My Lords, those two powerful speeches have made the case that we wish to make from the Front Bench. We also hope to persuade my noble friend Lord Rooker than objecting to the clause itself is in fact a stronger position than his amendment. I hope the speeches have convinced a very significant number of Members of the Committee, perhaps even the Government, to think again, but they have also reduced the length of my speech because all the issues have been more than adequately covered.
I emphasise that the effect of the Government’s legislation would be to downgrade rights that are derived from a duty on the part of the Minister to a
mere choice by him, which is the emphatic point that my noble friend Lord Prescott was making. There is an obvious flaw in the Government’s proposals. My noble friend has made his case already but I will show how much we on the Front Bench are concerned about this. It is not clear how the Secretary of State can be expected adequately to assess the existing evidence in order to suspect a miscarriage of justice without investigative help by the very accident investigation branch itself. As my noble friend Lord Prescott has indicated, there are very good reasons why the branch should be reluctant to participate in this. The work will now be undertaken by the branch only if the Secretary of State requests it because he already suspects a miscarriage of justice. That is a long shot in circumstances where he has no or very little evidence before him at that stage. In addition, reinvestigating might unearth difficult truths about the adequacy and focus of previous assessments by officials and the department when making the initial judgment. Any Minister should, of course, be able to process issues without fear or favour, but there is bound to be an inhibition when he is dependent on the department for certain facts.
The justification that Ministers have given for the change is entirely spurious. They have claimed that it is to safeguard the human rights of officers involved in accidents, whose careers could be undermined by an automatic investigation organised by the Minister. It might have that advantage, but it would block off new evidence to support future safety measures and which could tell families what really happened. We know, from the illustrations given today, two things from the “Derbyshire” inquiry. First, the families of those who were lost got to hear what had actually happened 20 years later, as opposed to the original depiction. Secondly, future safety measures were inaugurated by my noble friend in the department as a result of the evidence of why the ship had sunk.
I believe that the clause should be opposed and not stand part of the Bill.