In this chapter, I will summarise the main findings of this work. I will offer suggestions for future research to explore further the findings of this book and for avenues which I have not been able to cover here. I will end with some recommendations for developing public inquiries which come out of the work presented here.
7.1 Summary of Findings
At the heart of this book has been the idea that blame permeates every aspect of the public inquiry—from its inception to its reporting—and that blame is something which is achieved through linguistic means. I have argued that, for the most part, blame is something which is not done in an open and up-front manner but it is present, nonetheless. That blame is done implicitly is something which comes about because it is rarely sought in the Terms of Reference of an inquiry and because it has been presented by some as being risky and/or something to be avoided.
In Chapter 2, I showed that governments are often reluctant to establish public inquiries—offering as a justification the fact that they are time-consuming and costly—but often at the heart of this reluctance is a concern that the government may be blamed. In part, this may explain why the Terms of Reference (which the government draw up with an inquiry chair) contain in them presuppositions which have the potential to restrict what an inquiry panel can investigate. Even if the Terms of Reference do not restrict what an inquiry can investigate, they do play an important role in the discursive construction of blame. By empowering an inquiry to, for instance, find out who was responsible for a negative action, the inquiry sets out with the task of seeking someone (or a group of people) to blame, but who the target of this is may be restricted by the Terms of Reference.
Chapter 3 explored questioning patterns at the C. Diff Inquiry and showed that there was a clear difference in the way that witnesses were treated by counsel based upon whether they could be considered blameable or blameless. Counsel is particularly cautious when it comes to asking questions about matters which are viewed as especially blameable. At the C. Diff Inquiry, the poor communication around C. Diff infection and the handling of soiled laundry came in for particular criticism in the final report. When discussing those matters, counsel to the inquiry ensured that they did not ask witnesses potentially leading questions. This meant that when blame was produced, the blamees could not suggest that it stemmed from unfair questioning practices. Blame is something which has to be arrived at, and seen to be arrived at, fairly.
In Chapter 4, we saw the personal and professional risks which witnesses associate with being blamed, and this offers motivation for participants to engage in blame avoidance behaviours. I showed that denials—where the speaker outright rejects the idea that they committed a negative action—form part of the arsenal of blame avoidance tactics which can be employed. To this we can add excuses, where the commission of the negative act is admitted to but the speaker seeks to negotiate a reduction in blame based on some mitigating factor. These mitigating factors at the Leveson Inquiry included not having clear responsibility for the act in question or arguing that the negative outcomes of an action were not intentional or predictable. We also saw some attempts at justifying one’s behaviour. Here the commission of an act is accepted, but the speaker attempts to reframe the act as a positive one, and thus not something which they can be blamed for. Exploring blame avoidance gave insight into what people think of as the constituent components of blame.
Chapter 5 explored the reports of various public inquiries and showed that blame is something which is rarely done explicitly. Using the Shipman Inquiry—which did engage in explicit blame—I was able to explore how the linguistic patterns which were found there are also used in other inquiry reports, but without an admission that the chair is engaging in blame. I showed that verbs associated with criticism, expressions which assign responsibility and descriptions which frame an action as negative do occur in public inquiry reports. They are, however, found less often than in parliamentary language. Other implicit means of blaming—by using modalised expression which do not necessarily commit a speaker to a proposition—are also found. The motivations for this less than explicit assignment of blame were discussed. I explored the views presented by some that blame can be toxic and can distract from effecting real change. I presented a counter-view, that avoiding assigning blame can make people feel that it is possible to act with impunity and can make those who have been wronged feel as though their suffering has been overlooked.
In Chapter 6, I discussed how apologising can be seen as a self-blaming action. I showed that apologies during oral evidence may be seen as attempts to pre-empt blame; in acknowledging wrongdoing before one is blamed, one may be seen to more genuine in feeling regret for the negative action. I showed that, as well as blame being performed indirectly, apologies are also often done using implicature. Speakers often seek to demonstrate their sorrow, or desire to apologise rather than doing so unequivocally. I also talked about apologies which are given by the government in response to the public inquiry. I explored how these are done despite the apologiser not having been involved in the wrongdoing. Apologising in these cases is a means for the government to clearly endorse the findings and legitimacy of the public inquiry. These government apologies may also be seen as an attempt to speak directly to those who were wronged by a previous government, and seek to bring that otherwise marginalised group ‘back into the fold’. I showed that these apologies are a unique parliamentary activity which allow all parties to accept blame. They may be seen as a form of ritual catharsis.
In all, I have sought to show the importance of blame in the running of a democractic, civil society. I believe I have also demonstrated the important role that analysing the language of quasi-political events has in developing our understanding of psycho-social phenonmena.
7.2 Future Research
In this section, I want to outline a few areas which require further research in light of the work done in this book.
Firstly, in Chapter 3, I looked only at one model for oral evidence procedures—the restricted model which allowed only counsel to the inquiry to pose questions to witnesses. Further work would do well to explore the traditional and hybrid models of questioning, to see whether differences emerge in how blame may be constructed by opposing counsel. It would also be interesting to see whether the differences between questioning at criminal trials and the C. Diff Inquiry also apply to inquiries which use different oral evidence procedures. The findings about questioning could also inspire future work to see whether the types of questions a witness receives clearly predict whether or not they are likely to be blamed in the final report.
