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MARK AUSTIN THOMAS: This Friday is the first anniversary of the London bombings in which 56 people died. More than a hundred suffered serious injuries. The British government has repeatedly rejected calls for an investigation into the atrocity. From London, Stephen Beard tells us why.

STEPHEN BEARD: The government has ruled out a public enquiry citing, amongst other things, the cost.

Ministers point to the hearings into the so-called Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland. They have so far cost almost three quarters of a billion dollars in lawyers’ fees.

But cost should not be the main consideration says former Government Minister John Denham.

JOHN DENHAM: All public enquiries are expensive but they’re usually held where there’s an urgent need to establish what went wrong after some tragedy or accident and in particular where you need to learn lessons in order to protect yourselves for the future.

He says that more insight into why four young Britons committed mass murder in their capital city and why the security services failed to stop them, would be invaluable.

In London, this is Stephen Beard for Marketplace.