To think spending money on enquiries is a waste…

[IDoWonderWhat]

Just that really. The Covid enquiry the Manchester arena enquiry.

Covid was a National pandemic. It’s unlikely we will have another pandemic like it. If we do have another medical pandemic the needs will not be the same and how we respond will depend on the rapid changing then current medical needs.

What happened in Manchester was awful. Terrorism is bigger than this one event.

The government has spent a significant amount on the enquires. What is the outcome though? How can we prepare for a pandemic we know nothing about? How can we fight terrorism that we can’t see coming?

Would this money not be better spent support people living with the impact of these events. For examples those struggling with long Covid or life changing medial conditions from the arena attack.

For Manchester, we need to learn lessons about how they evaded security and bombed an area teeming with police and security personnel. Those enquiries are really important. And why it took so long for ambulances to arrive. The security guard actually had a bad feeling about one of the terrorists but didn’t call it out for fear of being labelled a racist. All sorts of lessons need to be learned and if your child died, I think you would also want to know that this had happened.

We do need to understand the impact.

The government had a pandemic protocol - probably based on the last pandemic - but things change.

If mistakes were made, then we need to learn from them. It’s our best source of information gathering real fact from real events.

I did not know this about the security guard. Thank you for taking the time to reply. All your pouts you have made are really valid and I can see why an enquiry is needed.

If you don’t mind me asking, what are your views about Covid?

Firstly you cannot have a "national pandemic" as a pandemic is, by definition, global. Secondly we are extremely likely to have another pandemic. Even if the circumstances are not identical, there are lessons to be learned from the mistakes made with covid. YABVVVU

Very important to have inquiries for both of those very serious incidents.

COVID was unprecedented in recent times & agencies were guessing. Thousands of lives could have been saved if decisions were made differently but weighed up against the impact of millions of lives impacted by lockdown & isolation - many are still suffering the consequences of poor mental health, lost childhood years, education etc.

It's important to go through all the decisions (good & bad) and look at where decisions could have been made sooner/later or differently so that lessons can be learned.

No improvements will come from political fighting & social media keyboard warriors. - A systematic in depth view through an enquiry is absolutely needed.

Have you actually read all these enquires to decide they’re not worth it? The grenfell enquiry gave a lot of actions for fire services to take for example. Maybe do some research first before deciding they’re not needed.

On Covid, we will have another pandemic at some point. It would be good if we learned lessons from this one. It may not happen in our life time but it almost certainly will in our children’s and I would like to think we armed them with information as well as we could.

Issues like - when to lockdown, who should be making decisions (is it doctors, is it politicians etc), how hospitals need to deal with ill patients, when to shut schools (if at all).

I have less faith in a Covid enquiry than I do for something like the Manchester bombing because Covid became as much a political issue and also you have doctors that disagreed on courses of action. With big incidents, there are usually more facts involved if that makes sense!

They can have all the enquiries they like about covid, but who's to say the public would behave in the same manner next time round? It's doubtful.

I used to do ‘learning lessons’ as a career in the civil service. The trouble is that over time resources have become pinched and time isn’t devoted towards putting learning in place. That can be policy changes - bad enough with coming up with what’s suitable, but applying it (making sure it reaches the audience intended and properly implemented) is an even bigger task. Changes to equipment, who delivers the process etc all has its complications. But it can be very effective.
However - what’s learnt often involves a change in organisational thinking at the very top. No senior likes to think they’re at fault ever so you’re then on the road to hell.
Overall, I do think that even after spending years learning those lessons, some of the massive government enquiries have wasted time and money, seemingly just an appeasement to those criticising our government, regrettably often bereaved family members.

You can certainly find out important things and learn important lessons, but more often than not, they seem to be more about finding someone to be the scapegoat, someone who is then hung out to dry.
There's a national obsession with getting an individual to go in front of the cameras to say "I'm really sorry", then spending the next two years criticising the manner in which they said 'sorry'

I don't think the enquiries go far enough.
There needs to be accountability for the actions of those working in senior public service roles.
I'm not talking about a witch hunt but where people personally took the opportunities that COVID presented to profit financially then they should have been prosecuted. (PPE supply scandals).

When something has gone badly wrong it's important to find out why, and how we can avoid it happening again. A lot of the time, there were small changes which could have made things go a completely different way.

