The infected blood scandal puts spotlight on public inquiries and their effectiveness - Bill Carmichael

Most shockingly of all, deliberate attempts were made by medics, politicians and civil servants to conceal what was happening, including evidence of Whitehall officials destroying documents.

Blood products were imported from abroad and used on British patients, despite repeated warnings that they had been donated by high risk groups.

According to documents unearthed by survivors, the blood products were even given to pupils at a special school for haemophiliacs in Hampshire, because it was cheaper than carrying out medical tests on animals.

As one doctor wrote in a letter at the time, the children were “cheaper than chimps”. It is frankly hard to understand how a medical professional trained in the obligation to “do no harm” can have this kind of abhorrent attitude.

On releasing his findings this week Sir Brian said: “What I have found is that this disaster was no accident.

“People put their trust in doctors and the government to keep them safe and that trust was betrayed.”

Sir Brian and his team have clearly done a sterling and fearless job of uncovering this scandal, and I am pleased that the victims and their families finally have found justice.

And it seems from statements from the government this week that financial compensation of around £10bn will be swiftly made available, to ease the suffering of those impacted by this egregious misconduct.

But if Sir Brian’s recommendations are implemented in full, that will be an exception to the rule. Because despite the number of public inquiries ballooning over recent years, very little seems to change.

According to the Institute for Government in the 30 years before 1990 there were just 19 public inquiries. Between 1990 and 2017 there were 68 at a cost of £639m, and only six of these were scrutinised by Select Committees to ensure the recommendations had been acted on.

Just off the top of my head I can think of the following: The Bloody Sunday inquiry (which took 12 years and cost £210m); the Leveson inquiry into the British press; the Covid-19 inquiry; the Grenfell Tower fire inquiry; the Post Office Horizon inquiry; the Manchester Arena bomb attack inquiry; the Hillsborough disaster inquiry; the Rotherham child sex abuse inquiry; the Harold Shipman inquiry; the Lucy Letby inquiry; the Stephen Lawrence killing inquiry; the Wayne Couzens inquiry; the Victoria Climbie inquiry, and the Marchioness sinking inquiry.

A couple of minutes on the internet would produce dozens more, but you get the idea. If anything goes wrong these days the automatic response is to set up a public inquiry as though that is the panacea for all ills.

I hope the infected blood inquiry is different, but all too often nothing really changes. Nobody loses their well-paid jobs, or faces prosecution. We are constantly assured that “lessons have been learned” and it won’t happen again - until it does. It all adds to the impression of a broken society where nothing works.

Take for example the current Covid-19 inquiry, which will grind on for years at a cost of well north of £200m. There may be important lessons to be learned from our response to the pandemic, such as did we lockdown too early, or too late. Or given the impact on our economy and children’s education, should we have locked down at all?

But instead of addressing these important issues, the inquiry is obsessed with the tittle tattle of who said what to whom, and how many swear words were used. It seems like an exercise on blame shifting and point scoring.

As former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption told the BBC: “The first question we’ve got to ask is whether, with the knowledge we have in hindsight, lockdowns were a good idea and whether the effects were worth the phenomenal collateral costs - financial, social and educational. That does not appear to be on the agenda.”

Perhaps the infected blood inquiry will mark a change? For example, Sir Brian recommends that a statutory “Duty of Candour” be imposed on the entire public sector, including the NHS. This would place a legal obligation on public servants to speak up if they spotted anything wrong. That could make a big difference.