Clause 2
11:15 am
Henry Bellingham (Shadow Minister, Justice; North West Norfolk, Conservative)
Clause 2 is similar to section 14 of the Coroners Act 1988, which allows a coroner in one district to ask a coroner from another district to assume jurisdiction over an investigation—in effect, to take over. One of the discussions that has been going on relates to the costs of transferring inquests to another coroner area. Will the Minister tell the Committee the situation regarding costs? Will they be paid entirely by the coroner area where the inquest takes place after the transfer, or will the original coroner area pay some of those costs?
This clause is good news as far as military inquests are concerned, because we have all been concerned about the situation relating to the bodies of tragically deceased servicemen and women who have been flown into RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire and RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. Military inquests have been taking place within Wiltshire and Oxfordshire and carried out by the local county coroners. They have been carried out extremely effectively, but the problem is that significant delays have built up, and that has been a concern to both the coroners in those areas and the families involved. Why can the families not—as a matter of course—elect to have the inquest in their home town? Under clause 2, according to my reading of it, families could speak to the coroner, and the coroner could decide to request that another coroner carries out the investigation. That coroner could be the coroner for the home town or city of the families involved. The inquest would therefore take place, probably as a matter of course, in either Wiltshire or Oxfordshire, but when pressures build up and delays take place, there could be an easy transfer to another city or area.
Members on both sides of the Committee will have dealt with situations in which families who have lost loved ones in either Iraq or Afghanistan have found it extremely inconvenient and difficult to get to Wiltshire or Oxfordshire. Recently, a family wrote to me to ask why an inquest could not have taken place in Norfolk; I was sympathetic to that. Does the clause make that eventuality more likely and more easily brought about, and will the Minister answer my question about costs?