Coroners and Justice Bill
10:30 am
Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, Justice; Harborough, Conservative)
I associate myself and my hon. Friends with the Minister’s remarks and welcome you, Mr. Cook, to the Chair. We also look forward to the chairmanship of Mr. Gale.
Like the Minister, we hope that this will be a constructive Committee. The last occasion that we sat under your chairmanship, Mr. Cook, was when we considered the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill last year and, rather like London buses, Home Office and justice Bills follow each other in whizzing round the corner. My hon. Friends and I will do our best to provide grit on the road so that these buses can gain better purchase on the surface, but I have to say at the outset that this Bill is another plum duff. I accused the Government of producing a great, fat Bill last year—most of it was duff; there were a few plums—and the same can be said of this Bill. I cannot guarantee to be as generous to the two Ministers on this Committee as I was to the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), to whom I gave a Christmas pudding rather than a plum duff at the end of our deliberations. Unfortunately, the House of Commons shop does not sell plum duffs, so he had to make do with a House of Commons Christmas pudding that looked suitably like the kind of infernal device that one might throw at early 20th century Austrian archdukes.
This is another long Bill. It has 162 clauses and 21 schedules and each of the schedules is divided up into several parts. My complaint at this early stage is that this is too big a Bill and covers too many discrete subjects. It should be divided up into separate Bills. Of course, the Government are in a hurry—time is running out for them—but we will do our best to try to make sense of nonsense and to improve what is almost capable of being described as sensible. We will applaud where appropriate those provisions that we think will enhance the criminal or coronial law.
Although we may take a different view as we make progress, at this stage we can agree with the Minister’s motion for the timetabling of the Committee, but we reserve our right to come back to seek adjustments if necessary. We look forward to constructive if sometimes controversial debate.