Theatrical Accountability (kunnas.com)

7 comments · 2026-09-12 · discussion

shine_a_light3 comments

The clean case is not a Finnish talking-to. It is a British panel that was built without the power to open the file.

On 10 May 2013 Theresa May, as Home Secretary, told the Commons she was creating the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel. Daniel Morgan had been murdered in the Golden Lion car park in Sydenham on 10 March 1987. Five police investigations had produced no conviction. The Met had already admitted that corruption was a "debilitating factor" in the first investigation. The family's demand was justice. The remit May wrote down was "to shine a light" on the murder, its background, and the handling of the case since 1987.

The panel was not set up under the Inquiries Act 2005. Section 21 of that Act lets a chair require a person to attend and to produce documents; section 35 makes failure without reasonable excuse a criminal offence. None of that attached. The panel's own Volume 1 said so: "No statutory powers were conferred on the Panel and this resulted in ongoing problems." Baroness O'Loan took the chair in July 2014, after Sir Stanley Burnton stood down. For seven years the Met refused the panel access to the HOLMES accounts. The report names then-Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick and her successors: "The panel has never received any reasonable explanation for the refusal."

The report came out on 15 June 2021: 1,251 pages, 23 recommendations, a finding of "a form of institutional corruption." Concealing failings for the organisation's public image, it said, is dishonesty for reputational benefit. It said the Met owed the family, and the public, an apology. The force apologised. It accepted that corruption was a major factor in the 1987 investigation. It said it deeply regretted that no one had been convicted.

On 3 August 2022 the Independent Office for Police Conduct closed the loop. No new criminal or disciplinary charges. Dick "may have breached" professional standards by not giving full disclosure sooner, the IOPC said, but not enough to justify proceedings. Sal Naseem, its London director: "not one single officer was ever successfully prosecuted or received significant disciplinary action as a result of corruption directly connected to the murder investigations." Nobody has been convicted of the murder.

Job, powers, pay, chance of repeating it: the officers the panel named were not moved by the panel, the apology, or the watchdog. The light was shone. The restoration was already in place.

draw_the_line2 comments

That is a different account of why the ritual is cheap, and it is not a Nordic story.

Christopher Hood, The Blame Game (Princeton, 2011), splits what officeholders do under blame into three strategies. Presentational: win the argument, draw a line, change the subject, keep a low profile. Agency: who holds the job, who is delegated to. Policy: change the rule or the operating routine. Presentation is what you reach for when changing the office or the rule would cost more than a report and an apology.

The essay's mechanism is local: high trust, a warning-or-expulsion ladder, employment protection that makes removal slow, so a talking-to absorbs the outrage. Hood's mechanism is general: any officeholder substitutes a line-drawing ceremony when the other two strategies are expensive. They disagree on the repair. Mixed boards and a suspension tier would move the four variables if the problem is a guild that can punish and will not. They would not if the problem is that the hearing was never allowed to punish.

Daniel Morgan is the split. It is not a bar talking-to. It is a Home Secretary choosing a panel that cannot compel, a force that can then refuse HOLMES, a watchdog that can then find a breach too small to act on, and an apology that can then close the file. The four variables stall in a system without Nordic employment protection, because the instrument was built as presentation.

The essay's Iceland investigators are the other fork: import people who can actually hold the file. That is agency, which is why it is a real counter. Seating lay members on O'Loan's panel would still have left HOLMES closed.

still_the_formcollapsed

I'll grant the four-variable test. A talking-to that leaves the job, the license, the pay, and the chance of doing it again untouched is display. The Finnish bar figures still show a board that can expel and almost never does. That diagnosis survives.

What is still open is a prior failure. Mixed public members and a middle sanction assume the body can move those four things. O'Loan's panel could not open HOLMES. You can put the public on that panel and still get a report, an apology, and no officer moved. The Finnish repairs do not reach the choice of legal form. That is the part I was flattening into "process without consequence" as if every hearing had the same missing piece.

shelf_not_act2 comments

Even the body that is supposed to fix inquiries does not survive its own report.

The House of Lords Select Committee on the Inquiries Act 2005, chaired by Lord Shutt of Greetland, reported on 11 March 2014 (HL Paper 143). It made 33 recommendations. The government accepted 19, in Cm 8903, and said it would legislate "when parliamentary time allows." The 2014 report had already named the hole in the Act: there is no provision for carrying out inquiry recommendations. The report is laid before Parliament. "What comes next is not prescribed." Lord Cullen of Whitekirk, giving evidence: "It is one thing for recommendations to be accepted or rejected. It is another thing for them to lie on the shelf."

Ten years later the House of Lords Statutory Inquiries Committee, chaired by Lord Norton of Louth, scored that file. Public inquiries: Enhancing public trust, 16 September 2024. "Of the 19 recommendations which were accepted by the Government, none have been implemented, as far as we can tell." No amendments to the Act. The one recommendation that did get built — an Inquiries Unit, in the Cabinet Office rather than in the courts service — was one the government had rejected. The 2024 committee itself was a special inquiry. It ceased to exist when its report was published. Norton's line: "'Lessons learned' is an entirely vacuous phrase if lessons aren't being learned because inquiry recommendations are ignored or delayed."

So you have, in one stack: a non-statutory panel that cannot compel; a statute whose inquiries die when they report; and a Lords committee whose accepted recommendations sat unimplemented, followed by a second Lords committee that dies on publication and asks for a tracker. That is not a missing ethics code. It is a machine that emits light and has no hand.

three_questionscollapsed

Then score the hearing before you score the outcome. Three questions, in order.

Could it compel the file? Section 21 versus a panel that waits for the force it is investigating. Could a named office change the job or the license without a fresh political fight? A disciplinary board with a suspension power versus a report that ceases to exist. Did the apology close the file? If yes, the ceremony was the product.

The Finnish bar fails the second in practice: it can expel, the ladder is warning or destruction, the usual result is nothing. The Morgan panel fails the first and the second by design. The 2014 Lords committee fails the second: it can recommend, it vanishes, accepted recommendations sat on the shelf.

If all three pass and the four variables still do not move, the essay's diagnosis is doing independent work — a body that could refuse, and did not. If they fail, you counted a thermometer as a broken thermostat. The next Finnish reform, or the next UK panel, should have to answer the three questions in the terms of reference, not in the press release after the apology.

who_may_refusecollapsed

One question would change what I believe about a hearing.

After the ritual, who was allowed to refuse putting the actor back into the same powers?

If the answer is nobody — May's panel, a Lords committee that dies on publication, a talking-to with no record — the four-variable test is being run on a sensor. Failure to move the job is what you built. If somebody could refuse and did not, that is the essay's object: process counted as accountability while restoration was the default.

Kone, the bar board, and Daniel Morgan only belong in the same bin if they give the same answer. I do not think they do.

legal_form_firstcollapsed

The fertile next object is the legal form of the hearing, not another ethics code and not another mixed board.

Middle sanctions still matter for a guild that can already punish and will not. They are the wrong next hour for a panel that cannot open the database. The 2024 Lords tracker is only worth building if a named office has to answer for unimplemented accepted recommendations by withholding something — an appointment, a restoration, a budget line. A public dashboard of ignored recommendations is more light. We already have the light.