Bloody Sunday Inquiry to report in the autumn

I hear that Lord Saville has finally completed his report into the events of Bloody Sunday, more than 11 years after he was appointed to inquire into the shootings in Northern Ireland on 30 January 1972. It has taken him five years to write.

The report, which is said to run to 7,000 pages, is apparently with the printers. There is no word on when the report will be published but I understand it may not be until Parliament returns after the summer recess in mid-October.

I suspect that the law lord has now decided to include a summary, something he initially thought he might be able to do without.

A spokesman for the inquiry told me she could make no comment about publication date. Relatives of those who died were told last year that the report would not be published before this autumn.

Lord Saville, 73, finished taking evidence from all but a handful of witnesses in February 2004 and heard closing speeches in November of that year.

He must have started work on the report in 2004 because he made it clear at the time that he planned to submit his report in the summer of 2005. It will now be published four years late.

What seems to have given him an incentive to shake off his personal albatross is the prospect of sitting as a justice of the Supreme Court when it opens in October. He is eligible to serve for 18 months before reaching the retirement age of 75.

Although he was the most junior law lord when appointed to chair the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Lord Saville is now the most senior apart from the president and deputy president. He was therefore able to choose the best room.

This has gone down particularly badly with his fellow law lords because their individual offices have turned out to be much pokier than expected.

One might ask how much of a contribution Lord Saville will be able to make to the new court, given that he has not sat as a judge for well over a decade. At least Jonathan Sumption QC, widely expected to join the Supreme Court if Lord Neuberger becomes Master of the Rolls, is a lawyer first and historian second.

Posted at June 1, 2009 03:28 PM