The three speeches/headings immediately before

1. 1 earlier: David Howarth

   I shall deal first with the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), which I support, and then with the Government motion to disagree to the Lords amendment introduced by my noble Friend Baroness Miller.

   I have tried to emphasise throughout the debates on this part of the Bill that the question is not whether there are circumstances in which certain things have to be heard out of the public gaze—for example, when important matters of national security arise in the course of a coronial investigation—but whether there should be a jury in important cases of deaths at the hands of state officials. That is the central question, and it is why the hon. Gentleman has to be right that it is no solution at all to move from a proposal to have inquests without a jury to one to have inquiries without a jury. That is just as bad, and as he pointed out, it is worse in many respects.

   The key is public confidence. How can the public be confident when someone has died at the hands of a state official—a police officer, a prison officer or an officer of one of the security services—if the investigation into their death is carried out by someone chosen by the Government, with terms of reference chosen by the Government, and in circumstances in which, as he said, the process can be suspended by the Government? The Government could also determine the terms of the final report to some extent. The independence of such an inquiry would be suspect from the start, and the public would have no confidence in it.

2. 2 earlier: Andrew Dismore

   My right hon. Friend makes his point. The Rodney case was a police operation to try to bust a drug gang. It was a very dangerous gang by the sound of it—firearms were involved—but it was not an issue of national security in terms of intercept evidence.

   Given the way that the Bill is currently phrased, there will be secret inquiries at the behest of the Executive. The Executive will set the terms of reference, the Minister will choose the judge, the Minister or the judge can restrict attendance at the inquest, the Minister or the judge can restrict the disclosure or publication of evidence or documents, the Minister can redact reports and recommendations at the end of the inquiry, and the Minister can suspend the inquiry merely on the grounds that it is in the public interest to do so. That is far more broad and generous to the Secretary of State and to Ministers than the original super-inquest proposals were. That is why I am worried that there are no safeguards in the Bill that deal with this issue.

   Similarly, if the inquest is resumed after the inquiry, the findings of the inquest are not allowed to be inconsistent with the outcome of the public inquiry, even if the jury comes to that conclusion. So if a judge is conducting a public inquiry and the inquest is later resumed at the behest of the coroner, the jury is not allowed to make a certain finding even if that is where the facts take it. Secret inquests are being replaced by the prospect of secret inquiries, which will not be adequate and effective investigations. They will not be independent or provide public scrutiny, and they will not involve the next of kin in the way that they should.

   In the 16th report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, we particularly considered the use of the 2005 Act and came to the conclusion that

   "any Inquiries Act 2005 inquiry specifically designed to circumvent an inquest, in order to meet the Government's concerns about disclosure of sensitive information would raise the same or similar issues as Clauses 11-12"—

   the inquest provisions—

   "about the independence and effectiveness of that inquiry for the purposes of Article 2".

   The current proposals will not give closure to relatives or create public confidence that lessons have been learned.

   Are families expected to take seriously a secret inquiry chair's findings as to what happened to their loved one? It is sometimes difficult enough under the existing open arrangement to convince them that justice has been done. Are the public expected to accept the findings of a secret inquiry? We have seen the reaction that there has been to recent inquiries—the public have simply said that they have been whitewashes. That would happen particularly if reports were redacted and the family and pubic excluded from hearings or from seeing documentary or other evidence. The secret inquiries will cover exactly the sort of cases that should be held in the open—those in which the state is potentially implicated and independence is essential.

   Amendment (a) in lieu is a consequential amendment to allow for the suspension of a normal inquiry, for example into a big rail accident, in which there will be none of the implications that I have mentioned. The proposals in the Bill cannot be allowed to become part of our law. We have to provide a proper, article 2 compliant process for relatives and the public.

3. 3 earlier: Frank Dobson

   My hon. Friend is a lawyer and understands these things rather better than I do. Does he share the concern and puzzlement of quite a few people that in the de Menezes case, where some of the evidence was clearly related to national security, the existing law worked, whereas in the Azelle Rodney case, where we are told that national security is not at stake, we are also told that there is something so deadly secret that it cannot be disclosed? We should bear it in mind that we were told, not on the Floor of the House but by Ministers, that there was no chance of an inquest in the de Menezes case unless we changed the law—but we did not change the law, there was an inquest, and it was carried out quite satisfactorily.