Clause 11
Coroners and Justice Bill
10:30 am
Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, Justice; Harborough, Conservative)
At the end of our previous sitting, we discussing the amendments and the hon. Member for Cambridge had just said:
“As the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk said, there is some common ground between his amendments and ours. We are both looking for some degree of judicial control, and to restrict the conditions under which certificates relate to national security and nothing else. The combination of those two points is that the judiciary has some role in checking whether national security really is at stake. If we do not have that, national security becomes the Executive branch’s flexible friend, to be invoked whenever it feels that it does not want anyone to inquire into what it is doing.”
He went on to say:
“So there is some common ground between us, but where we differ, crucially and unfortunately—I believe that this is the point that the Minister was trying to make to the hon. Gentleman—is that the Conservative amendments still exclude the jury, whereas ours do not. In the end, it comes down simply to this: does one accept that ordinary members of the public have a role in this kind of case? Are they ever to be trusted? Our starting point is that often they are more to be trusted than Ministers and judges, but the Government’s starting point seems to be the opposite.”——[Official Report, Coroners and Justice Public Bill Committee, 10 February 2009; c. 224.]
The hon. Gentleman had also said that the central point of his arguments against clause 11 was the removal of the jury because that disconnected any form of democratic input into that judicial process. I agree that the use of a jury in such an inquiry, as in criminal cases, is hugely important. I also agree that the Government’s attitude is one to be deprecated and needs to be scrutinised with extreme vigour by Parliament as well as those outside Parliament. However, I disagree with the hon. Gentleman about the extent of the difference between his party and mine about what we need to do about the matter.
Having been a member of Public Bill Committees before, the hon. Gentleman will know that Opposition Members must use devices to put arguments before the Committee and to get the Government to answer them. The reason that he alighted on a difference is that we have used a different device to put the issue before the Committee. I hope that he accepts that what he said and what my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk said at the outset of his remarks are but parallel arguments aimed at the same target. For my part, I do not mind whether we vote on the hon. Gentleman’s new clause or the amendments tabled by the Conservative party during our proceedings, but I want the Government to answer the case that has been—and I hope will be—put to them. That case began with the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk and concluded on 10 February with the speech of the hon. Member for Cambridge.