Coroners and Justice Bill

I intend to be fairly brief in my response. As the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, indicated, these are not matters to be decided tonight. We need to come back to them, but it is a useful first exchange across the Dispatch Box and around the Committee on this particular topic. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken: the noble Baroness for her amendments and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, too. My comment tonight is that I welcome the fact that Amendment 46, which the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, spoke to, appears to accept that establishing an inquiry to investigate the circumstances of a particular death may be an appropriate way of proceeding. Maybe we read that wrong, but his amendment proposes a number of significant changes to the Inquiries Act in such cases. The Government have made it clear that we will do everything we can in any particular case not to go down this avenue if there is a way in the coronial system of hearing a sensitive inquest. If we could, we would. This is not our first choice, which is to use the coroners system in every case. If we cannot, we feel we have to find an alternative. The alternative we have found is the Inquiries Act 2005. As to the details of the noble Lord’s amendment, I should like to say this about the various changes he wants to see. To be fair to him, he says that that is a prerequisite before he could consider supporting what we are doing. On the chairmanship of an inquiry established for these purposes, I assure the Committee that we fully expect to appoint a senior judge, in much the same way that Clause 11 provided for a High Court judge to preside at a certified inquest. As to the other changes the noble Lord has proposed, we remain to be persuaded that they are necessary. Removing the ability to amend the terms of reference of an inquiry into the circumstances of a person’s death might be detrimental to the interests of the bereaved family given that information could come to light which suggests that the terms of reference should be revised. That said—I repeat what I said when I spoke to my amendment—we would expect the terms of reference for any inquiry to reflect the matters to be ascertained by a coroner set out in Clause 5 and it is unlikely that, once set, they will need to be changed. As to the powers vested in the responsible Minister to suspend an inquiry and restrict public access—something that has exercised the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—we cannot see why different arrangements should apply in the case of an inquiry examining the circumstances of a person’s death compared with any other inquiry which, by its nature, is also likely to be considering issues of considerable public importance. We believe that the decision whether to restrict public access to safeguard national security or international relations should properly rest with Ministers which is what, as I understand it, occurs at the moment. We would expect the greater part of any inquiry to be held in public. While legal aid is not available, the chairman of such an inquiry may award an amount in respect of legal representation for interested parties. Decisions made by the chairman of an inquiry—for example, to exclude the public from certain parts of it—are open to judicial review. That is all I want to say on this issue tonight. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, asked whether we will consider what has been said. Of course we will. I want to make it absolutely clear that our position is as it is at present. Amendments 32 to 36 deal with the relationship between a coroner’s investigation and a public inquiry into the same death. It is entirely appropriate that where an inquiry is established into the circumstances of a death, the coroner’s investigation should be suspended and resumed only if the coroner considers that there are exceptional reasons to do so. The Bill also provides that an investigation may not be resumed after the completion of an inquiry unless, but must be resumed if, the senior coroner believes there is sufficient reason for resuming it. However, these provisions are intended to cover situations in which the terms of reference of an inquiry will not, or have not, achieved an inquest’s statutory purposes. As I have said, an inquiry held in these circumstances is very likely to have within its terms of reference the coroner’s statutory purposes; accordingly, a coroner would be expected to suspend and not resume his or her investigation in such cases. Indeed, if the circumstances of the death had been fully investigated by an inquiry, I would have to question the value of resuming the inquest in such a situation, particularly if the coroner did not have access to sensitive material, such as intercept evidence, which had been available to the inquiry. I recognise that there is no perfect solution to the issue that Clauses 11 and 12 sought to address, and we accept that the approach set out in these clauses does not command the necessary cross-party support. On that basis, I would ask for support across the Committee for the government amendments. I also invite the Committee to think carefully about whether in the absence of Clauses 11 and 12, it is not right to accept that the only assured way of ensuring that Article 2-compliant investigation can proceed while also protecting highly sensitive material that may be relevant to a determination on the circumstances of a death is to proceed, in those very exceptional cases, by way of an inquiry rather than a coroners’ inquest. Indeed, the noble Baroness will forgive me if I do not—I should not—refer to any individual case, outstanding or not.