Formal inquiries, resulting in a Report to the Prime Minister with recommendations for change in the relevant areas of public life, have been a fundamental aspect of the Committee's work since its inception. In the past fourteen years, we have completed eleven reviews.
Typically, an inquiry consists of:
- publishing a consultative paper setting out the issues and questions it believes are of specific importance
- commissioning research where appropriate to support evidence-based inquiry
- inviting written submissions based on the issues and questions paper
- holding informal meetings with practitioners and experts
- holding formal hearings open to the public and the press where the issues are explored in detail
- publishing a report, the second volume of which contains transcripts of oral evidence and a CD-Rom containing written evidence and any supporting material.
Although some of these stages will overlap, a full inquiry is quite a lengthy process. In some cases, it may take a year or more. However, some "short" inquiries only take six to eight months: it all depends on the scope of the issues being reviewed here (pdf 227Kb), and whether this is the first time that the Committee has examined them.
Inquiries can be initiated by Government - the Prime Minister directly or a Cabinet Secretary, on the Prime Minister's behalf - or by the Committee itself. By convention, the Committee will first consult with the Government, but it does not need to seek the agreement of either Government or Parliament before announcing an inquiry or other piece of work.
In practice, only a few of the earlier inquiries (for example, the first and the fifth) were initiated by the Government; the latter inquiries were initiated by the Committee.