Stapleton and Wilson (2010) argue that discourse analysis (and particularly political discourse analysis) should look not only at ‘molar’ concerns of the positions available to speakers, but also the “‘molecular’ analysis of how these are taken up and negotiated” (Stapleton and Wilson 2010: 312). It is doubtless a shortcoming of this study that the so-called molecular aspects have focussed on the reactions of political figures involved in the inquiry process and neglected those of non-present recipients and ratified overhearers. Future work, likely taking an ethnographic approach, would do well to remedy this.
Further work into the framing of recommendations of public inquiries and how forcefully (or tentatively) these are outlined in their reports also merits investigation, but has been outside the scope of this work focussed as it has been on blame.
These are but a few ideas for further work. Such is the scope of public inquiries, and the delicate interactional work that occurs at them, that there are many avenues for future research for linguists interested in the interface between the law, parliament and the media.
7.3 Changing the Public Inquiry
I have thought carefully about the inclusion of this final section. As a linguist, the earliest thing that one is taught (and that we still teach) is that it is important for us to describe and not prescribe. This particularly relates to how people use language and the idea that one dialect or variety is not intrinsically better than another. That avoidance of prescription, however, often filters into other areas of our work and means that linguists will frequently undertake a study like this and leave it up to others to decide on its implications.
I usually tend in that direction, but equally after having explored public inquiries and their relationship with blame in some detail, I hope it is not viewed as beyond my remit to offer some suggestions about the potential wider implications of this investigation. After all, for all the talk of evidence-based policy making in government circles, there is precious little of it about (see Hammersley 2013 for a thorough-going review and critique of evidence-based policy and practice).
- 1.
Remove the role of the executive in establishing, managing and terminating inquiries. Empower parliament (and the public) to establish public inquiries;
- 2.
Require inquiry chairs to state in their executive summaries who is being blamed and why;
- 3.
Establish processes which pressure the government to implement the findings of inquiries.
In the rest of this section, I will explain and justify these recommendations.
Firstly, confidence in the Inquiries Act (2005) will only be maintained until there is an abuse of executive power, which is possible under the terms of the current act. Where a government wants to hide from blame it need only refuse calls to establish an inquiry. Whilst continued pressure might make that embarrassing, this embarrassment may be weathered and as a result the government may be able to ‘let itself off the hook’. Moreover, where an inquiry has been established, it still remains possible for a government to terminate it without giving any justification. That is deeply problematic. Fear of termination may even stymie an inquiry, giving it cause for concern when it comes to blaming the government. Again, whilst there is no suggestion that a government would use this lever for nefarious purposes, that it is even a possibility should give us cause for concern. It does not reflect the open, transparent and fair democracy which we seek for ourselves and seek to promote around the world.
In light of this, I propose the following changes. The first would see a return to the position of the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 which allowed any parliamentarian to introduce a motion to establish a public inquiry. The sponsors of any inquiry which is agreed to should be the Speakers of the Houses of Commons and Lords—this would allow independence from executive power. In addition, the existing petitions systems which allow matters of public concern to be discussed in the House of Commons should be extended such that a call for an inquiry which passes a certain threshold of support be debated as a substantive, binding motion. This would further underline the public nature of public inquiries. A further element limiting executive power is more straightforward still—it should not be possible to terminate a public inquiry once established. Whilst suspension may be necessary if potential criminal prosecutions arise, this possibility should be in the gift of the chair and not the executive.
The second change relates to how blame is done when the inquiry reports. Whilst recognising the concerns presented by some of creating a blame culture, I believe these risks are outweighed by the benefit for society at large of being unequivocal when it comes to assigning blame. Society is damaged when the public believes that powerful élites can act with impunity. It gives rise to resentment and a belief that there is one rule for those at the top and a different rule for everyone else. If justice is not only to be done, but seen to be done, inquiry chairs should take the lead of Dame Janet Smith (chair of the Shipman Inquiry) in clearly spelling out who is to blame. Whilst blame is done implicitly in inquiry reports, their length, technical language and indirectness mean that they are either not read, or viewed as unsatisfactory. The executive summaries of inquiry reports should be compelled to clearly state who, after the careful consideration of the panel, is to be blamed. There is nothing stopping the inquiry chairs from making clear how much blame should be assigned to individuals named in the executive summary.
The third change relates to what happens after a public inquiry. A criticism found of public inquiries is that they take forever to do their work and then nothing happens after them (Stutz 2008). This perception is potentially corrosive and could undermine public confidence in the justice system. More impetus needs to be given to governments to implement the recommendations of public inquiries. In part this could be supported by a suggestion made by Norris and Shepheard (2017: 32) that the Cabinet Office set up a unit of civil servants and advisers tasked with developing legislation and policy as recommended by public inquiries. This work should be scrutinised by a standing select committee made up of MPs from all parties and chaired by an opposition MP. Furthermore, the inquiry chair should be called before the select committee to give evidence on their view on how successful the government has been in implementing the inquiry recommendations. The potential for embarrassment may, at the very least, spur the government into explaining why it dissents from the view of an inquiry. But preferably, such embarrassment would lead to the government effecting changes in response to an inquiry.
In making these changes, the opportunity for the government to potentially avoid blame is reduced. The value of seeing justice being done through the inquiry chair being explicit in blame (as well as offering lessons to be learned and resultant recommendations) can be embraced. Committing the government to acting in light of an inquiry shows that blame has not been done just to distract attention from making real change; it shows that blame is important, but cannot be boiled down to righteous anger, instead it can be the trigger for change. We should be rightly proud of our system of public inquiries, but these recommendations may help it to continue to have the confidence of those whom it is intended to serve.