wholly inadequate response. Currently, there is not really any satisfactory system of oversight in relation to that. That would apply not just to Government bodies that are receiving PFDs, but to the multiplicity of other organisations and public bodies that receive them.
Q137 Sam Carling: That is really helpful and slightly alarming in terms of there not being a general oversight mechanism. I have been concerned about a number of prevention of future death reports and the patterns that emerge.
Jenni Richards: The chief coroner has published a list—I cannot remember whether she called it her badge of dishonour list or something of that kind—of where there had not been timely responses to PFD reports. I am only able to give you a snapshot. It is very much the chief coroner and potentially the Ministry of Justice that may be able to give a more across-the-board response in relation to that.
Sam Carling: Thank you. That might be worth considering. May I ask one further question, Chair?
Chair: Yes.
Q138 Sam Carling: We have touched on this a little bit. Do inquiry chairs and panel members have enough routes at the moment to raise the alarm when they feel a Government are not acting on their recommendations quickly or effectively? If not, what could those routes look like?
Sir Brian Langstaff: I think it probably depends on their terms of reference. The function of the inquiry is to find the facts, make its report and, if it has the ability in its terms of reference, to make recommendations. Having made the recommendations, at the moment there is no compulsion on Government to do anything other than to consider those recommendations.
Having considered the recommendations, the Government or the Minister, whichever it is, will then decide whether to accept, to accept in part or, as they have done with the infected blood inquiry, to accept some recommendations in principle, because they necessarily involve consideration among a lot of other considerations, including the duty of candour.
Should the inquiry chair have a right to police the recommendations? I think I agree with what Richard said and that it is not our function to police the recommendations, so probably no. On the infected blood inquiry, we were able to look at what had been done and whether it had been done sufficiently, properly and with timeliness, because our terms of reference were drafted in a way that permitted that, and that is what we did. That was within the terms of reference, so I think it all comes back to the terms of reference and what they permit an inquiry chair to do.
Jenni Richards: If interim reports are issued with interim recommendations, then an inquiry can do what we did, which is to hold further hearings. But once the inquiry has otherwise discharged its function, there are no tools left in its toolbox.
Q139 Charlotte Cane: Good morning. In your report, you make the point that under the Act, inquiries end when the chairman notifies the Minister. When should scrutiny of implementation of an inquiry’s recommendations begin and end?
Sir Brian Langstaff: I think when the recommendations are made.
Q140 Charlotte Cane: It should begin then, but when should it end?
Sir Brian Langstaff: That is down to the recommendations. There may be some recommendations where you expect that the recommendation could only be implemented fully over time. Take a recommendation that was made 50-odd years ago in the Ely hospital inquiry investigation that the culture needed to change: that recommendation has been made by inquiry after inquiry after inquiry into healthcare. Almost every healthcare inquiry there has been has said that the culture has got to change. How do you deal with that and monitor that?
That is not an easy question, but the fact that it is difficult does not mean to say that it is not important, as indeed those repeated requests demonstrate. You need to know that something has been done and what has been done. If that goes on for a long time before you see any change, and inquiries are still coming up with, “This culture needs to change”, then you need to ask Government, “Well, what are you doing about it?”
Q141 Charlotte Cane: If this Committee took on scrutiny of how the recommendations are followed through, you are suggesting that we could, in fact, be looking at the recommendations from an inquiry for quite some years?
Sir Brian Langstaff: I would hope not. I would hope that the process would produce a pretty swift response, the Government would get on with it and that would be it, and you would recognise that that is done. I cannot rule out that there are some recommendations that, though deliverable, will only be deliverable over time and with persistence—and persistence must also not be an excuse for indolence.
Q142 Charlotte Cane: You have several times touched on the fact that your terms of reference allowed you to keep the inquiry open so that you could go back. Other inquiries may not have such wide terms of reference. Would it be wise for inquiries to produce interim reports and recommendations as a matter of course, so that they have a chance to hold feet to the fire?
Sir Brian Langstaff: There is a tension between time, expense and making effective recommendations that are going to be followed through, as you suggest. If interim reports are made purely as you go along, rather than to deal with something of significant urgency, then it takes time to do it. Within the Inquiries Act, there is a need for submissions to be made by those who are core participants. There is also a need to notify people who might be criticised and to deal with those criticisms. Those apply to the interim report just as they do to the main report. That takes time, as does the writing up, and time may be your enemy in terms of delivering justice.
Justice is not just getting it right; it is getting it right as quickly as you reasonably can at a reasonable cost and without taking up a disproportionate share of resources. That is the way that the civil courts now look at justice, and I think that is right. It is also the way that I think inquiry chairs have to look at justice. You are always balancing the need to do things as quickly as you can.
After all, if an inquiry is called, people want an answer as soon as possible. However, you cannot give it as soon as possible without compromising the quality of what you are saying and the thoroughness with which you are looking at matters. You will never leave no stone unturned. That is nonsense and it would take you forever. You have to have sufficient material to make decisions, which, again, will depend on the subject matter. You must spend only as much as will let you do that reasonably, but that may be quite a lot.
That is the problem with interim reports. If there is an interim report, you can follow up and see what is happening; whether you can make a commentary on what the Government are doing about recommendations in an interim report depends upon the terms of reference—and you come back to square one.
Jenni Richards: Interim reports can be an incredibly useful tool, but simply having the power to make an interim report does not mean that you necessarily have the power—as Sir Brian said—to follow through and examine what the Government are doing. That will depend on what your terms of reference say.
