Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, during both Grand Committee and Report stages, the noble Baroness gave a detailed and moving account of problems which had been encountered by bereaved service families in the course of a coroner’s inquest. I have considered carefully what the noble Baroness said on Report; it seems to me that she has three main areas of concern, and I shall try to deal with each in turn. The first is the process and quality of inquests. In the past decade, more than 500 inquests have been held into the deaths of service personnel who have lost their lives in military operations, including 12 service personnel who died in the UK of their injuries. Sixty-three of these inquests were held this year alone. Several years ago, bereaved families could have waited around two years for an inquest. Last year we completed 131 inquests into operational death, for which the average date was 15 months, and only 11 and a half months for those where there did not have to be a service inquiry. For those who died last year the average wait is currently eight months, although this will increase, as a small number of inquests have yet to be held. These improvements are a direct result of changes we have made, including the setting up of a dedicated defence inquest unit. But we are not complacent. The Ministry of Defence will continue to support coroners to ensure that they are able to hear inquests into service deaths promptly. This we hope will go some way to ease the burden on families at such a difficult and distressing time. The defence inquest unit deals generally with around 20 to 25 coroners, and as the noble Baroness said on Report, the Ministry of Defence has held training events for them. I note, too, that the noble Baroness also raised concerns over the wide variation in the standards and performance of coroners. At present there are 99 coroners in 114 coronial districts. She will be interested to know that the Government propose to take forward a package of measures aimed at improving the standard of service provided by coroners, including statutory provision set out in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, such as training regulations for coroners, and powers to make new rules, regulations and guidance. In the mean time, the Government will also publish a new charter for the current coroner service in early 2012. This will set out the minimum standards of service that those coming into contact with the system can expect and establish a new bereaved organisations committee for the important role of monitoring the impact of the charter. Moreover, as the noble Baroness has acknowledged, quarterly ministerial statements on military inquests are already provided to Parliament and have been since 2006. They are accompanied by detailed tables, outlining the status of each operational death in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am sure that information of this kind will continue to be presented to Parliament for as long as there is public concern about how the inquest system works in relation to service personnel. I also refer the noble Baroness to the commitments that I made on Report. The Secretary of State will have regard to a whole range of subjects included in the scope of the Armed Forces covenant, as set out in the guidance document published on 16 May. That includes the operation of the inquest system for bereaved service families. Again, I draw the attention of the noble Baroness to the membership of the covenant reference group. Both the Royal British Legion, which the noble Baroness mentioned, and the War Widows Association of Great Britain are there to ensure that the Secretary of State receives very clear advice. Noble Lords are well aware that the Ministry of Defence does not and cannot have total control of the process. Inquests and coroners are independent of government. In so far as the Government provide a legislative framework for inquests, that is a matter for the Ministry of Justice. Of course the Ministry of Defence has an interest in ensuring that inquests are effective and that they understand the military context. However, it would be wrong in principle for the Ministry of Defence to take on a general legislative responsibility to report every year on the operation of the inquest process. The second main issue concerns the information about the health of members of the Armed Forces that can be obtained from inquests. It is true that valuable epidemiological information can sometimes be obtained from inquests into the deaths of those who die in service. However, the noble Baroness expresses concern not only about those who die in service but those who have left the services. The difficulties of tracking what happens to all former members of the Armed Forces until their deaths are well known. Whether their deaths are the subject of an inquest will, moreover, depend on whether the death is violent or unnatural, the cause of death is unknown, or the death occurs in detention. Therefore, for those veterans whose deaths are from illness or plainly from the long-term effects of injury, there will be no inquest. The focus of the inquest is on the cause of death. For example, if a veteran is killed in a car accident, the effect on his health of military service or injury is very unlikely to be looked at in the inquest. If he or she dies of, say, cancer or heart disease, there will generally be no inquest at all. As a result, tracking veterans and then examining the inquest, where one is held, is unlikely to be a major source of information. I accept the noble Baroness’s point that inquests can yield information about the long-term effects suffered by those who have been in a theatre of war and been injured. However, it seems that the point here is not that there should be a legal obligation to cover inquests in every report, but that we should ensure that we use the information that comes from inquests in our analysis of healthcare problems. In this respect, inquests should be a recognised source of information for those healthcare issues that the reports address. However, only where there is an Armed Forces issue about them should inquests be the focus of a covenant report themselves. The third point made by the noble Baroness on Report was that: "““The problem often is that the service personnel who are at highest risk are those who are emotionally isolated and who present to clinical services that do not understand the long-term sequelae of what has happened previously””.—[Official Report, 4/10/11; col. 1045.]" This indeed is an important area of concern. However, if I may be blunt, I do not see how a duty to report on inquests would help in this area at all. What the noble Baroness refers to here is an issue of long-term healthcare for veterans, which comes squarely under the existing requirement of the clause to address healthcare for serving personnel, for veterans, and for Armed Forces families. The noble Baroness mentioned deaths in training. It is very important that deaths in training are carefully monitored, and that, if there are indications of underlying failures, they are the subject of government action. A report might be the right way to take that action; but it could not be a report on the effects of service in the operation of inquests—the inquest would be a source of information for the report, not the subject of the report. I believe that, for the reasons I have set out, there is no need for the legislation to refer to the operation of inquests. Moreover, if I have understood the noble Baroness correctly, its aims in respect of veterans would not be realised. I therefore ask her to withdraw her amendment.