All about Inquiries

After a major tragedy, public inquiries look at what happened, why it happened, and who is to blame, and what could be done to prevent this happening again.   One of the most notorious is the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, where many innocent people were falsely accused of crimes. 
Alma and Lucinda spoke to Flora Page, a barrister at 23 Essex Street Chambers,  she recently represented the sub postmasters in the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.  She told us: 

·      Why inquiries are so important when there has been a major tragedy 

·      How they ensure organisations are held accountable for their actions

·      Her role in the post office horizon IT Inquiry and why lawyers are involved?  

·      How the voices of children and young people can be heard in an Inquiry

When Flora was 10 she liked sailing and acting and thought she wanted to be a geologist!

Written, edited and produced by Lucinda Acland.

References and Resources
What is the Role of Ethics in Law (Richard Moorhead Series 4 Episode 8)

Watch Flora Page interview witnesses  with commentary

Post Office Horizon IT inquiry Livestream videos

https://www.23es.com/barrister/flora-page/

UK Covid-19 inquiry  Post Office Horizon IT inquiry.

Inquiries Act 2005. 

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/public-inquiries

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06410/

If you've got any questions, ideas about a topic or someone to interview, get in touch, we'd love to hear from you!! You can email us at kidslaw@spark21.org, contact us through the website: www.kidslaw.info  or through social media: Facebook, X and Instagram @KidsLawInfo 

Please subscribe, rate, and share the podcast with your friends. 
See you soon in the next episode!

Transcript

Verbatim transcript 
Hello, I'm Alma Constance. And I'm Lucinda. And together in our Kids Law podcast, we're going to take a look at how laws affect children as we grow up. So, what are we going to look at in this episode, Alma Constance?  Well, when we spoke to Richard Moorhead earlier this year about the importance of ethics in law and life, he explained that the post office case started as litigation, but then turned into an inquiry.

I'd like to know more about inquiries, what they are and what they achieve.  The inquiry that Richard mentioned was the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. It's a major investigation to look at what had gone wrong in criminal cases brought against sub postmasters due to the failings of the IT system over 20 years.

The aim of public inquiries is to look at what happened, why it happened, and who is to blame, and what could be done to prevent this happening again.  There have been quite a few inquiries in recent years. You may have also heard of ones such as COVID, Grenfell, Infected Blood, and the Manchester Arena Bombing.

Let's talk to Flora Page, who is a barrister at 23 Essex Street Chambers. She works in serious crime and fraud, and recently represented the sub postmasters in the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.  

Hello, Flora. Thank you so much for joining us on the Kids Law podcast today.

We are so happy to have you here.  Could you start off by telling us more about public inquiries and why we have them?  

Hello. Yes, I can, public inquiries are normally ordered by politicians when there's been some sort of a scandal or something's happened, which has affected a lot of people in a bad way.

And they want to find out what has happened and if there's any lessons to be learned and things that ought to happen differently in the future to make sure that something like that never happens again. So that's the idea of a public inquiry and as I say they're normally ordered by a politician.

It was very noticeable in the post office inquiry, the difference that the ITV drama that came out in, in January this year, now nearly a year ago, so the inquiry had already been running for some 18 months at that point.

And although there was a lot of interest and lots of people, would come and, and follow Proceedings. It's just completely order of magnitude different this year that since the, the, the ITV drama, because that just brought it up the news agenda so much more highly, and suddenly, and, you know, there was a real media circus in the inquiry every day. We had, regular items in the news. About what was going on in the inquiry. So it did make a big, big difference that public outpouring of, anger. I think people were mystified as well. How could it be that this institution that everybody knows from the high street from their villages that if they live in a village from their, from their big main shopping streets.

How could it be that this institution was actually sending people to prison? I think people were just astonished and outraged. So, that definitely got it up the news agenda.  I felt it, when I first read about it, which is why I got involved, I was kind of amazed that it wasn't more front page story at the time. And so I was kind of always expecting it to become a real front page news story and then eventually it did. And the only real reason it did was because of the drama, which goes to show how powerful drama can be, doesn't it? 

So how did you become involved in inquiries?

