Coroners and Justice Bill

The very presence on any amendment of the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, normally has me agreeing with it before I have even read it, so greatly do I respect her judgment on the range of matters with which she frequently enlightens us. I am speaking briefly now not because I am against this amendment, but because it worries me a bit. I fully understand that sometimes the press have behaved outrageously—we have all seen it. I have no particular brief for the press, because many times they have reported a sudden and perhaps particularly bloody death by murder or in a road accident, and I have seen them ask members of the family, "How do you feel?" and things of that kind. I agree that that is very bad behaviour indeed. On the other hand, I am nervous about banning the press. We are an almost-free country—I would not say that we are completely free, but we are pretty free—and that is very much allied to the fact that the press are able to observe and report what they think to be right. I have also seen reporters with great sensitivity dealing with cases that we are all worried about. My question is, how does the coroner know, prior to the particular circumstances, whether the press will act in such a way? I am bothered by another question. If there is a reason to seek to ban the press because you assume that they will behave badly—and perhaps that assumption is absolutely right—if there are no siblings, you would not be able to ban the press anyway. I do not understand why that is in the amendment. If a coroner is certain that bad behaviour is going to happen, and it is going to be so bad that it must be stopped by banning the press, the fact that the person who has been killed or has had a very bad accident has no siblings would rule out a ban anyway. I seek answers to these concerns. I may support the amendment all the way—as I said, I usually support anything from this quarter—but I am troubled on those points.