A tale of two inquiries

So as one inquiry gets properly under way, another one drags on. It’s the first full week of the Leveson Inquiry’s public sessions and also the day we hear that Sir John Chilcot feels he needs more time to do justice to the amount of paperwork he and his team have to go through on Iraq.

There was a moment early this summer when it sounded like the Chilcot team might be able to hit their target deadline. The inquiry sent out letters to witnesses under what’s known as the “Maxwellisation” process – sending individuals (and, through them, their lawyers) the draft references to them in the report so they can prepare their defences and if necessary ask for changes.

But after the warning letter that these draft sections would come to them, the follow-up letters with the actual draft terms of the report never followed. Given how long that process can take it’s not surprising to hear that the new expected publication date is no sooner than the summer of next year.

As for the other inquiry, the government did impose a deadline on Lord Justice Leveson. He’s supposed to come up with alternative rules for running the media in this country within a year (Sir John Chilcot had no such deadline and the only deadline he’s missed is the target date he set himself).

 The government has in the past made it clear it hopes that Lord Justice Leveson will come up with something that looks a lot like the Advertising Standards Authority. Phase 2 of the Leveson Inquiry was supposed to look at what actually went wrong (the celebrated horse and cart problem with its structure which Lord Justice Leveson referred to himself this week).

I mentioned a while ago one senior police officer suggesting that given the need to get court cases out of the way, this Phase 2 might not start until 2015. I now hear that senior lawyers in Whitehall are convinced that it will never actually happen and, after the drawn-out saga of police arrests, court cases and revelations, Phase 2 will be widely seen as a waste of time and be quietly buried.