As amended in the Standing Committee, considered.

Order for Third Reading read.—[Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified.]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

One of the fundamental principles in our democracy is accountability to the public. They rightly expect that, when something goes wrong, it will be investigated and put right. We have a long tradition of establishing formal independent and open inquiries into matters that have caused public concern. We have seen how valuable inquiries are at getting to the truth and learning lessons to prevent the same thing from going wrong again. In that sense, they serve to restore public confidence by doing just that. We have also seen the significant impact that they have had on our public services.

The Stephen Lawrence inquiry brought about profound and important changes that continue to this day in the police force and other public bodies. The Victoria Climbié inquiry into a young girl's tragic death in my constituency is another example of an inquiry that was instrumental in bringing about reform to public services and, in this case, children's services.

The Bill has a simple purpose: to enable the people who conduct inquiries to do their job and to get to the truth in the most open way possible more effectively. It contains new measures to ensure that the three vital principles of independence, transparency and accountability of those inquiries are achieved. It is essential that any inquiry is independent and is seen to be so.

The Bill strengthens the independence of an inquiry by creating a new statutory requirement to ensure that inquiry panels are impartial. It also gives the inquiry chairman full legal powers to seek whatever evidence he needs within the inquiry's terms of reference. It does not, as some have suggested, give Ministers free rein to control inquiries in a way that suits their interests. It clearly sets out the respective roles of Ministers and those conducting the inquiry. It clearly spells out in statute what has been regarded as good practice in many inquiries.

The Bill will lead to greater accountability to the public, bringing new requirements to publish and contain costs. The chairman must have regard to costs as well as fairness when planning and conducting proceedings. The procedural rules to be made under the Bill will also aid decision making and strengthen the chairman's hand in controlling costs.

Many hon. Members made valuable contributions to the Bill's scrutiny and we had the opportunity to examine key aspects in debates on probing amendments. My hon. Friend Tony Wright and his colleagues on the Public Administration Committee merit particular credit for their work. The Committee produced a thorough report on many aspects of the inquiry system and helped to inform debates. It will no doubt be a valuable source of best practice. I also express my thanks to my hon. Friend Mrs. Campbell, who contributed her useful experience from the Select Committee to the work of the Standing Committee.

Of great concern to the Select Committee and to other hon. Members is the proper role of Parliament in inquiries. Mr. Heald raised the matter earlier. The Committee made a number of recommendations that led to much interesting debate.

The Government accept that there is an important role for Parliament in all types of inquiry. We have introduced the requirement for Ministers to make statements to Parliament about the establishment of every inquiry under it so that Parliament can scrutinise those decisions. The Bill builds Parliament into the process for every inquiry conducted under the legislation and provides a framework for an appropriate amount of parliamentary involvement in each case. Under most of the legislation that the Bill will replace, there is no provision for any parliamentary involvement.

We were interested in the Select Committee's ideas about a wider role for Parliament in inquiries outside the Bill. As we said in our response to the Committee's report:

"There is no reason why the good work done by members through the present Select Committee system cannot be translated into a commission equipped to conduct a public inquiry."

We also said:

"The Government can see some merit in a formal channel for considering representations made via Members of either House of Parliament concerning whether an inquiry should be set up on a particular issue."

That is clearly for Parliament to consider, but the Government would be supportive of any work that Parliament wanted to do on developing parliamentary mechanisms of inquiry. From this point, we head out into a general election, but I have no doubt that my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase will play a part in that work after the election.

May I put on the record my appreciation of the way in which my hon. Friend has handled this matter? He has acknowledged the specific question about Parliament's role in relation to a certain category of inquiry that is not caught by the Bill and I am grateful for his comments. I hope that, when we return after the election, he and the Government will be prepared to give the matter further thought, so that the House can reach a view on how it wants to carry it forward.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

The Bill is important and I am pleased that we have been able to see it through. This is an historic moment for families, for people who use our public services and for people who are experiencing problems. The shining of public light on such problems that the Bill enables is fundamental to our democratic arrangements and we have brought the system into the 21st century. On that basis, I commend the Bill to the House.

We agree that new legislation is required to initiate and regulate public inquiries. There is a pressing need to consolidate the many statutory and non-statutory bases for public inquiries and we need universal procedures that can be applied with certainty to such inquiries. Those procedures must allow sufficient powers to call witnesses and evidence while maintaining safeguards and minimising red tape and costs. It is important that we retain the appropriate level of independence, openness and parliamentary involvement to ensure public confidence in any conclusions drawn by a public inquiry.

