Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the amendment he promised on Report and for what is included in it. However, he will remember that at that stage he also undertook to hold a meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, which I would have attended but unfortunately it was not offered. Having heard about all the meetings that the Minister has had since Report, I can only presume that there was no time to fit this one in. Had there been a meeting, I would have used it to suggest my amendment rather than perforce have to put it forward in the House. I would have liked to have discussed it with the Minister before the government amendment was tabled. I remind the House that the purpose of this Bill as set out in the Explanatory Notes is to establish more effective, transparent and responsible justice and coroners’ services for victims, witnesses, bereaved families and the wider public. In March 2008 in another place, the right honourable Harriet Harman said: ""We need to give bereaved relatives at inquests a real sense of fairness and support … it is important to improve the Coroner Service so that bereaved relatives can get answers to their questions".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/3/08; col. 1088.]" On an earlier occasion she said: ""If bereaved relatives, with no legal representation, turn up on the steps of a coroner’s court and find that the Ministry of Defence and the Army"," or the Ministry of Justice and the Prison Service, ""have a great battery of solicitors and QCs, they cannot help but feel that the position is unfair".—[Official Report, Commons, 13/3/08; col. 420.]" During Second Reading in another place, the right honourable Jack Straw said: ""Successive governments have resisted the notion that legal aid should be made available. There are exceptions to that—I have been party to agreeing to them … but there are some complexities. We must also consider the overall issue of cost, in the context that the legal aid budget for England and Wales is now the same amount that we spend on prisons … but I understand the concern that has been well expressed by Members in all parts of the House".—[Official Report, Commons, 26/1/09; col. 27.]" At present, only a few families are awarded funding for representation by the Legal Services Commission, and then only following a lengthy, complicated, intrusive and time-consuming application process. Therefore I am particularly glad that the Minister has said that the process is to be simplified. In addition, the exceptional funding may be awarded if the inquest requires the participation of the deceased’s parents or if the state’s obligation to investigate the death has not been fulfilled through other processes, including police investigations and internal inquiries. But as the Minister indicated, very few applications have been granted. Of the 69 applications in 2007-08, only 12 were agreed; and of the 104 applications in 2006-07, only 16. My amendment to the Minister’s amendment takes that exceptional funding a stage further and suggests that, because they know the circumstances of each inquest, coroners should be required to decide and recommend whether every family listed in the Minister’s amendment should be entitled to state-funded legal representation. Such decisions would be based on, for example, the level of representation the state will have at the inquest, and the likelihood of the inquest containing issues that are so complex that the bereaved family is likely to be at a disadvantage. I had hoped to be able to expand on this but I am advised that that is not possible at Third Reading or in the context of the Access to Justice Act 1999, cited in the Minister’s amendment, so a fuller amendment may be tabled in the other place. An inquest is an extremely traumatic time for the bereaved family, particularly when the death of a loved one occurs while in the hands of the state and, as is all too often the case, years rather months have elapsed since the death. I admit that I am more familiar with such occurrences in the military or in prisons than in police custody, but on more than one occasion in this House I have referred to the paucity of information made available to families before inquests, leading to their having false expectations of what they may learn there. Improving that situation is of course outside the scope of the Bill. However, put at its starkest, what is at stake here is trust in the Government’s word. Either it means that they intend to provide effective, transparent and responsible justice for bereaved families whose loved ones have died at the hands of the state—which, in equity, should include parity of legal representation with that provided by and for the state—or it does not, in which case they should amend or withdraw the described purpose of the Bill. Of all the cases for means-testing being dropped, this is one, because we are talking about deaths in which the state is the principal stakeholder. I beg to move.