Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for that non-churlish response. He must have been thinking of some earlier Administration when he talked about the main drive of government policy being an attempt to please the Sun. This has been a very useful debate and I hope that I can give some reassurances. I cannot give reassurances on the question of appeals. As my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor said in his letter, to extend, "““the appeals system was by far the most expensive element of the original Chief Coroner role proposal””." The noble Lord, Lord Bach, as with most of the proposals, including that in the Division we had today, is rather cavalier about costs. I am afraid that the Government cannot be. I also think that enough doubts about the idea of appeals were expressed in the responses to make it prudent not to proceed with that at the moment. We have all been in politics long enough to know that simply to leave the appeals system hanging there would almost certainly invite the next campaign on this issue to commence straight away. The Government started off this proposal with the idea that we would take on board most of the core part of the previous Government’s Act, but that we would give the responsibilities of the chief coroner to the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, rightly said, the House very clearly rejected that proposal. I make no apology for the fact that the parliamentary process has done its job. This has gone through both Houses, we have listened and we have come to a conclusion. I will deal with a number of points that were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, ingeniously brought up the treasure coroner. I understand that the noble Lord has written today to my colleague, the Minister in charge of coroner policy, on this issue. I am assured that it is in fact a matter primarily for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, but his point will be considered in due course. I know of his past responsibilities and continuing concerns in this area. Given the constraints on public expenditure and the usual caveats, I will give what support I can to what I think is a very sensible idea. However, if when I get back to the ranch I find out that there is no money, I will have to tell him so. The noble Viscount, Lord Slim, made a powerful contribution. Again, one of the values of this debate is the number of suggestions that have been made. The suggestion that the chief coroner should get to know the military and do the kind of visits that he suggested is very sensible indeed. So is the suggestion that the chief coroner has the power to allocate cases and to bring in more coroners if, for any tragic reason, the casualty rate were to increase. It is never far from our minds when we hear those lists read out at this Dispatch Box that for every individual family affected, the casualty rate is 100 per cent. That is something that always gives us pause for thought. I take on board the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, about the need for experience in military inquests. I pay tribute to her very long commitment in this area. If one listens to the interventions, one can well see that the chief coroner, when he or she takes up the post, will have a very full agenda. The military issue, which I will deal with in my broader remarks, will indeed be taken on board. I thank the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, who was one of the noble Lords who has fed in ideas on this right from the start. Now we have a chief coroner. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, asked whether we would leave this on the shelf. It is a little bit like the points about the YJB. Even if there was some nefarious plot within the MoJ simply to accept this and then leave it on the shelf, I cannot imagine it would take very long for your Lordships to notice and to draw it to my attention. I think I am on pretty safe ground in assuring noble Lords that this appointment will go ahead with all due speed, and they can hold me to that in the future. Of course, as has been said, there is no shortage of jobs for the new chief coroner. This rolling debate has reflected the concerns about the patchy nature of the coronial service: the lack of training; the lack of consistency; the lack of communications with the bereaved; and so forth. The new chief coroner has a big and serious job to do. To respond to my noble friend Lady Miller, yes, the chief coroner will be consulted as we draw up the new charter. Again, this task will be waiting in the in-tray when he or she takes office. I also take the point made by my noble friend Lord Newton about consistency on suicide verdicts. This, too, will be a very important issue for the new chief coroner when he or she takes office. From the contributions made tonight, we accept the size of the job ahead for the chief coroner. This is not my central area of responsibility at the MoJ but that of my honourable friend Jonathan Djanogly, so I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and my noble friends Lady Miller and Lord Boswell in particular for helping me to try to understand some of the complexities of this issue and the importance of us getting it right. I also pay tribute to the campaign that has been mentioned of the Royal British Legion and INQUEST. In the Armed Forces Bill, the Government accepted that the annual report on the Armed Forces covenant should include an analysis on the operation of the inquest system. This will provide a means for the chief coroner and other groups to inform Parliament on the progress of the reforms we are putting in place and to make recommendations on any further steps that might be necessary to ensure that bereaved families get the service from the inquest system that they deserve. Our new proposals go further than this, as implementing Section 36 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 will put the chief coroner under a duty to prepare an annual report to the Lord Chancellor on the operation of the coroners’ system which would in turn be laid before Parliament. The report must include an assessment of the consistency of standards between coroner areas. As I said, we are not implementing Section 40 of the Act and I have explained the very good reasons why not. I do not want to go over matters that have already been discussed. We have agreed to give the chief coroner a range of powers in the Act to drive up standards across the system. These include powers related to training, monitoring, reporting and direction. We will also set minimum standards of service in a new charter to be published early in 2012. This will help to ensure that the coroner’s service across the country is delivered to the gold standard we all expect. We have come a very long way since last December, as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, reminded us. This new compromise before noble Lords today represents a further and very significant move to meet the concerns expressed in this House and elsewhere. As always with these things, it is open to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, to press her amendment. The Government would resist that for the reasons I have given, and would take it to ping-pong if we lost. I do not think that that is the right end to what has been a good debate. If I may say so, it is a personal parliamentary triumph for the noble Baroness and it marks the culmination of some very successful campaigning on the part of noble Lords on all Benches and some significant organisations outside. However, that is a matter for her.