Saville's Straight Bat
If MPs have been bubbling with resentment over the cost and duration of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, then today was the day they could get it all off their chests, as Lord Saville gave evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster.
But if they imagined they would score lots of points over the 12 year duration and £190 million price tag of the Saville inquiry, they had another thing coming. The law lord calmly and politely swatted all their objections away. Some in the NIO might have thought the process would take a year and half, but he felt there had been no meaningful way to estimate the length of the exercise at its outset. His critics didn't have a benchmark to judge him against, nor any suggestions about how he could have carried out his work quicker or better.
Lord Saville defended his leading counsel, Sir Christopher Clarke Q.C., estimated by the arguing that if he'd stayed in commercial practice Sir Christopher would have earned 2 or 3 times as much.
He acknowledged the Inquiry's accommodation costs had been high, and said that maybe they should have bought a house in Derry and sold it at the end of their hearings for a profit. But like so much else this depended on hindsight.
Lord Saville supported carrying out a cost benefit analysis before ordering inquiries in the future, but renewed his assault on the 2005 Inquiries Act, arguing that Section 19 of the Act (which allows the government to put restrictions on inquiries) would destroy the general perception that such probes are independent. He specifically mentioned Pat Finucane in relation to this.
Questioned whether he would take on Bloody Sunday again, he admitted he might think twice before saying yes, but then made it clear that he thought chairing the inquiry had been a privilege and that he had no regrets.
I'm 
Comments