Coroners and Justice Bill

As I have said, article 2 does not require a jury. The only basis on which one could argue that a jury is required is through the long traditions of the common law as it relates to the coronial process. We should not get too hung up on the jury issue. We should be much more worried by the fact that the key requirement of article 2 is the involvement of the family. I think that families would be a lot happier if there were juries in these cases, and the new process provides for a jury. However, my main argument with the Government is the potential for the exclusion of the family from hearing certain aspects of the evidence. The existing system provides ways round that problem. My right hon. Friend has already mentioned gisting, and we know that the coroner in the Azelle Rodney case looked at the possibility of using that process. We are all getting hung up on that one case, but there is an old saying that hard cases make bad law. The Rodney case is a very hard case, and I think that it could result in our making very bad law indeed. That case did not go to appeal; all we had was the judgment of the coroner—in fact, I think it was the deputy coroner—of Hornsey, Coroner Walker, who was given the gist of certain redacted material but not given the rest. There was no question of his challenging that decision. In the Northern Ireland case of McCaughey and Grew to which I referred, Mr. Justice Weatherup had to decide on that exact point. He stated very simply that the coroner was entitled to see the redacted material, and to decide whether it was of relevance to the inquest and whether it should be put before the inquest. That decision is then subject to judicial review by either side. The Government can challenge the coroner, but so can the family, depending on the ruling. That is not the only option. There is also the public interest immunity certificate process, which worked perfectly adequately in the de Menezes case, and countless others in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. The eighth report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights deals with the Bill. Paragraph 1.38 sets out a whole series of options available to the coroner. It states that the law""allows the Coroner to sit in camera on the grounds of national security (a very rare occurrence…), to rule on a claim of Public Interest Immunity…(a more frequent occurrence), to seek… undertakings of confidentiality from interested persons, to order reporting restrictions, and to order special measures for witnesses (including anonymity and provision to give evidence by video link)"." There is a whole series of possibilities, and they have been used in many highly difficult, contentious, sensitive inquests, including the de Menezes case, the friendly fire cases and the inquests into the Nimrod deaths. It has been possible to deal with all those under the existing system. My main concern is that we are constructing a huge sledgehammer to crack a very small nut: one case—the Azelle Rodney case—which was probably wrongly decided by the coroner in the first place and not subject to testing through the appeal courts. If it had been tested in that way, the appeal courts might well have come up with a different ruling on how it should be processed, as we saw in the Northern Ireland case. Gisting might well be the answer to the problem. If the gist of the material were made available to a coroner's court, whether there was a jury or not, no state secrets would be given away about how the material had been collected. As we do not need to have a decision beyond all reasonable doubt, that might well be satisfactory for the purposes of article 2. Let me summarise my main argument. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for what he has done. He has moved a mountain in changing his proposals, but that still raises the question why we have to go through the process in the first place.