Clause 11

Part of Coroners and Justice Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 11:15 am on 24 February 2009.

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Photo of David Kidney David Kidney Labour, Stafford 11:15, 24 February 2009

No, those grounds are too narrow. The hon. Gentleman was not listening when I said national security and public protection. “Public protection” can be drawn too widely and end up including crime-fighting, but it must be read in the context of national security issues. However, public interest is slightly different from national security, and it is the two together that are valuable and that should be preserved.

The clause is too wide and too prescriptive in proposing a High Court judge as coroner, no jury and parts of the evidence being taken in private. It should separate the certification, which is properly the role of the Secretary of State and should occur on the narrow grounds that I have explained. As for the changes to the rules for running the inquest to which the certificate relates, the clause should provide a menu, not a single solution, of responses to the certificate, and the judiciary, not the Executive, should rule on the selection of the options from the menu.

Under my suggestion, the Secretary of State would issue a certificate that a matter should not be in the public domain because of national security or public interest, and it would be subject to challenge by judicial review, as in the present law. In any event, the Secretary of State would give the certificate to a High Court judge. I would be happy for the Secretary of State to give the judge, in addition, the Secretary of State’s proposals for modifying the running of the individual inquest from the menu of options. For example, in the most serious cases, the Secretary of State might say, “I am giving the certificate. That means that it should be a High Court judge as coroner, no jury and some bits in private.” However, the judge might say, “Well, I am looking at what the law says, and I have a set of  options.” I assume that we want the law to say that the judge should choose the options that make the least change to existing practice in every other inquest, so the options would be in rising order of seriousness, and the judge would then select from them.