Coroners and Justice Bill

I shall not add to the troubles that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has experienced in trying to convince the Committee of this amendment. She will already have appreciated that she still has quite a case to argue, given the reservations that have been identified by noble Lords, on which I shall not comment at this stage. I hope that, although I cannot accept the amendment, my response will be constructive. I understand the points and reservations that have been made as noble Lords have contributed to the debate. No one in the Chamber does not sympathise with the noble Baroness’s objectives. We are all concerned about circumstances in which a family suffers again, often in a very savage way, through excessive and insensitive reporting. We would all like to see a remedy to that and, bearing in mind the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, to find a way of ensuring that it does not bring distress. Press freedom and discussion in a democracy are important principles, and restrictions on the press must be considered with the greatest care. As successive Governments over many years who have sought to operate restrictions have found to their cost, things do not work out in quite the way that they hope. Therefore, I shall begin by recapping policy developments over the past few years in order to put this issue into some context and, I hope, to reassure the noble Baroness that we are thinking constructively about this very real problem. The draft Coroners Bill 2006 contained a clause on reporting restrictions. That clause would have allowed the media to report cases but the coroner would have had discretion to make an order preventing the names of individuals being published. However, as a direct result of our consultation on the draft Bill, my ministerial colleague, Bridget Prentice, announced in October 2007 that we would take the clause out of the Bill. This was because a broad consensus had emerged that the proposals could limit public scrutiny and the transparency of coroners’ courts—the very point that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made—lead to inconsistent reporting of inquests across the country because of the differential impact, and unreasonably raise the expectations of families where the likelihood of any restrictions being imposed was pretty limited. Instead, we agreed to look at how else we could ensure the sensitive reporting of all deaths, not just those of children or those where children would be affected. Nevertheless, the noble Baroness’s concern has a particular sharpness to it. On 14 January this year, we announced that, following further consultation, the Government had decided that the best way forward was to work with the Press Complaints Commission, bereavement support organisations, the Coroners’ Society and others to bring the Press Complaints Commission’s code of practice to the attention of both bereaved families and the press. The code includes very important provisions to avoid, ""intrusion into grief or shock"," and about children generally. It is important that families are aware of the code so that they know what they can do if they feel that they are being harassed by the press or that the case has been misrepresented. To this end, in recent months our officials have been working closely with the commission to ensure that the organisations that do important work supporting bereaved people are fully aware of the code. I understand that the commission also works directly with the press—both with new journalists and then via refresher training for more experienced ones—so that reporting is as sensitive as possible. In March this year, the commission also published its updated Editors’ Codebook, which goes into great detail about what sensitive reporting involves. Against this backdrop, I should add that I doubt whether the amendment would have the effect that the noble Baroness hopes for. It might bar the press from an inquest but they would still be able to obtain and publish information about the inquest, and earlier stages of the coroner’s investigation, because they get that from other sources which would not come under the prohibition. Therefore, the danger would be that such information from secondary sources would be unreliable and would lead to more distress for a bereaved family than if the press were present at the inquest when the issues were discussed clearly. This strengthens our view that the work with the Press Complaints Commission is a more effective and proportionate way forward and more likely to protect bereaved people, whether bereaved by the death of a child or someone of any other age. I want to give the House the assurance that we take the burden of the noble Baroness’s concern very seriously. She mentioned the particular issues with regard to Bridgend, which had a terrible dimension, but there are other instances. I had the occasion to serve on a Select Committee which looked at press intrusion. The press can improve over time, but we saw one or two cases where it was indefensible that anybody would act in such a way, completely reckless of the horror they were visiting on people who had already been assaulted by appalling news and events. So I am fully at one with the noble Baroness in her objectives and I hope she will see that the Government are trying to be constructive about this. However, if she thinks I have not expressed some concern about the amendment, I hope she will have listened to other voices in Committee which indicate that the amendment should possibly be withdrawn.