The UK government has spent more than £200 million on inquiries that have been completed since 2005.

The government can decide to hold an inquiry in response to public concerns about a particular event. Inquiries often investigate complex issues and their nature, size and subject matter can vary significantly. However, all inquiries face the challenge of maintaining public confidence and accomplishing what they set out to achieve within an acceptable timescale and cost.

The #NationalAuditOffice found that the 26 inquiries that have been completed since 2005 have been done so at a cost of £236 million, with the average duration of these inquiries lasting 40 months.

The reason for these costs and delays can partly be explained by the fact that no single government department is ever responsible for the inquiries, and because of how this "structure" has developed, there is also no formal criteria to determine the type of inquiry, how long it should last, what it should cost etc... No formal criteria! In the government! (shocking)

Since 2014, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Justice have committed to various actions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of inquiries - Non have yet been fulfilled. (surprise)

There is no oversight across the government for monitoring and tracking whether inquiries have achieved their intended impact, or whether recommendations that have been suggested have been implemented, and there is no particular rule that says how transparent each department needs to be with these PUBLIC inquiries.

For this audit, the NAO requested 8 cases to review out of the 26 in question but due to these vague, unorganised, non-existing rules, not even half of those cases were readily accessible. Yet our government insists that anything the government spends public money on, the information and details must and will be readily available. (I wonder where they draw the secret lines)

The NAO found that the largest costs to each inquiry was the costs of legal staff and teams, on average this accounts for approximately 36% of the full inquiry, although in larger cases such as the Mid-Staffordshire NHS enquiry where many terrible wrongdoings took place,

(read more on this here -> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/06/mid-staffs-hospital-scandal-guide)
67% of the costs were attributed to the legal teams for this case.

Of the 10 inquiries the NAO reviewed, the expense ranged between £0.2 million to £24.9 million, the expenditures vary considerably per case. This is mostly due to the length of time it takes to complete an inquiry.
For instance:
Some snydy Rolf Harris secrecy issue between media and the police inquiry lasted 16 months.

(read more here -> https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jul/01/ukcrime-national-newspapers)

But then the major Iraq inquiry where we couldn't decide if we were right going to war or not, even though we've already been to war, lasted 84 looong months!

(You can read the gov report here -> https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-report-of-the-iraq-inquiry)

Scatty

There is nothing yet to say how all of these things will be improved. Scatty is the main word I use to describe the UK government and it's old fashioned and slow system. Given we have been promised a review on these inquiry matters for 4 years (and counting) and they haven't lifted a single little finger on the "promise" yet, I won't hold my breath for anything to change quickly. But that is a hell of a lot of public money on such a small handful of inquires over such a long fucking time of country operations.

In Conclusion

WE ARE JUST SO TERRIBLY DISORGANISED AND SLOOOOOOW..and cost ourselves a fortune along the way -_-