There seems to be a lot of anger out there about the decision not to hold a public inquiry into the July bombings.
One of the bombing victims, Rachel, wants an inquiry because she wants answers to a whole range of questions and to know what factors led to the bombing taking place.
Annie Mole has also commented on it and people have expressed a range of views about the decision on her blog. I suppose my thoughts are that I am not necessarily sure what a public inquiry would achieve. Those really important questions that might be what people really want answered probably would never be able to go into the public domain. For example the Security Service is never likely to reveal its surveillance techniques or what they didn’t which that meant that the July bombers were able to carry out the attacks. The more that is put into the public domain the more it could highlight our vulnerabilities – and therefore make us more of a potential target.
However, this does not mean that there is nothing being done to address issues that came up during the bombings. The London Assembly has held meetings on what happened – although some might question the wisdom, or taste, of playing a phone call made to the emergency services in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Also each of the emergency services involved will have had de-briefs and identified lessons learned.
That isn’t necessarily any comfort to those who are looking for answers though. It doesn’t necessarily make you feel any safer out there or help people to feel that the likelihood of it happening again is in any way diminished. So I think it is about finding a balance. Allowing people’s voices to be heard and for them to raise their questions. After all if all the “official” people involved i.e. the emergency services, government etc are able to put forward their issues then why aren’t the very people who were directly affected by the bombings? Why can’t their questions and concerns gain some level of official recognition even if it isn’t through a full public inquiry? Are their views somehow of less value?
After any major incident the government put a lot of effort into the “getting back to normal” message, but what if you no longer know what normal is?
2 comments:
Hello and thanks for your thoughts.
I think that what many of us would like is some kind of plan going forward about improving tube safety and victim support, practical things, as well as some examination of the causes as that will impact on safety in the future. I doubt they will mention the war, ever, they can't, but however well the emergency services reacted on the day, the aftermath was poorly handled, and improvements can be made
Thanks Rachel. Sorry for taking so long to respond.
I agree that there should be clear plans in each of these areas, but I am just not sure that they would ever make such things public. It would show where there are failings and would also perhaps make them too accountable(!).
As far as I know the Department for Culture, Media and Sport are dealing with issues to do with the family assistance centre and the follow up for victims, so perhaps you could lobby Tessa Jowell (the Secretary of State in that department) directly to see if that makes any difference?
I think another source might be London Resilience. (Can't get the link to work properly so you can copy and paste the web address http://www.londonprepared.gov.uk/)
However, as I am typing this it makes me think that the fact you would need to go to so many different sources to address the issues is half the problem and having one definitive source would be far better and give people confidence that things were being done and that they knew who to contact to find out what that was.
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