Coroners and Justice Bill

I shall take the views of the hon. Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) to heart, and shall not make any party political points about members of the SNP who did not turn up to Committee where they could have raised this issue. The hon. Member for Salisbury is quite right that this point is something that everyone, on both sides of the House, agrees on. Colleagues in government in the Scotland Office and the Ministry of Defence have been working very hard on it, including both present colleagues and those who were previously in some of those posts. I welcome the fact that the Lord Advocate and the Justice Minister in Scotland have worked with us to achieve a process of decency, as the hon. Gentleman said, for the families of British armed forces personnel who happen to live in Scotland, to enable them to deal with the death of their loved ones closer to home than is currently the case.