Responding to Sir John Saunders’ third and final report on the bombing at Manchester Arena, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary called it a ‘difficult day’ for the Home Office. In saying so, she was clearly referring not just to the general failure of the authorities to prevent the attack, which cost 22 lives, but specifically to the failures of the security service, MI5, which comes under the aegis of the Home Office.
In his report, Sir John concluded that the bombing might have been prevented had MI5 responded differently to the information they had. He noted that one officer in particular had contributed to the failure by not passing on information promptly. Most damaging of all, however, he expressly rejected the assessment made by MI5‘s own expert that no one other than the bomber, Salman Abedi, and his brother, Hashem, were knowingly involved in the attack. The corporate position, as it was presented, he said, was more a ‘retrospective justification for the actions taken or not taken’. This comes close to an expression of no confidence in the service as a whole and its leadership.
Some victims’ families felt that Sir John had not gone far enough
In directing what was at times excoriating criticism at the domestic security service, Sir John made something of a departure. MI5 has come in for criticism before, including in relation to the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London. But any criticism tends to go so far and no further. The nature of MI5‘s work, as that of MI6, its foreign intelligence counterpart, is acknowledged to be difficult, much of it in the shadows. Rather like military officers, intelligence officers themselves are considered to be fine upstanding patriots, who are subject to strict discipline and, so, to an extent, are beyond reproach.
Some victims’ families felt, despite this, that Sir John had not gone far enough. They said they held MI5 entirely responsible for the deaths and injuries of their loved ones. Among their common points was that the inquiry, while illuminating in some respects, had provided less information than they wanted. And one major reason why this would have been so was that almost the entirety of the evidence relating to MI5 was heard in camera. That is, only Sir John Saunders, as chairman, and the lawyers were allowed to hear it. The families themselves, like the general public and reporters, were excluded.
There is a standard defence of such secret hearings, which was wheeled out as the report was presented yesterday. It is this: that, if such evidence is not heard in secret, it will not be heard at all. MI5 officers and their superiors will simply refuse to attend or submit evidence. A whole dimension of any case will thus be missing. Better limited access, than no testimony at all.
Except that the Manchester Arena Inquiry was a public inquiry – and the very definition of a public inquiry should surely be that it is held in public, with full access for the general public and journalists. But here we encounter a paradox worthy of Kafka. A public inquiry does not mean that all the evidence has to be aired in public.
It is not uncommon for the powers that be to have a choice between holding an inquest and holding a public inquiry. An inquest is a legal requirement in the UK in any case of sudden or unexplained death. But there are times, and the Manchester Arena bombing is one of them, where an inquest may be elevated into a public inquiry. This may be as a result of pressure from those directly affected by the particular case, who may believe that a public inquiry will have a wider remit and produce a more thorough investigation than an inquest.Or it may reflect the prominence and broader significance of the case.
But, and here is the catch, a public inquiry may also be preferred by the government and various departments or institutions such as the intelligence agencies because – unlike an inquest – it does not require evidence to be given in public. That’s right. An inquest, in the best traditions of English law, requires witnesses to give evidence in public, whereas a public inquiry does not.
There was some interesting, and instructive, to-ing and fro-ing before the 7/7 inquest which retained its status as an inquest – or rather inquests – throughout. To her credit, Lady Justice Hallett (incidentally, the judge who will be chairing the Covid Inquiry) drove a hard bargain to compel MI5 officers to testify in person. In the end, they appeared behind a screen, identified only by a letter, not their name. But they appeared and were subject to cross-examination in open court.
The Manchester Arena inquiry is not the only inquiry where the private aspect of a public inquiry may have suited the intelligence agencies. The inquiry into the death of the Russian exiled former intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko also heard an unknown proportion of its evidence not just in secret, but in the presence only of the presiding judge, Sir Robert Owen. Lawyers for Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, and others argued for lawyers at least to be admitted, but this was refused.
Sir Robert’s findings were supposedly informed by the secret evidence, but even in his report he was not free to divulge the actual evidence on security grounds. For anyone with less than complete trust in government, this could not but represent a serious defect of any findings.
The process is soon to be repeated. After much delay, an inquest was finally announced last year into the death of Dawn Sturgess, the only person known to have died in connection with the 2018 poisonings of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. Before resigning to chair the Covid Inquiry, Lady (now Baroness) Hallett, who had been designated Coroner for the case, successfully asked for it to be designated a public inquiry.
One of the consequences is likely to be the same as at the Litvinenko Inquiry: an amount of evidence heard in secret, possibly only by the chair, which relates to what the UK intelligence services knew or did in connection with the Skripal case. The inquiry will probably be the closest the UK public gets to a public airing of the case, but at least some of if – perhaps a large amount of it – will not be held in public, which will only detract from the credibility of the process.
Returning to the Manchester Arena inquiry, families of the victims are right to feel that what was billed a public inquiry fell short of that definition by some margin, left some evidence out of their sight and afforded anonymity to individuals who, it was found, fell far short of their own professional standards with catastrophic consequences. This is a weakness not just of the this inquiry, but a weakness that is built into the process and suits certain sectional interests.
Trust in the system demands that some mechanism be found that permits the role of the intelligence agencies in such cases, and that of individual officers, to be properly and more openly investigated. In the meantime, the Great British public needs to know that some aspects of some public inquiries are not really public at all.
Comments