The Government introduced the Bill in the other place at the end of last year. Although it dealt with some of the deficiencies of the present hotch-potch of rules, the Bill was fundamentally flawed. First, it removed all parliamentary involvement and thus democratic legitimacy from the public inquiry process. Secondly, it over-extended Ministers' powers to interfere in an inquiry at the expense of the inquiry's chairman, which would compromise an inquiry's independence, effectiveness and credibility. Thirdly, the Bill failed to address our concerns, due not least to the Saville inquiry, regarding the proper control of costs. In its original form, the Bill was wholly unacceptable to the Conservative Opposition.

I acknowledge that, since then, we have made great progress in amending the Bill to meet those concerns. First, through a compromise position reached in another place, we have ensured that Parliament has some involvement in public inquiries. Under the Bill as it is now, a Minister must inform Parliament of his intention to set up an inquiry, the extent of its terms of reference, who will chair it and how many will serve on the inquiry panel. Further clauses provide that a Minister must lay before Parliament any decision, supported by reasons, to suspend an inquiry or to bring it to an end before it has fulfilled its terms of reference. Those provisions will ensure parliamentary scrutiny and, I hope, debate. They will also facilitate public scrutiny of Ministers' central decisions relating to an inquiry.

Secondly, following the strong and eloquent argument of Lords Kingsland and Howe of Aberavon in the other place, we have boosted the chairman's involvement in key decisions relating to an inquiry. The chairman must now be consulted before a Minister decides who serves on the inquiry panel and when their appointment may be terminated; the extent of the inquiry's terms of reference and any modifications to them; whether it is appropriate to appoint assessors; when an inquiry is suspended; and when an inquiry may be terminated before the publication of its report. The added involvement of the chairman will help to promote the independence and effectiveness of inquiries. I hope that the chairman will not be political but have intimate knowledge of the progress and detail of the inquiry which, in turn, will help to improve public confidence in its conclusions.

It should be said, however, that those changes do not go as far as we had hoped in reining back the Government's extensive powers. In Committee, we proposed several further amendments to ensure the greater involvement of Parliament and chairmen in the inquiry process. Unfortunately, the Government rejected all our amendments, despite wide-ranging support from numerous human rights groups and parliamentary Committees. I certainly mirror the Minister's congratulations to the Public Administration Committee, which has done much work on the Bill, but its recommendations have been largely ignored by the Government.

In addition to obstructing our positive amendments in Committee, the Government pushed through two unfortunate amendments of their own, which removed the compromise positions reached after much debate in the other place that allowed parliamentary involvement in inquiries into ministerial conduct and gave a veto to the Lord Chief Justice on the appointment of a judge to an inquiry panel. The amendments undo the efforts of our noble Friends and are of particular concern to the Conservatives. Like the original version of the Bill, the current post-Commons Committee version does not allow for any special procedure to be used to investigate ministerial misconduct. It will now be a Minister who sets up such an inquiry, determines its scope, the members of the panel and public access. A Minister will also decide whether it is to be terminated and whether a report will be published. It does not require a great leap of faith to realise that a Minister may have little or no interest in launching an investigation into conduct by himself or the Government. If the inquiry discovers an embarrassing or incriminating fact, he may be tempted either to restrict its scope or public access, or to interfere with the timing, form or publication of the report.

It is Parliament's role to hold the Executive to account and we maintain that Parliament should be involved in any inquiry into the Executive's actions. We proposed appropriate amendments in both Houses that would have ensured such involvement. The other place made some headway in cutting the democratic deficit by providing the option of laying a resolution before Parliament, but that progress was reversed by the Government in Committee. The Opposition have noted that the hon. Members for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright) and for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) proposed a new amendment to address the issue, although I hear that it has since been withdrawn. It is worth considering it, however, as it would require a resolution by both Houses where public concern focuses on the conduct of Ministers or Government Departments and where other forms of inquiry are not appropriate. The drafting of the amendment is not clear, but I interpret

"the conduct of Ministers or Government Departments" to mean ministerial misconduct. Where Government Departments are under investigation, one or more Ministers would have to take responsibility. The amendment went some way towards introducing the necessary parliamentary involvement in inquiries into ministerial misconduct. However, in the eyes of the Conservative Opposition, it would not have gone far enough. A parliamentary resolution should be required for every public inquiry into ministerial misconduct, not just in those cases where other forms of inquiry would not be appropriate.

