Abuse inquiry controversy

A judicial review action over the child sexual abuse inquiry is to continue despite Fiona Woolf’s resignation as chair.

A survivor of the abuse applied for judicial review of the home secretary’s decisions in relation to the inquiry last month. The action continues, and legal advice is that nothing in the past week—Woolf’s resignation and a further statement from the home secretary in the House of Commons—alters the bases of the claim. The bases are: failure in a timely way, or at all, properly to consider the impartiality and relevant experience of the chair and panel members; failure to consult—as common law and fairness demands—with survivors and their representative groups as to decisions on terms of reference, and panel and chair of the inquiry; and irrationality in failing to appoint a statutory inquiry (the present format remains discretionary).

The Home Office had appointed Woolf, a corporate lawyer and Lord Mayor of London, to chair the inquiry in September. She resigned over her links with former Home Secretary Lord Brittan. She had replaced Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, who resigned because her brother Lord Havers had been Attorney-General at the time of the allegations. 

David Burrows, solicitor advocate with The Family Law Co, Exeter, who acts for the survivor and judicial review applicant, says: “The Home Office has a chance now to clear the slate; to look at everything again in the light of a real consultation exercise. This is what our client wants.

“As Lord Carlile, among others, has suggested, the home secretary can invite the lord chief justice to recommend to her a senior judge with appropriate experience. She can make the inquiry fully statutory; and leave the judge to appoint expert assessors or to rely on expert evidence as he or she sees fit.”