Coroners and Justice Bill

In moving Amendment 128A, I will speak also to Amendments 132A and 206A. These are not technical amendments. They go back to Second Reading and my concern for the families of military personnel who have lost their lives in the service of the country. I accept, however, that amending the Bill will affect all families. My concern is that the Bill is intended to make the system more accessible, understanding and compassionate to families. It is particularly relevant for military families who lose their loved ones many hundreds or thousands of miles away and, as we are all aware, often have to wait a long time for an inquest. When multiple fatalities are involved, many of those families have to travel a long way to go to the inquest. It is very important that they are not faced with feeling—as many of them do, to judge from a consultation that I was fortunate enough to be part of last summer—shut out of the system, and that it is not accessible to them. They come away from the inquest all too often feeling that they have not got to the root of what happened. They really do not understand fully; do not feel that they have been treated fairly; and have not been part of what could have been part of the process of healing and moving on from a very traumatic period in their lives. My first amendment would mean that the Lord Chancellor would be required to consult those he thinks appropriate, arising from any proposed amendment to subsection (2) on page 18. There are some quite profound statements here. I give as examples a decision to resume an investigation; a decision whether there should be a jury at an inquest; a decision not to request a post-mortem examination. Those are all profound points that go to the core of the issue. My amendment makes a simple but important request: to seek consultation with those families before changes are made. Amendment 132, to which I am speaking, would also require consultation before regulations are drawn up. Amendment 206A on page 107, provides a new clause that requires the officials specified in the amendment to be consulted. They are three straightforward amendments. I will not trouble the Committee at this late hour going into a detailed case in support of it, because they are straightforward. With that, I beg to move.