Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I added my name to these amendments because, as the Explanatory Notes say: ""The purpose of the Bill is to establish more effective, transparent and responsive justice and coroner services for victims, witnesses, bereaved families and the wider public"." In Committee, the Minister said that the average time for an inquest was 26 weeks. That, of course, is not so for Schedule 2 inquests, particularly those involving prisons, the police and the Armed Forces, for which two years is the average time. Very recently, a very complicated case involving the police was brought to a conclusion within one year, because all those involved put their minds to getting the thing done quickly. That suggests that if greater pressure was put on the system to speed it up, it would be possible to avoid some of the dreadful cases that we know about in which inquests are taking four-and-a-half, five and even six years. Imagine what that does to closure for the families. There is an example of this in the case of the Armed Forces. Since 5 June 2006, there have been regular Written Ministerial Statements with information about inquests into the deaths of military personnel. I welcome the amendments and commend them to the Government, but I particularly welcome Amendment 47—with its suggestion that the Lord Chancellor should make six-monthly reviews to Parliament—because Parliament could then be aware of delays, particularly in outstandingly long cases, and perhaps imposing ministerial scrutiny on the system could help to speed it up and reduce delay, which is one of the reasons for this Bill.