Well, it was really only the one inquiry. I haven't worked on inquiries before the post office Horizon IT inquiry. And the reason that I got involved was because I had acted for some of the sub postmasters when they were trying to get their convictions overturned and appealed and following that successful appeal of their convictions, they asked me if I would represent them in the inquiry.

So how are inquiries different from criminal prosecutions or litigation? 

Yes, well, inquiries are actually not allowed to do what courts can do. They're specifically not allowed to do what courts can do. So they're not supposed to kind of overlap or do the same thing. So a court process, especially a criminal court process will be about whether somebody has committed a crime or not committed a crime, whether that's proven or not proven.

And, so it's all about the, the court's decision, whether somebody is actually guilty of a crime or not, the inquiry can't do that, then, it's not part of its remit that has to be left to the court.  All that an inquiry can do is give factual rulings and say, this is what happened. And then it can make recommendations for what ought to happen differently in the future, but it's not able to say, even if it might've found a load of facts, which suggests that somebody who committed a crime, it's still not able to actually say that person has committed a crime.

So why are inquiries so important? 

The public probably cares about, whatever an inquiry is looking into. So, an inquiry is normally ordered when general public is really concerned and worried about something. And it's important for making sure that the public sees and hears and understands why this terrible scandal has happened, or why this bad thing has happened. And it's, sometimes the first step towards a court process. So sometimes there will follow on from an inquiry, some kind of court process, either to make sure that people are prosecuted for crimes, or maybe they might be, taken through a civil court process to find out whether they're liable for something, whether a particular company or person ought to pay some kind of, damages to somebody for doing something wrong. One of the reasons I think that there's been a lot of inquiries in recent years that have been particularly high profile is because  I think  there's become a bit of a problem with institutions in this country telling the truth and a feeling that  some institutions are getting away with things that they're above the law that the law doesn't apply to them that they don't have to tell the truth in real time. And so there’s been this. tendency towards forcing them to tell the truth in circumstances where there’s real consequences for them if they don't because they’re people are going to have to come and give evidence on oath.  And if they tell lies and they're shown to be telling lies, then that's actually an offence in itself of perjury. And so I think often inquiries are about trying to get a handle on the truth and make sure that institutions are not getting away with things.  Um, We've been looking at important institutions  Fujitsu a big international corporation that made the IT systems that were faulty, government or private companies or public companies. Or companies that are owned by the government, like the post office, and none of them were telling the truth. And so I think inquiries are about trying to get a handle on the truth and make sure that institutions are not getting away with things. It’s giving people rights against very large organizations who can be faceless and hold great power over them.

Absolutely.  

So how do inquiries work and why are lawyers involved?  

So, there's two different ways that lawyers are involved in inquiries.  They are either lawyers for the inquiry itself.  And so the inquiry works by having a chair and the chair of the inquiry is the person who's trying to find out what has happened and whether there's anything that he or she ought to recommend as a result of what's happened.

And so that chair of the inquiry will have lawyers acting for him or her to try and help them to get to the bottom of things and find out what's happened. And so those people will be called either counsel to the inquiry or solicitors to the inquiry. And so that's one role that lawyers might have in inquiries. But also if there are people or companies who are likely to be affected by what the inquiry finds out, and there might be some impact on their reputation or on their future ability to do their jobs or even they might possibly be worried about future criminal prosecutions or future civil claims against them, then those people can have representation in the inquiry as well. If they do that, what they do is they apply to become what's called a core participant in the inquiry. That application will be looked at and considered and the chair of the inquiry will decide whether that person is going to be affected by something that the inquiry is going to be looking into. And if the chair of the inquiry decides, yeah, that person really is somebody whose life is going to be very much involved in this, and so it would be only fair for them to have representation so that their, interests are looked out for during the course of the inquiry. And so, the right questions are asked of the witnesses to make sure that nothing happens that's unfair towards people and businesses who are very involved in, what's happened in the past, what's happened in the scandal. So, in my case, I was acting for the sub postmasters as core participants because their lives are very much bound up in what the inquiry may ultimately find out and say what has happened. And so, they care very strongly about that  and their lives have been so strongly affected by it that it was thought that they should be core participants but it's only fair that  their interests were looked out for during the course of the inquiry by lawyers looking out for them.  

So what was your role in the post office horizon it inquiry? 

