Coroners and Justice Bill

This House is always at its best when discussing our Armed Forces. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, kindly said, I have experience of replying to debates on that subject in the House. Tonight is no exception. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, and to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig. SSAFA, with which the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, is so closely involved, is a marvellous organisation that I am lucky enough to have dealt with over the years. The amendments address the expertise of coroners in investigating deaths of all British service personnel. I understand the wish of the noble Baroness and of the noble and gallant Lord to ensure that in a reformed coroners system we do not lose that expertise that has been built up by, for example, the coroners for the counties of Wiltshire and Oxfordshire. Amendment 6A aims to ensure that, where an investigation is transferred from one coroner to a coroner in a different area for whatever reason, the coroner to whom the case is transferred has had appropriate training on investigations into service personnel deaths. Amendment 37 aims to ensure that a cohort of coroners has the necessary skills to carry out investigations into service personnel deaths. Similarly, Amendment 119 would require regulations on training for coroners who carry out service personnel inquests. Amendment 114 would make a deputy chief coroner responsible for overseeing military inquests and training coroners who undertake them. There was a backlog. That was caused to some extent because the decision to repatriate all service fatalities initially via RAF Brize Norton in the Oxfordshire coroner’s jurisdiction created a singular and exceptional burden there. We would expect a coroner to be able to complete a routine inquest within six months of its opening. As the Committee well knows, inquests of service personnel can be more complex with a timeframe of around nine to 12 months from the date of death to the hearing of the inquest. Delays are often due to necessary Ministry of Defence investigations, especially service inquiries, and sometimes at the request of the family. As we know, coroners are funded by local authorities, but extra resources from government have been provided to Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Swindon coroners for inquests for service personnel killed on operations overseas. Both my department and the Ministry of Defence have looked at what else can be done to speed up the processes—for example, reviewing service inquiry procedures. The MoD established a Defence Inquests Unit in June last year, whose key role is to assist coroners and to progress internal investigation reports to prevent avoidable delays to inquests. The Ministry of Defence has also provided additional logistical support for bereaved families, which I shall not go into now. I reassure the Committee that, even without these amendments, measures in the Bill will mean that all coroners will be not only able, as my letter to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, said, but also equipped to deal with service personnel inquests. I want to offer what reassurance I can that the broad policy under a reformed coroner system will be that coroners in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire will continue to be responsible for leading investigations in the tragic event of incidents overseas involving service personnel that lead to two or more fatalities. I say in passing that the coroner for Wiltshire, Mr David Masters, who has conducted many of the most recent inquests and who has been praised by local Members of Parliament during Commons stages of the Bill, retired on 1 April. However, we understand that the new coroner for that county has appointed him as an assistant deputy for the specific purpose of continuing to preside over these cases. I said that incidents involving overseas personnel that lead to two or more fatalities will be looked at by coroners in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire. However, there may be exceptions to this. For example, if the families of the two or more fatalities are from Scotland or Northern Ireland, it may be more convenient for a fatal accident inquiry or inquest to take place there. We shall need to have much more detailed discussions about these matters to establish suitable protocols before the Bill is implemented. There are measures in the Bill to ensure that any coroner is equipped to deal with an investigation into the death of a single soldier in the event that responsibility for the investigation of a particular death is transferred to another coroner nearer to where the deceased’s family lives. Perhaps I may give some examples. First, one of the key roles of the Chief Coroner will be to issue guidance to coroners and their staff about investigations into certain types of death. This will include the deaths of those on active service. Paragraph 56 of our draft charter for the bereaved has already been mentioned by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig. Secondly, the Chief Coroner will make regulations concerning the training required by all coroners and their officers and other staff. I can confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, that this will almost certainly include training for those with responsibility for investigations into military deaths. These measures will ensure that all coroners are able to conduct effective investigations into the deaths of service personnel. However, if there were an extremely complex investigation, under Clause 3 of the Bill the Chief Coroner would be able to transfer the investigation to a coroner with the necessary experience or, under Schedule 8, to a particularly experienced judge, former judge or former coroner. I am afraid that I cannot accept that there is a contradiction between our assertion that all coroners will have the skills and experience necessary to conduct investigations into the deaths of service personnel and, on the other hand, our recognition that there will be exceptional, complex cases that will need to be handled in a different way. Those exceptional cases might involve, for example, multiple fatalities, which would sensibly be handled by a coroner who has conducted such investigations in the past. Those cases will be quite different from routine cases—if any such case can be described as routine—which any coroner should, with training, be able to handle. The noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, suggested that one deputy chief coroner should have oversight of military inquests. On balance, we do not believe that that is necessary because the Chief Coroner, as part of his or her leadership role for the service, would almost certainly want to be satisfied personally that all investigations and training were being carried out to the highest possible standard in line with the relevant rules, regulations and guidance. The overriding aim of the reforms in Part 1 of the Bill is to improve the service that bereaved people, whether service families or otherwise, receive from the coroner system. We are confident that, taken together, the measures in the Bill will strengthen investigations into military deaths. When I had the privilege of serving at the Ministry of Defence, I saw at first hand fatalities being brought back to Brize Norton as a consequence of the Iraq war. That is something that will stick in my memory, as it will with anyone who was at Brize Norton on one of those occasions. Therefore, I do not need to be persuaded about how serious a matter this is and how fundamental it is to the way in which we approach things. However, we do not consider that the amendments are necessary. We believe that the Bill already covers the very special interests relating to military personnel who die in service and their families who are left behind. They are indeed very special and different.