Coroners and Justice Bill

There are elements of the Bill with which I profoundly disagree, and I shall have no hesitation in following the advice of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) this evening. I want to touch on the matters that were not debated yesterday on Report—the changes to the coroner system. I have no doubt that the system could be improved further, but I respect the Government's intentions in changing the architecture of the coroner system, and in making significant improvements to its operation. My interest in the subject was sparked largely by the experiences of a constituent of mine, Mr. Alick Moore, who sadly lost his son on 15 October 2004 in a diving accident. Mr. Moore and his family had to wait four and a half years for an inquest to be held, with very little information on the protracted investigations of the Health and Safety Executive and the police into the circumstances of his son's death. There was little apparent co-ordination, and a very unsatisfactory conclusion at the end. That, and the treatment that Mr. Moore received at the inquest, persuaded me that serious questions need to be asked. I have been in a long correspondence on the subject with various authorities, including the Attorney-General and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice). I should like to say how grateful I am for the way in which she addressed the concerns raised by Mr. Moore in her most recent letter to him. I know that he very much appreciates the care she took in responding to the points that he put. I hope that the outstanding questions—work-related deaths—will be resolved in the further stages of the Bill, if it passes to another place. The work-related death protocol has been ineffective in ensuring proper co-operation between the investigating authorities, particularly the HSE and the Crown Prosecution Service. I am dismayed that the wait that Mr. Moore had to experience is so often seen as the norm. My question to Ministers is whether they believe the Bill will cure that chronic problem of delay in investigation and delay in inquests being held. It is essential that the investigative period is substantially reduced in order to provide comfort to the bereaved family at an early stage, and so that at the time of the inquest they have clear and conclusive reasons for a prosecution being pursued or not. The key point that Mr. Moore would want to raise with the Minister is how we reduce that very long and entirely unacceptable period between the death and the results of any investigation. Other issues include the degree to which bereaved families are represented in court. In work-related deaths, corporate respondents to the inquest are often well and expensively represented. The family do not have that opportunity. We should look at whether, within the guidance and the funding of the inquest system, we can provide for families to be properly represented where there are questions that need to be put on behalf of the family about the circumstances of death. One of the things that my constituent found most difficult about the circumstances that he faced was the point-blank refusal of the coroner to communicate effectively with him until the inquest was completed, and even after that time, when he was not prepared to give any reasons for reaching his conclusions, having set aside what had already been accepted as a partial liability on the part of the company involved. That is unsatisfactory. I hope the charter for the bereaved that the Under-Secretary mentioned will deal with some of those issues. Clear guidance must be given to coroners on the extent that they can communicate with and have a dialogue with bereaved families without prejudicing the conduct of the inquest. That seems to me to be a crucial point if we are to provide a proper service to bereaved families. Despite my deep reservations about other parts of the Bill, I think the Government are moving in the right direction in the reform of the coronial system. I wish we had had a separate coroners Bill that dealt with that, rather than with all the other excrescences that have been added. Although I shall join my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge in the Lobby this evening against the Bill, I very much hope that reform of the coronial system will survive parliamentary scrutiny and will be improved in another place, and that we shall see a real improvement in the services offered to families in future.