Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 47. I shall not repeat the arguments deployed in Committee on either of these issues, arguments which were very ably put by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. With her permission, I have tabled a similar amendment to the one which she tabled in Committee and I shall speak to them both. I remind the House that we spoke at length about the great difficulties caused when inquests are delayed. Over time, witnesses may become more unreliable, thereby obscuring the search for truth, and making families wait prolongs and intensifies their pain. These amendments reflect the Minister’s comments in Committee. They ensure that a monitoring system will be in place to highlight problems within the coronial system. If particular jurisdictions are struggling with workloads or resources and not completing inquests in a timely manner, the Chief Coroner would be able to take action. As the Bill intends to modernise the coroners service, the long delays suffered by a very few inquests—I accept the comments the Minister made in Committee—surely must be addressed. The Minister said that inquests should be held as soon as possible when all the relevant information is to hand. Some of the problems identified in the examples given in Committee were because various authorities dragged their feet in providing the relevant information. That needs to be resolved. The Minister also argued that the Chief Coroner will be able to carry out the functions that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, spoke about so persuasively because the Lord Chancellor and the Chief Coroner will be given power in regulations to require information to be provided to them by senior coroners. If the Government intend to lay that out in regulations, why can they not put it in the Bill? Not having that in statute undermines the comeback that families would otherwise have to obtain a judicial review where an inquest has dragged on for year after year for no reason. Finally, it would focus attention on ensuring that delay in relation to deaths in custody or otherwise in state detention is addressed. Many of them address Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This issue has been highlighted year after year by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, beginning in 2004, and I remind the House that the committee commented in March 2009 that it had recently received evidence that many of the issues and delays not only remain, but are getting worse. I beg to move.