Public Inquiries - a criminal waste of tax payers money
21st November 2024
I was saddened to hear that today is the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham Pub bombings. It was a barbaric attack on random members of the public and another abhorrent episode in the long running troubles associated with Northern Ireland and the IRA's bid to separate from the UK.
Since the original six men incorrectly jailed for the bombings were released in 1991, no-one else has been convicted of the crimes, although it is widely accepted that the IRA are behind it, not least because they issued a telephone warning, sadly too late and too vague to evacuate the pubs in question.
That said, and given the wrongful conviction of six men who lost 16 years of their lives in prison, there seems to be a reluctance to pursue this. In all likely-hood, the people behind it and the executors themselves, are dead. Yet, here we are, with demands for yet another public enquiry. In an ideal world, yes, a public inquiry might be appropriate, but these are far from ideal times. Will it actually solve the crime ? Will anyone go to prison ? Probably not. The one thing I could not fathom from the BBC'S interview with Julie Hambleton, sister to one of the victims, was that the source of her grief and anger is that time does NOT heal and that they constantly live with the sadness of losing a loved one. In that case, why launch a public inquiry, which, after all this time, will probably not come up with any definitive answers and will drag on for years.
Added to that, the cost of such inquiries is eye-watering and it all comes out of our taxes. The Grenfell Tower inquiry cost £170 million. The COVID inquiry has cost over £200 million to date and is ongoing, only due to be completed by the end of 2026. Given that the cost of running that inquiry is £135,000 a day, give or take, that will end up being nearly £300 million. The Chair person alone is on £256,000 a year plus expenses. And what will it achieve ?
Given that one of the three major objectives of an inquiry is to stop whatever it is happening again, then absolutely nothing, both in the case of Grenfell and Covid, will change. Firstly, the findings of a public inquiry do not compel any of the so-called "guilty" parties to be reprimanded, fined or go to prison. Secondly, you can never mitigate all risk. There will be other flat fires and there will be other viruses.
How we deal with the virus could be brought into question and a roadmap for that could be made, but the major issue with Covid and its inquiry, was to apportion blame and specifically as to why the Government did not close down earlier and harder in order to "save lives". The whole point of the inquiry should have been to expose the absolute moronic reaction to this virus, and the fact that locking down killed many more than it saved, as well as destroying the world economy, causing huge issues for our children and much more. But the report will not say that because no-one has the guts to say it (i.e. that we should have let the virus run its course with no lockdowns because the vast majority of people would have benefited and the economy would not have been annihilated).
The harsh truth about Grenfell and the Birmingham bombs is that they were random incidents, really very rare. That does not mean we cannot learn from them but we already knew well before the inquiry why Grenfell went up in flames and then wasted £170 million of public money writing an encyclopaedic report that no-one will ever read on top of the £ 1,250,000 per flat that was given in compensation.
While the compensation may be warranted, the cost to the public for an inquiry about 72 deaths and 70 injured, coming to a whopping £ 1.2 million per death/ per injury, on top of the compensation, is not. It achieved nothing tangible and the "facts" unearthed (the important ones) were already known.
A public inquiry needs to be in the interest of the majority of the public, who are paying for it. An inquiry into an incident that directly affected 100, or even a few thousand people, is NOT in the public interest. It is no business of those who were not directly affected and in many cases is simply a vehicle to point the finger of blame in one direction or the other, which serves little purpose in cases such as Covid because it is all subjective.
In the current economic climate we would advocate for a ban on all (so-called) public inquiries. If you want to hold people to account then bring a criminal case to court.
For those directly affected by these rare incidents, we feel the utmost sympathy, but using the public purse to try and pursue some sense of closure or blame is not in the general public's interest and the spend is vastly disproportionate to the results achieved.
G. Hoff
Editor
PREVIOUS ARTICLES
The fruitless £2.4 billion spent on legal fees by the NHS, yearly..
The NHS spends £2.4 BILLION a year, on legal fees fighting cases against it, largely in the area of infant deaths.
This is ridiculous.
Firstly, you should not be able to sue a service that is provided practically for free.
Secondly, aside to the very odd exception like Lucy Letby, no-one in the NHS deliberately kills people. They are there trying to help, under increasingly difficult circumstances, some of those strains no doubt put on them by the same kind of people that are suing them.
Suing people does not bring back the dead. The Swedish Government have recently banned all litigation against their own health service, even if gross negligence is cited. Why ? Because life is life and there is risk in everything we do and there was no deliberate intent.
Even paid for health services are not there to purposefully kill people and some people seem to have lost all perspective on what the realities are. A birth that has not been handled perfectly that results in the death of a newborn baby or the mother, is very unfortunate, particularly if both mother and child were in good health. However, complications in childbirth are common and doctors and midwives are not miracle workers. They have to deal with situations as they unfold. Sometimes they make the correct call, and sometimes they don't and manage to repair it, and sometimes they cannot. And on occasion, a critical situation arises which they react correctly to, immediately, and they are still unable to prevent the death. This is fate and they cannot be blamed for that. They should not be blamed for making decisions that, with the benefit of hindsight, maybe they could have made differently.
Many children die in childbirth or prematurely, because nature intended it. Just as miscarriages prior to birth are normally the body’s way of saying something is amiss with a foetus and its better if it is not born. That will sound harsh to some, but it’s being cruel to be kind, and frankly, it’s not about the parents, it’s about the baby and what kind of life it will have if it is severely disabled and unable to ever fend for itself throughout adulthood, let alone childhood.
That is another subject altogether, so returning to the point, we should follow Sweden's example. £2.4 billion is a lot of money that could be far better spent. Suing the NHS will not bring anyone back from the dead and people need to start learning that the health service, like every other profession, is not perfect and that suing and demanding compensation from a virtually free service, who intentions are only good, is obtuse to say the least.
Consider this. Most private practises will make you sign waivers before any operation, ensuring you understand that there is a minor risk with the anaesthetic and the operation itself. If you die or the operation is not a success or has some undesired side effect, you're unlikely to be able to sue them, despite paying many thousands of pounds for the privilege. Why ? Because there is a risk in everything we do and you cannot constantly lay the blame at someone's feet. If those rules apply for the private health sector then they sure as mustard should apply to the NHS.
I'll leave you with this.
The recent blood transfusion scandal that is rocking the UK, labelled as the biggest treatment scandal in NHS history, is another classic case where people do not look at the bigger picture.
Given that the vast majority of the 30,000 people affected were given transfusions for emergency reasons (mainly loss of blood after childbirth or major surgery) the reality is that if these transfusions had not been given at the time, most of those people would have died there and then, on the operating table. So, instead of pro-longing their lives by many years, they would have just died then. Had there not been the blood to give them, the NHS would have been lambasted for not having enough in the blood banks and the very reason this happened in the first place is because there were mass shortages and the drive to get people to give in the USA, with cash incentives drew out of the woodwork less than ideal candidates. We then imported this blood because we didn't have enough and weren't prepared to pay people to give...
So, I say to those affected, "Yes, it should not have happened but you or your affected relatives would have been around a lot less time if the blood had not been given. The cover up is scandalous for sure, but given the alternative, which would have been no transfusion at all, and likely immediate death, what would you prefer, given that the world is not perfect, never has been and never will be".
G. Hoff - Editor