09-07-2025
Southport Inquiry: Can public inquiries lead to real change?
Speaking ahead of the Southport Inquiry Figen Murrary, the mum of Martyn Hett, says the Manchester Arena Inquiry gave her the answers she needed, but it took an emotional and physical toll.
The government has so far announced three new public inquiries in 2025, bringing the total of ongoing or announced inquiries to 21. But with more public inquiries than ever - are they working as they should?
While public inquiries can be tools for accountability, they are not without challenges. Critics often point to the lengthy durations and substantial costs associated with these investigations and even more crucially the fact they often do not lead to change.
A recent report by the House of Lords Statutory Inquiries Committee warned inquiries were perceived as 'frequently too long and expensive, leading to a loss of public confidence and protracted trauma'.
Figen Murray OBE, the mother of Martyn Hett, one of 22 people killed in the Manchester Arena bombing, knows all too well the emotional and physical toll public inquiries can take on families.
The inquiry into the Manchester Arena Attack lasted more than three years.
She said: "Going through an inquiry as a family member who has been directly affected either by death or injury, it is one of the most traumatic experiences I have ever gone through.
"Once you see something, you can't un-see it. And when you hear things you can't un-hear them. So people need to appreciate that sitting through an inquiry you see things, you hear things, you go through all sorts of emotions and it's brutal."
However Figen maintains the inquiry did give her the answers she needed and helped her campaign for Martyn's Law.
Figen Murray said: They're crucially important because they make people accountable and they actually make sure all the facts are on the table and people can examine them and actually make sense of what happened and it puts all the pieces together that are missing.
"I think inquiries are absolutely crucial to learning from bad catastrophic events and finding out what can be done to avoid that from happening again."
While few will disagree with the need for an inquiry into the Southport tragedy, some remain skeptical as to what it'll achieve.
"It had been hoped Southport would be the first to adhere to the Hillsborough Law which would force public officials to tell the truth at inquiries from the outset or face criminal sanctions but the bill's yet to be passed."
Elkan Abrahamson, Director of Hillsborough Law Now believes the current inquiry process is ineffective.
"There are two big reasons why I think they are ineffective," he said.
"The first-is the lack of a duty of candour so it is easy to mislead a public inquiry - certainly in the early stages before an inquiry kicks off and the second is a lack of any oversight mechanism to see that any recommendations are, if not fully implemented, then at least properly considered.
"Time and again we have a public inquiry where recommendations are made and just ignored and we have to do something about that."
But Professor Lucy Easthope, one of the country's leading emergency planners, believes if done well the Southport Inquiry could bring positive change.
"One of the things about the inquiry is there wasn't a trial which many people were relieved about in some ways but it did mean there were a lot of questions unanswered and the inquiry can go much more broadly into other questions as well," she said.
"There is no doubt that inquiries done well with the right disclosure and with a very focused chair that demands things of the people giving evidence does inevitably and necessarily change practise.
"The sad thing for us is to have to see it being in an inquiry. "
So it seems this public inquiry will itself come in for intense scrutiny. The big question, will be whether it'll be able to provide clarity and a degree of closure to the families of Alice, Bebe and Elsie and all the others affected by the terrible events of last summer.