The provision is not only limited, but uncertain, which further restricts its usefulness. Who would decide whether other forms of inquiry were appropriate? Furthermore, there is no specific mechanism through which to debate the matter in Parliament. It may be the Minister who decides whether another type of inquiry is appropriate, which removes the benefit of taking the matter out of the Minister's hands. Also, there are no set criteria by which to judge whether another type of inquiry would be appropriate. That removes both certainty and consistency. The amendment was by no means perfect and did not adequately cure the deficiencies of the Bill in relation to inquiries into ministerial misconduct, but we recognise that it would have been an improvement on the Bill as it stands.

The second matter that causes great disappointment to the Conservative Opposition is the limited involvement of the Lord Chief Justice when a judge is asked by a Minister to serve on an inquiry panel. The current version of the Bill requires only that the Minister consult the appropriate judge, usually the Lord Chief Justice. That was the case in the original draft Bill but, following the compelling arguments of the Lord Chief Justice and other noble Lords, the other place divided against the Government to ensure that the Lord Chief Justice consents to a judge's involvement in an inquiry. Unfortunately, the Government used their majority in the House to reverse the good work done in the other place.

It is important that the Lord Chief Justice can veto the use of a judge on an inquiry panel. If not, the Bill will remain inconsistent with the concordat agreed between the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor that only days ago became embodied in the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Only the Lord Chief Justice retains the necessary independence and knowledge of the courts' resources to judge whether it would be appropriate to use a particular judge for an inquiry. Finally, the current situation could leave a judge in a difficult situation where a Minister and the Lord Chief Justice disagreed about his appointment. Could he refuse the Minister? It is unfortunate that the Government did not accept the Lords amendment.

In conclusion, the Conservative Opposition support the legislation to regulate public inquiries. We are encouraged by the many positive amendments that were secured in the other place but remain disappointed that so many amendments were rejected by the Government, particularly on the two key issues relating to parliamentary involvement in inquiries into ministerial misconduct and the Lord Chief Justice's involvement in the appointment of judges to inquiry panels. I ask the Minister to consider those issues carefully and note that, as they arise from amendments introduced in another place, the Bill must now return to the other place for further consideration. We shall observe with interest what progress may be achieved by their lordships.

I shall be brief. I welcome the Bill, which in some ways took us by surprise. Those of us who were investigating the matter of inquiries were surprised when the Government decided to legislate during the same period. It is good that they should, for two reasons.

One is that the Bill focuses attention on the importance of inquiries. We take them for granted, but inquiries play a hugely important role in our public life. Usually in the context of something bad having happened that needs to be investigated, they enable us to take a step backwards, to subject a part of our public life to microscopic investigation and, hopefully, to learn lessons for the future from whatever has happened. It is a crucial part of our tradition of public life and public administration, and it is right that we should therefore focus on it in the way that the Bill forces us to do. We owe a huge debt to those who undertake inquiries and we have an obligation to learn from them. That is the first reason.

The second reason is that the effect of having this Bill is that many more inquiries will now be conducted on a statutory basis. At the moment, they are conducted on a variety of bases, many of them on an ad hoc basis. The effect of the Bill, contrary to some of the suggestions that have been made, is that it will bring far more inquiries within the orbit of statute, and so equip them with the powers contained in the Bill. Therefore, it is to be welcomed as a strengthening of the inquiry tradition as a whole.

Having said that, I want to put on record why some anxieties remain, to which I hope that we can return on another occasion. My hon. Friend Mrs. Campbell and I tabled an amendment to explore some of those. As I have acknowledged already, the fact that the Government have been able to say something positive on the parliamentary issue has enabled us to withdraw that, but the matter still sits there and two issues connect.

One issue concerns the role of judges in inquiries and the role of the Lord Chief Justice in assenting to a judge serving on an inquiry. Having heard the evidence of the Lord Chief Justice on that point, it is clear that the judges take seriously what we invited them to take seriously, which is a move further down the road towards a separation of powers in this country. In the context of inquiries, they say that, if that is to be case, we must not think in the future, as has been the case in the past, that we can simply summon up a judge to conduct an inquiry in politically contentious areas, because that raises particular problems for the judiciary. That is well known in other systems. Over the years, it has become massively fudged in our system, but the judges now want to take that more seriously. We should be alert to that. It is not the case that judges are universally the best people to undertake inquiries. Some of the best recent inquiries have been undertaken by people other than judges.

