Coroners and Justice Bill

I, too, support the intentions behind the amendment. My concern relates to military inquests, in which legal aid has by and large been granted wherever applications for it have been made—I believe through the MoD and not the Ministry of Justice, although I am not quite sure about that. For families who have lost someone in the service of their country, usually on the other side of the world, as we now see in Afghanistan, to walk into an inquest that has quite often been delayed and to be faced with a phalanx of legal people, a number of them in uniform, can be quite off-putting. Although this has worked well thus far, I am concerned. I am not touching on the amount by which legal aid payment has been reduced. I know my noble friend well enough from his time as a Ministry of Defence Minister, and the compassion he showed then for the Armed Forces, to know that the smile on his face at the reduction of legal aid spend had nothing at all to do with that. It was probably surprise that any government department could achieve a reduction in any kind of budget. I would welcome the Minister giving an indication about military inquests. I accept that it is difficult to separate them out, but Amendment 25 talks about "relevant inquests", and those that I am talking about are military inquests. Whereas families have been able to be supported through their applications thus far, I would not wish to see this new Bill change that. Therefore, if there is no reference in the Bill to it, I certainly hope that we can be given an assurance that that will continue.