If your terms of reference are limited to, for example, a specific fact-finding exercise about an event, it is unlikely that the use of an interim report would be a legitimate device to enable you to police what was being done in response. Our terms of reference included an examination of the response of Government at all stages, and that was why we were able to do it.
Q143 Charlotte Cane: So it comes back to the terms of reference?
Jenni Richards: It absolutely comes back to the terms of reference.
Q144 Chair: Your report highlights the benefit of individual Select Committees doing scrutiny—the independent expert panel used by the Health Committee, for example. Others highlighted for doing good work included the Housing Committee on Grenfell and building safety in general. Given those points, why did you settle on recommending that this single Committee fulfils the scrutiny role? Is it purely the collective residual corporate memory and an understanding of public administration?
Sir Brian Langstaff: Essentially, yes. You are not precluded from looking at what other Departments will say.
Chair: Sure; thank you.
Q145 Peter Lamb: Building on the response to the last question, other organisations have suggested a national oversight mechanism instead of the Select Committee as a means for overseeing recommendations made by Select Committees. Do you have any views on that as a solution?
Sir Brian Langstaff: Yes, I do. I recommended this Committee, not a national oversight mechanism, and I stand by that recommendation. I align myself with the views that Lord Norton expressed to you about it. Why create another body outside Parliament when you are dealing with the scrutiny of what is happening within Government? That is essentially the role of this Committee. The argument for setting up an outside body may be resources, but it costs to set up the outside body and fund it. That is money going to an outside body, but it does not need to. I think the existing institutions within Parliament—yourselves—are fit for purpose.
Q146 Peter Lamb: If these structures already exist and we already undertake some measure of oversight of these recommendations, as we are doing today, people may question whether Parliament is currently proving itself functional and looking at recommendations of inquiries. There is always the question of whether partisan interest interferes in the functional scrutiny of Government policy, whereas an external body may have greater willingness to investigate these things.
Sir Brian Langstaff: You are probably right that lots of people outside Parliament think that Government policy is open to be criticised, but that is not really the test. The question is whether there is sufficient confidence in the independence of the system.
The national oversight mechanism would be established because there is a sense that there is a lack of trust, but one of the features that made me confident in my recommendation that this Committee could take it on was its history of being thought to be independent of Government and not frightened to say when it thinks that the Government have fallen short.
The general picture of Select Committees is that they have that function. This body has an honourable tradition of doing just that. That is the public’s greatest assurance. After all, if there was a national oversight mechanism, it would report back to the Government and the Minister, and may say exactly the same thing as they did, but you can call the Minister to account and to explain within Parliament, and are much closer to those who have the power to get the Government to change their mind if they need to.
Peter Lamb: I suspect that any Minister who has been called before this Committee in the last two years would struggle to believe that they were getting an easy hearing.
Jenni Richards: National oversight is what is required. In my personal and professional view, a national oversight body or mechanism may be a good thing for many of the reasons outlined in INQUEST’s evidence to this Committee, but it would not be a substitute for the specific role that Sir Brian recommended for this inquiry, which is the ability to call Ministers before it and to call Ministers to account. It is difficult to see how a national oversight body could fulfil that, although there might be lots of other good work that it could do.
Q147 Peter Lamb: Of course, the goal is to ensure that we do not require the scrutiny process to step in when things go wrong. Could the role played by central Government be improved in this process? If so, how?
Sir Brian Langstaff: Yes. Currently, the Cabinet Office has set up a dashboard of the recommendations of the main inquiries. It does not give as much detail as the reports that the Cabinet Office Minister has given to Parliament about my inquiry and its progress, so if the model of the dashboard is to be effective, it will have to give more information, I think.
There is an external website, designed by someone who I think worked in the Cabinet Office at one stage, that uses AI to bring together various things that have been mentioned—developments that have taken place in respect of inquiry recommendations. That is more informative, so something of that sort could be the model for the dashboard. It could be expanded and used to give the public the information they need.
What you are looking for is accountability, openness, transparency and essentially the involvement of those who most need to know: the people who are affected by whatever the inquiry recommendation may be. In the case of my inquiry, those people who were infected and affected are particularly concerned that all the recommendations that I have made—including the ones about PACAC, as it happens—are put into effect, as I understand it.
Jenni Richards: If there were to be just one thing done by central Government, it should be greater transparency, because we saw in the earlier questions about the establishment of IBCA and so on, and in the relationship between the Cabinet Office and IBCA, a repetition of a lot of the problems of the past.
Things were being done, but no one was telling the people most closely involved what they were. If there were greater transparency and less defensiveness on the part of central Government, that would go a long way towards addressing many of the problems and making scrutiny and oversight a great deal easier.
Chair: I will ask for a quick final question from Mr Baker and a quick answer, as I am conscious of time.
Q148 Richard Baker: Thank you, Chair. The final question is: how can any national system of oversight and monitoring best take account of the role played by the devolved Executives and legislatures? Sir Brian, you said that they have an important role in many aspects of inquiries. How could that be taken account of?
Sir Brian Langstaff: Parliament is the UK Parliament. There will be issues that are purely English, purely Welsh, purely Northern Irish or purely Scottish. They will be informed, no doubt, by what happens in England, in Wales, in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. I rather wish, as you gather from comments that I made earlier, that the response in England were more informed by the Scottish oversight and assurance group than it has been. That is what I would want to say about that.
The scrutiny is obviously scrutiny of the implementation of the recommendation on the national level as it stands. Matters that are purely—I say “purely”; you know what I mean—devolved will have to be matter for the devolved Administrations, but they do not operate in a complete vacuum.
Chair: Thank you; that is very helpful. Thank you both for your attendance this morning, and I thank colleagues for their questions.