Coroners and Justice Bill
5:27 pm
Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
I wonder whether there is an alternative approach to what you say, as I understand it, must include an absolute right to have jurors and the handling of evidence within already set precedents—I think that that would be a summary of where you are. I am relatively fresh to it, but one of my concerns is that the Secretary of State is the certifying authority. Would it be at least a compromise, if not a halfway house, to say that the Secretary of State could not certify, but could apply to a High Court judge to certify that such an inquiry was appropriate? That would be a safeguard, as it were, so that one would not have the potential moral equivocation of the two capacities—the Secretary of State as a member of a Government which might have authorised something which led to a death in custody, for example, and at the same time being able to fix the inquiry so that it would not cause embarrassment to that Government. Could you take the decision process, if the Government think it is essential, out of the hands of Government itself?