Coroners and Justice Bill

I shall deal first with the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), which I support, and then with the Government motion to disagree to the Lords amendment introduced by my noble Friend Baroness Miller. I have tried to emphasise throughout the debates on this part of the Bill that the question is not whether there are circumstances in which certain things have to be heard out of the public gaze—for example, when important matters of national security arise in the course of a coronial investigation—but whether there should be a jury in important cases of deaths at the hands of state officials. That is the central question, and it is why the hon. Gentleman has to be right that it is no solution at all to move from a proposal to have inquests without a jury to one to have inquiries without a jury. That is just as bad, and as he pointed out, it is worse in many respects. The key is public confidence. How can the public be confident when someone has died at the hands of a state official—a police officer, a prison officer or an officer of one of the security services—if the investigation into their death is carried out by someone chosen by the Government, with terms of reference chosen by the Government, and in circumstances in which, as he said, the process can be suspended by the Government? The Government could also determine the terms of the final report to some extent. The independence of such an inquiry would be suspect from the start, and the public would have no confidence in it.