Britain’s public justice crisis: why inquiries keep failing the rule of law

There are too many things broken in this country, but one fundamental train wreck continues to be ignored, never repaired. That is the corrupted institutionalised culture of government and its agencies towards justice; most particularly public nature injustices where the government is involved to one extent or another - what we might call Public Justice Scandals. Government may at times still doth its cap to law, but it no longer sees justice as an ideal or as a right (particularly when it challenges government’s interests or policy). With energy bills spiralling and threats of nuclear war, one would be forgiven for feeling that of all the things that are bust in the UK, justice is perhaps not on the top of the fix it list.

However, it is only when you aggregate Public Justice Scandals and their victims that you begin to appreciate the scale and significance of the problem: Post Office Horizon; Hillsborough; Stephen Lawrence; sewage releases; Libya Semtex; Covid contracts; Iraq dodgy dossier; Bloody Sunday; cash for honours; MP expenses; Epstein; banking bail outs; Birmingham Six; Windrush; Partygate; Grenfell; and asylum and immigration practices. I apologise for the hundred other Public Justice Scandals I have omitted. Most justifiably lead to Public Inquiries. But the problem with any Public Inquiry is that it tends to look at the skin-deep problems of the specific matter it confronts rather than at the more general underlying problems, the result being that internal cancers get overlooked, government is let off the hook, and the cycle of Public Justice Scandals just continues. 

This horror show has just played out again in the case of the British Military Nuclear Test Veterans from the 1950/60s. For 70 years they have fought - no, battled - for justice against the government. I say battled because HMG’s approach from the start has been to treat them as ‘enemies of the state’ in their quest for justice. Recent enforced disclosures now indicate the veterans were used as guinea pigs in the nuclear tests, were potentially exposed to harmful radiation, and that evidence (analysis and data) that supported this had not been disclosed by successive governments. No wonder the veterans call for a Public Inquiry -- how can you trust a government to investigate itself on the question of trust, cheating and misleading courts -- into their public injustice. Yet another justified Inquiry to add to the long list above. 

Time and time again we see government defending the indefensible on issues of public justice; blindly adhering to a political line or policy. This also evidences itself in process: not just in government legally seeking to frustrate and disrupt justice efforts, but also in illegally seeking to do the same (this may seem shocking, but it is nevertheless true). One might argue that with the inequality of power faced by worthy public justice victims, even legal obfuscation by the government is beyond the pale. 

The clear common denominator to all these Public Justice Scandals is the government’s poor approach to delivering on public justice matters that touch and concern itself. This classic conflict of interest often necessitates legal action, inquiry, investigation, or prosecution against the government. Such public justice conflict of interests don’t just reveal themselves at home, they regularly occur each time a British citizen is wrongfully detained abroad; our embassies can support welfare but are conflicted and shackled from tackling miscarriages of justice that cause diplomatic embarrassment with security or trade relations. Justice – the fundamental cement of every society – has somehow been relegated by government to the second division of importance. 

What is clearly broken is the collective government approach to public justice and rule of law. Time and time again, HMG and its agencies are found wanting, not just on the political will to deliver justice for the sake of justice itself, but on a lack of candour, truth and compliance towards justice. Such is at epidemic proportions and, unlike with the recent Covid pandemic, it’s constantly with us throughout the decades and successive governments; public justice victims are in an eternal lock down on justice. 

The problem manifests itself in the increasingly bizarre reality of government appearing to take on a persona of its own that sees itself hurt (if criticised), suffering (if asked to do its job or challenged) and as being more important than the victims and the people it serves. Such nonsense is symptomatic of an over privileged liberal world where computers are similarly suggested to have feelings and rights of their own. 

This personality trait appears fuelled by government having developed an arrogant institutionalised disregard for law and justice whenever it is convenient to do so. If there were substance (defence of the realm etc) to their malfeasance, then they might be excused in terms of a Machiavellian greater good argument, but more often than not, simple scrutiny reveals convenience, self-purpose, hubris, or blind allegiance to this false idol of the State. Whether falsely covering up public scandals at home or making up facts overseas to ‘legally justify’ its foreign policy, lying within legal frameworks just comes too easily these days to successive governments. This isn’t helped by the fact that the big global powers set daily precedents for the total disregard of rule-based order. 

But our government is the very first in the line to attack authoritarian regimes over their approach to justice, but these days it would do well not to cast stones from glass houses. If we are honest, HMG’s approach to justice is not just similarly autocratic, but actually Orwellian in so far as it doesn’t just openly crush victims’ attempts for justice (as the former does), but it also seeks to cover up its malign obfuscation activity, disingenuously portraying itself as a helping and caring Big Brother. Somehow, under our noses, the UK has become a malign Big Brother when it comes to public justice. We have sleepwalked into this nightmare over the years, and it is now regularly, as the constant Public Inquiries demonstrate, coming back to haunt us. 

This time, perhaps the Veterans’ Public Inquiry demand needs to go further than predecessors; to go beyond the specific problem in question, and look at the more general causation of all these issues - the problem of an institutionalised culture of cover up and ‘autocratic’ approach to Public Justice Scandals evident across all government departments and agencies. This goes beyond the need for simple accountability to rules and laws (that HMG rode rough shod over in many of these scandals), this goes to the very cultural heart of the state that approaches Public Justice Scandals with open sympathy but also, behind the public gaze, with contempt, disinterest, derision, or disdain. Whether due to power, self-interest, arrogance or whatever, there is a government culture that consistently places justice second fiddle not just to policy, but to politics too. It is a condition that cannot simply be operated on through the band aid of a legal action here and there, but one that needs a holistic “change of life” cure. 

This is so fundamental, so deep state ingrained, so become the norm, that it is hard to contemplate how any UK government will even begin to appreciate or accept it has a problem in the first place, agree to such a probing Inquiry, and even more difficult to predict what it will uncover and recommend. Such an Inquiry could be so life changing to the HMG Behemoth that it might put the ‘Great’ back into Britain, foster good and honest officialdom and policy, reduce damaging scandals, and stop the policy of turning a blind eye to public injustices (such as sewage discharges into our rivers and beaches) when it is more convenient to do so. 

One simple recommendation of such a Public Inquiry might be that Public Justice Scandal victim groups (like the Post Office workers and the Nuclear Test Veterans) are designated for special treatment. With such groups, it might be better if the government does not approach their public justice claims in an adversarial manner but rather as a benign Big Friendly Giant; perhaps with obligations and duties on government to not (even legally) frustrate such claims but to actively support them. After all, government needs to remember who it serves, both the people and the laws. 

This suggested Public Inquiry is not a waste of public money; it is essential to enable this broken country to get back on its feet and, not least, to save on the cost of the next thirty inevitable Public Inquires if this government culture is permitted to continue. If we aggregate all these public injustice issues into a single Public Inquiry that looks into the heart of the matter - government culture towards public justice - we most certainly will find answers to prevent future embarrassments that fundamentally mark us as a broken country.