Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I respectfully suggest to the House that the case put forward by the noble and learned Baroness is wholly unanswerable. I am not at all sure, and certainly do not pretend to have the background knowledge to know, whether all residual powers under common law have disappeared in this case. It seems to me that they have and that therefore the powers that exist are those specifically spelt out in statute. If I am wrong, nothing is lost. It means that the status quo is still there and that, by double-banking it with the adoption of the amendment, nothing at all will be lost. However, I have a substantial suspicion that those common-law powers have gone and that the system will now be extremely cumbersome and self-defeating so far as concerns its object. The object of a coroner’s hearing is to determine cause of death. That is the basic question under common law as it was and as it is now under statute. Therefore, it is axiomatic that any piece of evidence, particularly physical evidence, that fails to be preserved when it could have been defeats the very objective of the hearing. In many cases, as indeed the noble and learned Baroness has pointed out, it would be purely by accident that such evidence is overlooked. Once it has disappeared, there is no way in which it can be recovered. In other cases, there may be bad faith when persons who have an interest in the ultimate finding of a coroners’ court would be motivated to remove certain objects. The system under statute is cumbersome and self-defeating, while the defective system under common law that still operates works. One is not asking police officers to be given wide powers, although magistrates’ powers, to which the noble and learned Baroness, referred, in parallel circumstances are certainly comparable. We are asking for a power to be exercised under the imprimatur, as it were, of a senior coroner. I cannot see that that in any way infringes any principle, whereas if the amendment were not carried, it would place at risk the whole validity of an examination.