Meeting of the Parliament 26 February 2026 [Draft]
I thank you, Presiding Officer, and members of the Conveners Group, for helping to enable this debate to take place.
I am delighted to open the debate on behalf of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. In the short time that is available, I can but touch on what is an in-depth and detailed 73-page report, which I recommend to all members.
Our scrutiny, which was completed over nine months last year, marked the first time that a Scottish Parliament committee has examined statutory public inquiries in depth. We sought to bring greater understanding of the current position of public inquiries in Scotland, looking at their purpose, terms of reference, timescales and costs, as well as their recommendations and their cost-effectiveness more generally. The merits or recommendations of individual public inquiries were not considered as part of our scrutiny.
In addition to written evidence, we held 10 oral evidence sessions and two informal engagement sessions, hearing from stakeholders and academics from elsewhere in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, from people with lived experience of public inquiries and from civil servants and public inquiry staff. We again thank all those who provided evidence to help to shape our conclusions and recommendations. I also thank my committee colleagues and our hard-working, dedicated and effective clerking team for their sterling efforts throughout this process.
Statutory public inquiries are a powerful and important mechanism of accountability. They investigate issues of major public concern, which are often triggered by disasters, systemic failures or circumstances that can erode public trust. They have the power to compel evidence.
In the past 18 years, Scottish ministers have commissioned 11 statutory public inquiries, with six continuing. Another was announced only yesterday, albeit with no apparent budget or timescale. Of the on-going inquiries, four have been running for more than four years. Indeed, the Scottish child abuse inquiry has been on-going for more than a decade. The cost to Scotland’s public purse has been more than £258 million since 2007. Across the UK, the figure is six times that much.
Our scrutiny found that public inquiries remain an essential mechanism for holding public bodies to account, reviewing past wrongs, identifying solutions and recommending policy changes. Nevertheless, the current system is overstretched and poorly defined. Inquiries often lack a core objective, whether that is in forensic investigation, policy reform or truth telling. Instead, they often attempt to perform all those functions with ever-expanding timescales, costs and expectations.