Coroners and Justice Bill

This amendment was put forward by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and is supported by Inquest. For no reason that can be ascertained, the Government propose to change the number of jury members required at an inquest from not fewer than seven or more than 11 to six, seven, eight or nine. The Joint Committee on Human Rights asked the Minister to consider whether public confidence in the outcome of any relevant inquest—and in the process as a whole—will be diminished by the proposed reduction, particularly in cases where the convention rights under Article 2 are engaged. The Minister told the Joint Committee in evidence that no concerns had been raised about this issue in public consultation, but he said no more. He did not justify it in any way. When we look at the Explanatory Notes for guidance, we see that they say on Clause 8 that, ""the nature of the inquisitorial task"," that inquest juries, ""are required to undertake means they do not need to be of the same size as juries in the criminal courts"." Why not? The issues that are involved concern someone’s death. Juries are to be summoned, in accordance with the Bill, only in circumstances where agents of the state have caused, or may have caused, that death. There is an even greater need to ensure that the decision-making remains of a high standard. We submit that it is wholly wrong for issues as crucial to the public interest as the deliberate killing of a civilian by an agent of the state—and noble Lords know the case to which I am referring—to be determined by a jury possibly consisting of as few as six members. What is the purpose of the reduction? The limited research that has been done in other jurisdictions into the composition of juries has discovered that the best quality of decision-making is found when there are 12 members of a jury, who discuss all the issues. That is what the research has shown. We have operated for many years with much smaller juries in inquests, but I can see simply no reason to reduce them as proposed in the Bill. I beg to move.