So what it involved was making sure that we stayed in close touch with the sub postmasters that we were representing, letting them know which witnesses were coming up, and if they were witnesses that had been very much involved in their lives or in their case, then we would make sure that Whatever questions that we were going to ask that witness reflected what they, they wanted us to ask. So, I'll give you an example. We represent Seema Misra and she was prosecuted by the post office and sent to prison by the post office's prosecution when she was pregnant. She hadn't committed the crimes that were alleged against her. Her other son was 10 years old, and she went to prison when she when she was pregnant. So, it was a very, obviously very dramatic, huge impact on her life. And some of the witnesses coming to the inquiry were, the lawyers who prosecuted her. Um, the expert witness who gave evidence in her trial saying that there was nothing wrong with Horizon and everything was working perfectly. So, people like that who she actually met and who she knew had done things which had such a terrible impact on her life. We would then talk to her. about what questions we were going to ask of these people. And she would then say, yeah, that makes sense. Or she might say, actually, you know what that witness said such and such to me. And so you might want to ask them about that. So that's, that's the role that we took. And so I sat next to Seema when we were cross examining the expert who gave evidence saying how brilliant Horizon was, and she was able to sit there and see him and the tables be turned on him. and him be the one who was being accused. And I think it gave her a sense of empowerment and gave her a sense of, of feeling that justice was finally on her side, to have her lawyer there asking questions on her behalf.

So, what has been the outcome of the post office inquiry and even other inquiries?  

So, so far, the post office inquiry has not yet reached conclusions. It's very nearly there, but the, uh, the stage we've got to is, um, the evidence is finished, and now the chair is going to have to think about what he comes up with, uh, so he's going to have to write a report that sets out what he thinks actually happened.  Who knew what, when, and what he thinks ought to, to change, and what recommendations he wants to make. So that's the phase we're at with the post office inquiry. And other inquiries, they always end with a report from the Chair, saying what they've found out, and what their recommendations are.  Previous inquiries like the Manchester Arena Inquiry have made recommendations which potentially lead to changes in the law. So that's the sort of thing that can happen. And with the Manchester Arena Inquiry, that law is, is currently still under review and being looked at.

But  it may well come to pass. So that's the kind of thing that can happen as a result of inquiries recommendations.

So do you think that inquiries are a good way to find out the truth and help make changes?  

I certainly think they're good ways to find out the truth. I'm not sure they always do what they hope to do in terms of making changes. Because they take a long time. Sometimes the politician who decided in the first place that we ought to have an inquiry is no longer in power by the time the inquiry finishes. And so sometimes the inquiry makes its recommendations and people have forgotten why they'd even asked for the inquiry in the first place. And so sometimes things can, can get forgotten about, which is a shame. , because usually a lot of effort has gone into finding out what happened and a lot of effort has gone into making recommendations. Sometimes, like with the one we were just talking about, the Manchester Arena bombing, it was reasonably swift and, recommendations are being followed up, but that is not always the case, unfortunately.

So which inquiries have focused on issues affecting children and what happened as a result? 

So, there's, all different sort of levels of, of inquiry and you can have some much smaller inquiries that just look into a particular case. Um, and so for example, circumstances where the social services maybe haven't done what they should have done. So going all the way back for example to a little girl called Victoria Climbie. She was known to the social workers, and it was thought that it was important to find out what went wrong Why the social workers did not? Take action to make sure that she was protected. So you can have that sort of, quite small scale inquiry based on one particular case. But then there's also quite sometimes quite big inquiries that affect quite a lot of children who may be been in care or been in, situations where they're vulnerable 

How do inquiries ensure that the voices of children or young people are meaningfully included? 

All courts and proceedings are getting much better actually at, uh, listening to children. Um, I think for a long time there was this sort of perhaps rather old-fashioned idea that, you couldn't rely on anything that a child said. And I think that that has been very much swept away in modern court proceedings and inquiry proceedings. And so children can be witnesses and children can, get involved as core participants if they if they wish to, and certainly people acting on behalf of children in the sort of inquiries.

We were just talking about in terms of children they would certainly have, uh, dialogue with the children, so conversations with the children about their experiences and about what they, um, suffered.  So, I think there, there's different ways. So children won't always want to actually get involved by being a witness, but even if they don't want to get involved by being a witness, then they would be represented by lawyers who've had conversations with them and would be represented by lawyers who've had conversations with them and would be able to, to make points on their behalf and put forward their side of the story.

