Coroners and Justice Bill

I have absolutely no idea whether that is the case, but it is a wholly improper constriction of the time of this House for the Secretary of State to make a statement today that he could have made on any day last week, any day the week before or any day in the remainder of this week. It was not time-precious—that is to say, time-urgent—for him to make the statement today. I would suggest that it is an entirely cynical, albeit typical, Government business manager move to compress the debates on the Bill. The Bill, which is about the size of the mid-Suffolk telephone book, is yet another plum duff of a Bill—plenty of duff and very few plums. It deals with about 15 discrete areas of law reform. We had inadequate time in Committee to debate the Bill, and we can see from today's amendment paper, which is about the size of the Rutland telephone book, that plenty needs to be discussed on Report. We can also see that there are nine groups of amendments and new clauses that have to be dealt with in today's business alone. It could be suggested—no doubt the Minister will confess to this in winding up the debate—that the whole purpose of the way the programme motion has been constructed and the way the Government have so organised this afternoon's business was to prevent things that need to be discussed and scrutinised from being discussed and scrutinised. We will probably see many hon. Members wishing to discuss inquests into a person's death that may be conducted without a jury, which is a highly controversial aspect of the Bill. However, there are other subjects equally worthy of discussion, such as: the death of service personnel abroad; coroner's duties and powers; inquest juries; medical examiners; the governance of the coronial system; some new material on sedition and seditious and criminal libel; the reform of the law of murder; and finally, the subject of assisting suicide.