Public inquiries often involve significant sums of money. For the first time, a Holyrood committee is to examine the cost-effectiveness of public inquiries in Scotland.

What are public inquiries?

According to Scottish legal firm Morton Fraser MacRoberts: “Public inquiries are set up to investigate issues of serious public concern. They scrutinise past decisions and events. They are used to establish facts, to learn lessons so that mistakes are not repeated, and to restore public confidence. By their nature, they are newsworthy – the public will always have an interest in the matters being considered by the inquiry.”

Inquiry remit

The remit of this inquiry into the cost-effectiveness of public inquiries in Scotland is:

• to foster greater understanding of the current position with public inquiries in Scotland, including their number, timescales, extensions to remit, costs, categories of spend and outstanding recommendations
• to enhance clarity around the purpose, framework and decision-making process for establishing public inquiries and their terms of reference, and whether any improvements are required
• to establish if public inquiries in Scotland deliver value for money, the extent to which spending controls are necessary, and how they might be implemented while maintaining the independence and effectiveness of inquiries
• to identify examples of good practice (in Scotland or elsewhere) which ensure cost-effectiveness
• to identify alternatives to the Scottish inquiry model, including how such alternatives may work, deliver outcomes and value for money.

The inquiry will not make recommendations on the merits or otherwise of individual Scottish Government decisions on whether to hold a specific public inquiry, or recommendations made by individual public inquiries.