How did inquiries shape child welfare policies in the UK?

So, around, um, how we look after children in care. Some of that has been shaped by recommendations from inquiries. And that comes fundamentally from children's voices being heard in inquiries and being able to get across the way that, being vulnerable in in care or what have you has affected them. 

I have a question I ask all of our guests. What were you like at 10 and what did you imagine you'd go on to be as an adult?   

Oh, I was very much sort of typical 10-year-old kid. When the summers I was, I was fortunate enough to be able to do quite a lot of dinky sailing, which I loved. And, and I was also very into acting.  I was a little bit older than 10. I was again, lucky enough to be in a children's TV programme which is being aired again this Christmas, 40 years on.  So, I was quite a happy-go-lucky kid. I didn't have a sort of a very strong drive towards any particular career, I certainly wouldn't have said to anyone, I want to be a lawyer. But funnily enough people did used to say to me, I bet you're gonna be a lawyer when you grow up, and I guess that was because I was always one for putting across my point of view, um, and sometimes adults find that frustrating. So, they say things perhaps a little bit sharply like, Oh, aren't you going to be a good lawyer when you grow up? That sort of thing  um, but actually I didn't have any ambition to become a lawyer until much later. In fact, I seem to think that when I was 10, I had a strange idea that I was going to be a geologist. I don't really know where that came from.  It certainly didn't mature into anything.

Well, thank you so much, Flora, for talking to us today. Do you have any final advice for our listeners who might want to know more about the topics raised in this episode? 

Yeah, I think if there's young people out there who are interested in the law, I think there's now from for inquiries anyway, a huge amount of information that they can look at online. Most public inquiries are filmed and put on YouTube.  If you ploughed through all of the footage you’d be there for a very long time.  So, I probably wouldn't suggest that, but you, what you can also find on YouTube is people who've been watching the inquiry and picking out their favourite bits, and so, that's quite fun and you get these kind of quite fun YouTube presenters. Kind of giving an intro and saying, you know, this piece of questioning went well, or this piece of questioning, look at how stupid this witness was or whatever. So that's quite fun. Um, I happen to know that there's quite a lot of that for the post office inquiry, but I suspect that there's that kind of content on YouTube for other inquiries as well that people might find interesting sometimes they have little clips from the inquired proceedings and  say something or  just do it as a voiceover.  Sometimes they have graphics that pop up in the middle just to kind of make it a bit more interesting, I guess, and pick out the fun bits.  

Thank you for coming on. Thank you very much.  Thank you.  Bye.

So, what did you think about what Flora told us, Alma?  

Well, Flora told us that inquiries are essential when it's very important to find out the truth.  It has been used to collect critical evidence and cross examine people who may not have told the truth, such as powerful institutions. All inquiries are concluded with the reports, recommending changes and ideas to prevent any future problems. Flora also told us that inquiries have resulted in changes related to children, these children don't have to be witnesses and can choose to not partake in the inquiry directly, but instead have a lawyer that will speak on their behalf.  It sounds as if inquiries are a very good example of lawyers holding people and organisations to account for their actions and obey the rule of law. When she was 10, Flora sailed on her holidays and people always knew she would be a lawyer, but  she thought she would become a geologist

I thought it was interesting that Flora told us about the media interest in the Post Office Horizon case, and this came about through a TV drama. It seems that the media play an important role in acting as a mouthpiece for public concern, which can force politicians to hold inquiries. 

In our podcast, we've been exploring how laws work and affect young people. All of these things help children understand their rights and responsibilities so that they can make informed decisions, not only about their lives, but also about voting for MPs who make the laws and understanding how the legal justice system works. 

It's also important that children know they should be kept safe and that adults must care for them. Remember, if you have any worries, talk to an adult you trust and tell them how you feel. This includes your teachers at school who are there to look after you too, so tell them you need to talk to them. You can call Childline on 0800 1111 if you're under 18 and want free confidential advice. You can find out more information on åKidsLawInfo website. 

Keep your questions coming in. Please subscribe, rate, and share the podcast with your friends. See you soon in the next episode.

Bye