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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Lord Carlile is a Lib Dem peer and one of Britain’s top legal experts, he joins me now from London, very good to talk to you Lord Carlile.  What are your thoughts, as I was saying to Yvette Cooper there, isn’t the important thing to get this inquiry underway?  It’s been four months now as they have been trying to sort out who is going to chair it.  

ALEX CARLILE: Well the columnist Melanie Phillips commented in the last couple of days that we are in danger of having an inquiry into how we have an inquiry and absolutely we don’t want that.  We need to establish an inquiry quickly, there are two prerequisites in my view.  The first is that the person carrying it out should not be a parliamentarian, should not be a member of either House of Parliament because those of us who are obviously know some of the people concerned and the second is that it should be somebody with training or experience of dealing with evidential issues involving child protection and child abuse.  There are plenty of people to choose from.  The two people who were asked to do the job so far actually were not suitable on one or other of those two counts.  

DM: Okay, well you’ve headed me off at the pass because your name has been mentioned but of course you have just said you don’t think it should be a parliamentarian.  

ALEX CARLILE:  I couldn’t possibly do it because I know some of the people whose names have been mentioned, or knew them, one or two have died now.  

DM: Okay, so you think there are plenty of people around?  Do you have anyone in mind, whether you want to share it with us or not?  Plenty of eminent and well-trained people?

ALEX CARLILE: Well I think the politics has to be taken out of this and I’m not going to name names but for example if the Lord Chief Justice could be persuaded to release a senior judge to do this job I think that would ideal.  There is no particular reason why it should be a woman but there are as it happens seven women who are Members of the Court of Appeal, Lady Justices, a point which I raised in a parliamentary question in the House of Lords several weeks ago.  Alternatively there are some recent retired judges from the Court of Appeal who would do a very good job if they were persuaded and willing to do it and we must remember too that there is quite  a big world north of Watford, there are an awful lot of people of great ability who could carry out this inquiry who are not part of the Westminster village or the political scene.

DM: Do you know what, you know what happens Lord Carlile if one of those judges were appointed or were proposed, then the digging starts.  They’re judges they’ve been around, they go to dinner parties, they go to drinks parties, the digging starts and you find that they’ve been in the same room and it seems to be Lord Britton who seems to be the one, they’ve met him.  

ALEX CARLILE: Well you’ll be surprised how independent judges are of politics.  Look at the wonderful job that Lady Justice Hallett did with the 7/7 inquest, there was never the remotest suggestion that she was too close to the government or to any other interest group and believe it or not, there are quite a lot of judges who in their practice as lawyers were not practitioners in London or will not have met a single cabinet minister of any party in their whole lives.  There are plenty of people to choose from, they must be asked the right questions to ensure that there isn’t a conflict of interest but you know, if any lawyer is asked to take on a case the first thing they should do is a conflict check.  A simple conflict check would ensure that the wrong person is not appointed and we should not be in the position we’re in now.   

DM: Wouldn’t it be safer to just get somebody with expertise in child protection?  This is precisely what the inquiry is all about and it is not just led, as we know, by the Chair, there would be plenty of other people with the legal expertise on the panel.

ALEX CARLILE: I’m not against having the panel led by somebody with child protection experience, I do think however that it is very important that the panel should have the skill to analyse evidence, to assess issues of credibility, to look carefully at documents that are disclosed, to ensure that full disclosure has taken place and the involvement of a senior judge or a senior lawyer seems to me to provide the expertise and training to achieve that but it could be somebody else of course.  The issue is lack of conflict of interest and requisite skill.

DM: It could all take a long time though couldn’t it?  The point is that people kind of want answers as soon as we can get them but this process is going to take maybe years.  

ALEX CARLILE: Well I don't know, I don't think it should take years at all. There have been a couple of inquiries that have taken years but there have been an awful lot of inquiries that have not.  I referred earlier to the 7/7 inquest, that’s a very good example of an inquiry of the greatest public interest attracting blanket press attention, some of it from around the world, which did not take a particularly long time.  The Crown Prosecution Service inquiry into the Savile case was done in weeks not in months, so there are the skills out there and there are the people out there who have no conflict of interest, who could carry out this inquiry quickly and dispassionately and objectively and come to the correct conclusions.

DM: Lord Carlile, great to talk to you, thank you very much indeed for sharing your views with us, that’s Lord Carlile in the rain there in North London.