Cost of McGrail Inquiry? £5.8m and counting

The McGrail Inquiry has cost taxpayers just under £5.8m up to March 2025, according to figures released by the Gibraltar Government.

The figures, first reported by GBC, show the running total of legal and ancillary costs currently stood at £5,747,736.29 last March, even before the reconvened hearing took place last week.

The costs cover the work of legal teams representing the Inquiry and the core participants in the process, as well as other costs including sound, transcription and advertising.

The Inquiry’s own legal teams had racked up fees of just under £1.9m between 2021/22 and last March, while the Inquiry’s charman, retired UK High Court judge Sir Peter Openshaw, had been paid £231,100 in that period.

Fees for lawyers for the core participants totalled just over £3.2m in that time.

The McGrail Inquiry is tasked with looking into the reasons and circumstances leading to Mr McGrail’s early retirement in June 2020, after a 36-year career and halfway through his term in the top post at the Royal Gibraltar Police.

As far back as July 2020, when Chief Minister Fabian Picardo announced the Gibraltar Government would convene the Inquiry after Mr McGrail publicly called for it, the Gibraltar Parliament was told it would run into “millions” of pounds.

The Inquiry reconvened last week for a three-day hearing and lawyers now have until April 25 to provide any further written submissions.

Sir Peter Openshaw said his draft report was already well-advanced and ran to hundreds of pages.

Once he reviews any further written submissions, the chairman said he would write a further chapter on the disclosure issues scrutinised last week and make “some consequential amendments” to some of the chapters in the draft.

He said this would “necessarily take some time”.

Once the revised draft is prepared, the next step will be to alert anyone explicitly or significantly criticised in the report and allow them an opportunity to respond, a process known as Maxwellisation.

Sir Peter Openshaw will then consider those responses and make any necessary changes to the draft report.

Last week, the chairman said he was “acutely aware” of the need to finalise the report but declined to give any indication on timelines.

“The experience of the Inquiry has been to demonstrate that it is unwise to give a timetable and I am unwilling to do so,” he said.

“But I make clear that we will go about our task with a sense of urgency.”

“I will deliver the report as soon as I can, but consistent with my duty to deal with these complex issues, fully and fairly.”

Once the report is complete, the chairman will deliver it to the Gibraltar Government in line with the relevant legislation.

The Government, “subject to certain exceptions which I do not foresee are likely to apply”, has a statutory duty to publish the report, Sir Peter Openshaw said.