Jim Diamond, who has assessed legal costs for 35 years, believes that there will be no audit over the costs – a move which he said would be ‘shocking’.
The lawyer has previously offered to review – free-of-charge – the money given to Eversheds, the London law firm which worked on the inquiry, and the travel expenses which, at £1.5 million, Mr Diamond said were ‘higher than anything I have seen before’.
In July, the inquiry released its long-awaited report and made a string of recommendations, which included creating the post of Children’s Commissioner.
The final cost of the inquiry was almost four times the
initial £6 million budget allocated to it. This included £10,541,841 on lawyers’ fees and expenses.
The Public Accounts Committee, which recently appointed St John Constable Chris Taylor as its new chairman, is responsible for reviewing and reporting on money spent by the States.
Mr Taylor took over from Deputy Andrew Lewis as chairman, who resigned after being censured by States Members following criticism levelled at him by the inquiry, who found he had lied over the 2008 suspension of then-police chief Graham Power. Deputy Lewis has consistently denied the allegations.
Deputy Judy Martin, who sits on the PAC, confirmed that the inquiry costs would not be reviewed before the next general election in May 2018 due to time constraints and other work currently being carried out by the committee, but added that the next PAC could revisit the issue.
Mr Diamond said: ‘The issue that people keep talking to me about is how on earth have we spent this money.
‘This nonsense has gone on for 20 years, with Jersey throwing money away. The question is what was spent and why was it spent and to develop practices for the future.
‘It is not a case of undermining the recommendations or the inquiry. It is about insuring there are proper checks and balances.’
Mr Diamond added that he had concerns over the way cost management was handled in Jersey, as well as legal fees in the Island, and believes an audit of the inquiry could highlight some of the issues.
‘It didn’t have to be me looking at it, it could have been someone like me,’ he said. ‘I have no intention of making this the Jim Diamond roadshow – I offered my services because I felt there were serious concerns about the amount that was spent.
‘Eversheds lawyers would cost between £275 and £500 a day – junior barristers could probably have done the same advisory role for a third of the cost.
‘If you don’t have practices in place to control the costs, you can’t have another inquiry. It is potentially embarrassing to say “we spent more than we needed to” and I think the States are trying to bury that by not reviewing what was spent.’
