Making sure our public inquiries get results

Diana Johnson (Letters, 30 May) is right to be concerned that too many public inquiries have little impact because there is no mechanism to follow up on their recommendations. When I chaired the Soham inquiry I included a recommendation that the government should report back to parliament six months after publication on progress made.

That was agreed by the then home secretary. As a result, ministers and the civil service were more diligent in ensuring that action was taken as they knew they would be held to account. Since then, select committees have become much more effective and could usefully take on the task of revisiting inquiry recommendations after six months. At the moment, too many inquiries take too long and are quickly consigned to history. We need a more rigorous system of accountability.
Michael Bichard
Crossbench peer, House of Lords

• Simon Jenkins’ criticism of Lady Hallett’s inquiry in light of Sweden completing its pandemic report (A fight over Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps? The dither and delay of Britain’s Covid inquiry is a disgrace, 30 May) is a comparison of chalk and cheese. Far from perfect, Sweden has a government with vestiges of integrity. We are blessed with something different – ministers who made some bad decisions, MPs who sought cash for chums and other gratifications in the “opportunities” afforded by Covid.

This government would be delighted to have an investigation done and dusted so that it can better showcase its pre-election agenda of demonising “boat people”, portraying sick and disabled people as a burden on the state, and rebranding long Covid as a disease of the feckless.

Lady Hallett does not wish to be remembered for a whitewash. If her inquiry needs time, we need to be patient.
Graham Murphy
Liverpool

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