A particular issue has arisen there that connects directly with the second outstanding issue. There is a category of inquiries that only Parliament should properly undertake. There is always difficulty in finding the words to describe those inquiries, but we know which they are and we heard evidence on the matter from many recent inquirers who said that there is a whole category of inquiry that it would not be proper for people such as them to undertake, because they are politically contentious inquiries that turn on the conduct of Ministers and on what happened in Departments. These are matters that Parliament must consider.

If we are honest with ourselves we will accept that Parliament is good at many, many things, but it is not well equipped to undertake forensic fact-finding inquiries. That is not what it does. It used to be so equipped in another age, but it is not any longer and we have had some recent examples of the difficulties that it gets into if it tries to undertake such inquiries. We have a choice here. Either we simply say that Parliament cannot undertake such inquiries any more and we must contract them out to somebody else, or not do them at all or we can say that there is a category of inquiries that only Parliament can properly undertake, so we must find a mechanism within Parliament for undertaking them. Some of us have been exploring what such a mechanism might be. That is the clear choice. The reason I was happy to withdraw my amendment was because I was and am confident that the Government have at least accepted our analysis, even if on this occasion they have not accepted our conclusion. However, it is an important issue and I hope that we can return to it early in the next Parliament, because if we do not, Parliament's standing will be diminished further. We either have to abandon formally this territory or reclaim it. There is no other choice in the matter. I hope that, after the election, the Government will enable Parliament to reclaim this inquiry territory.

I am delighted to follow Tony Wright for two reasons. First, he speaks with great authority on this issue and has experience and eloquence that I cannot match. He has given much attention to the subject both in his Committee and elsewhere. Secondly, I agree with the concerns that he expressed. At this stage, it will not be possible in a matter of a few minutes to address them in the Bill, but I hope that what the Minister said about unfinished business in this respect will be held to when Parliament meets again after the general election.

I and my colleagues in both Houses welcomed the opportunity of this Bill—an opportunity that I hope we have used for constructive improvement. As Mr. Djanogly said, the Bill has improved since the Government introduced it. One issue of principle is extremely important, particularly, but not exclusively, in relation to the issues raised by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase. His Select Committee, the Public Administration Committee, gave a great deal of attention to the issues that are now before us and were before us in Standing Committee. Yet, the cross-fertilisation of that detailed inquiry into inquiries was not treated with the serious attention that it deserved.

As has been mentioned, Mrs. Campbell sought to introduce some major principles from that previous investigation by our Select Committee, which, after all, has a Government majority. As far as I recall, its recommendations were virtually unanimous, as the hon. Member for Cannock Chase may confirm. Yet the cross-fertilisation of that Select Committee work into a Standing Committee on the Bill simply did not take place.

There are wider issues that go beyond this Bill. A great deal of the most important work in this House is now done in Select Committee. If we cannot at least guarantee a clear channel to a Standing Committee of information, instruction and guidance from Select Committee work specific to a Bill such as this, there is something wrong with one Committee or other, or with the communication between the two. I suggest that the problem lies in the Standing Committee.

There is unfinished business, and not just in relation to the role of the Lord Chief Justice. I agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase, but I suggest that the issue is more specifically about the parliamentary role. The Minister referred to that, but I do not find the reassurance that he gave us wholly adequate. I hope that there will be a return to the issue. Much careful thought was given in Select Committee and in the other House to how inquiries that touch on the conduct of Ministers could be effectively set up. That involved terms of reference and how the inquiries were to conduct themselves while taking note of the fact that there was a ministerial component.

I regret that we have not made more progress on that matter. I have had experience of inquiries of various sorts, both statutory and non-statutory. To fail to address the problem and to have made so little progress on that thorny issue is unfortunate, given that we have only rare occasions on which legislation can improve such matters and that there may not be another such occasion for some years. As I said before, that is unfinished business. The integrity, independence and efficacy of inquiries is at stake if we do not get this right and it is unfortunate that we have not made more progress.

I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Cannock Chase and his Committee, as, indeed, the Minister did, but I think that it would have been even better if the words that we have all expressed had been reflected in action and if the Committee's recommendations had been taken to heart and put into the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.