Like, the inquiry after the he kings cross fire caused lots of safety changes to the London underground, I remember. Massive changes to football rules after Hillsborough.
Airlines do this stuff very well for obvious reasons.

Is there a place for a review of what happened to look for areas of improvement and examples of successful actions or decisions so they can be reinforced? Yes.

Does the current format of public enquiries do this in a way that delivers value for money? No.

Spot on.

To someone that lost my Mum to Covid that she caught in hospital! The Covid Inquiry is important to me, not to appease me as a bereaved person but for lessons to be learned & the massive failings learned from. I saw a lot of failings in the hospital that contributed to a lot of deaths including my Mums but even prior to that the way things were shut down prevented people from accessing medical help when desperately needed that then ended up with them being admitted to hospitals where unfortunately a lot contracted hospital acquired Covid. Yes I agree a lot of political finger pointing & blaming distracts from what actually needs to be looked at the policies, procedures & effective training that need to be place to prevent anything like the scale of what we had happen again irrespective of what party is in government. I have given evidence to the inquiry & it shocked some of them as to what I said, could show & prove that happened in my Mums case, so I am thankful that the judge did listen & can see so far from some of the recommendations that came out our stories of real life not political bullshit have had an effect. But for us that lost someone we are now into our 6th year without them & still having to relive this through the inquiry so it’s hard, but all we hope for is that things get put in place so that other families in the future don’t have to suffer what we did.

Someone linked to an article about then enquiry following the Marchioness disaster the other day. It was how they improved dealing with identifying the bodies. Really sad but very interesting.

Depends what you mean by 'profit'. There's nothing wrong with making a profit. It's only wrong if it's done fraudulently. We needed PPE rapidly, if someone found a way to make it quickly and properly, it's win/win - the public needed it, they made money. That's how business works.

I think that there’s a lot from how things like the AAIB, MAIB, RAIB work that could be transferred to public enquiries to get better value for money and results.

At the moment enquiries seem to be influenced a lot by people feeling that their experience needs to be heard. Rather that what will bring benefit at a national scake.

Whereas a more structured review:
What should have happened
What did happen
Did the differences improve / harm the outcome
Whats clear that should be changed
Did The incident highlight something Thats previously not been considered
What would benefit from further consideration / research.

All done pretty promptly afterwards gives you that foundation.

The Cullen enquiry after Piper Alpha is a good example of something done well Thats delivered lasting improvements. It’s interesting to compare cost and timelines of that vs more recent enquiries.

The poor sharing of evidence - or a reluctance to consider other learning - is most definitively a factor in the ‘waste’.
AAIB etc do share but in my experience changes to ops aren’t implemented unless things are forced by legislative change. There’s a universal reluctance to navel gaze, to consider just how much your organisation might be as guilty as the perpetrator of the cause investigated. As I said in my earlier post, big bosses aren’t seemingly able to consider they’ve ever been in the wrong.

Surely the Hillsborough enquiry was one of the most important reviews of police conduct ever. So much learning, not just about the events of the day but the subsequent cover up.

Modern pandemics are occurring more frequently, they ascertain around every 15 to 20 years in modern times. They also think they are becoming more severe. Because the nature of society and medicine are changing constantly and more so than ever post WW2 they are trying to learn from the last pandemic to model what best todo for the next pandemic.

Was it though?

How much difference did it make when compare policing prior to the enquiry starting (not at the time of the incident, but just prior to the enquiry starting) to policing 3/5/10/20 years later.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Institutions can become corrupt - the public enquiry is a necessary counter balance. Eg the Hillsborough report makes for horrible reading. They are expensive but I think it’s worth it.

But what have they ever found out that everyone didnt know in the first place? sure they may make people feel better something was done but in a real sesne what do they actually do in the end?

We seem to be extremely bad at enquiries in this country, they go on for years months and cost a fortune and come up with really crap conclusions.

Why on earth did we need so many Hillsborough enquiries, why did it take so long to unearth the truth?

The Covid enquiries was more interested in putting the boot into Boris than looking at whether lockdown was the most effective way to deal with it.

Other countries seem much better, it's too much of a gravy train and the rules on giving evidence and who can be called need to be way stricter.