Coroners and Justice Bill

I shall be brief. First, I recognise that the Secretary of State has come a long way from his position last year. I served on the Committee that considered the Counter-Terrorism Bill, and strongly opposed the powers that it gave to the Secretary of State of an exclusive jurisdiction as to when a jury-free inquest should be held. That was wholly objectionable, for the reasons that right hon. and hon. Members have expressed during the debate. However, we must all ask ourselves one question: are there no circumstances in which one would hold that the presence of a jury was inimical to a full inquiry? I found that a difficult question, because I have always been, and I always am on the libertarian side of the argument. I hope that the House will allow me that. However, I served in the Foreign Office and the Home Office for seven years, and I am conscious from my time in government that there are matters—very few—that are not in the interests of the nation to be widely known. One needs to define those categories very strictly, and one needs to set them about with real constraints. I do not think that the Justice Secretary has gone far enough, but I believe that the process that he is putting in place is the right one, because he is allowing the judge—the coroner—to make the decision. I do not accept that a High Court judge would simply rubber-stamp the original certificate. We might be able to improve the process—the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) made a valuable point about the special counsel assisting the court on that specific inquiry. It is a process that we shall consider tomorrow in the context of the anonymity of witnesses. I have tabled amendments. We could raise the evidential bar so that a judge would have to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt. That is the burden and standard of proof referred to by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard). We could say that the Secretary of State should not issue the certificate unless he is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt. There are a number of things that we could do. The central question to which we must return, however, is whether there are some cases, albeit very few, in which it is not right for material to be made available to a jury. Let me say this to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve). If material is made available to a jury, even if it is provided in camera, the possibility must be contemplated that it will not be not confined to the jury, but will become public. At the end of the 1980s, I was an Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office. At that time, we had counter-terrorism legislation relating particularly to Northern Ireland. No doubt my hon. and learned Friend will remember the amendments that were tabled with the aim of preventing discovery of documents being made available to defence counsel and other lawyers. I had charge of that Bill, and we were faced with the considerable difficulty of determining whether there were classes of document that should not be disclosed to defence counsel. We decided that there were such classes of document, and it got me into terrible trouble. What I said in Committee—it was true—was that at that stage there were lawyers who were too close to terrorist organisations. Shortly thereafter, a man was murdered, the solicitor Mr. Finucane, and I was blamed for it. It has always been a great source of distress to me that people thought that I was associated with his death, but that was said of me. The truth is, however, that we reached the conclusion—I still believe it could be the case—that there are classes of document that must be held very close, and what we are discussing is that sort of case. I shall not vote against the Justice Secretary's proposals, because I think that they are moving in the right direction. I think that they can be improved, and I hope that they will be improved in the other place, but I hope it will be recognised by the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) that although I am always on the libertarian side of an argument, on this issue I shall not be with them. Let me make one further apology, which I have mentioned to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am afraid that I may not be present for the winding-up speeches. However, I shall be here to abstain in person.