Denis MacShane

I am broadly in the same camp as my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), because I feel that I voted the wrong way on Monday. However, I am a serial loyalist, and sometimes that overwhelms me.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor is probably the greatest circle-squarer whom Whitehall has seen in recent years. I tend to follow him, but I remember that when we worked together at the Foreign Office he would come to me and say, "We may be going in this direction, Denis, but it is about-turn time and swallow-humble-pie time, and I am afraid that is the political reality." On this cause, he may not have the votes of the House, so I ask him to consider whether that moment has arrived.

My thinking stems, first, from a fundamental principle that is enshrined in the terms habeas corpus. It translates as "produce the body", and it applies as much to the dead as to the living. A core human right is to know how and under what conditions somebody died. If we do not have that right, we do not have full democracy. Families cannot grieve and injustices cannot be put right. That is why the coroners' jury surveillance system is of the most profound democratic importance. I wish there were far more of it in Africa, Latin America and Asia, and I am very reluctant to see any watering-down of it in our own country.

Of course, I fully accept my right hon. Friend's sincerity, but I well recall our great right hon. Friend, Michael Foot, saying in the 1970s that if the freedoms and liberties of Britain had been left in the hands of judges, we would have precious few. He got terrible stick from the learned QC profession about that—the Thomas Leggs and others were out there bashing him about the head—but I actually think he was right. When I hear, "The Executive will talk to a senior judge and, er, that's all right", I am afraid I start to become more and more of a Footite and less and less of a Strawite. These things can happen.

I have some direct experience of the matter, because some 19 years ago I became involved tangentially, through a friend, in the case of eight British fusiliers who were killed by friendly fire in the first Iraq conflict. They were brought home, but they could not be buried until there had been a coroner's inquest, because a person cannot be buried in the UK without the coroner's say-so. We found the most constant lying, deceit, obfuscation, dishonesty and cover-up on the part of the Conservative party, which was in power.

— from debate entitled “Schedule 1 — Duty or power to suspend or resume investigations”

The three speeches/headings immediately before

  1. 1 earlier: Andrew Dismore

    Well, that is my concern, because I am not entirely convinced that the wording under the Lords amendment would achieve that. We would end up in limbo: on the one hand, the Lord Chancellor would say, "Secret inquiry"; on the other hand, the Lord Chief Justice would say, "You can't have a judge." We would end up exactly where we are with the Azelle Rodney case—four years on and no inquiry into it.

    My right hon. Friend knows that when we last debated the issue, he won the Division by eight votes. It was probably closer than he thinks, however, because several people said to me afterwards, "We went into the wrong Lobby by mistake." That demonstrates the strength of feeling on the Labour Benches. There is nothing to be lost in accepting the Opposition's formulation, because it would strengthen the wording and achieve, beyond peradventure, what my right hon. Friend says he wants to achieve through the Lords amendment.

  2. 2 earlier: Jack Straw

    There will have to be an inquest. If the request is turned down and there is, therefore, no suspension, the inquest will continue in any event. There is a separate issue about whether that inquest would then be article 2-compliant, which sort of begs the original question. Of course, if the Lord Chief Justice says, "I'm not giving you a judge," paragraph 1, as amended already, means that there will not be a suspension of the inquest—full stop. There cannot be.

  3. 3 earlier: Andrew Dismore

    I am not sure that that is right. Can my right hon. Friend absolutely assure us that if the Lord Chief Justice turns down a judge, the secret inquiry will not take place and the inquest will? If he can, that will go a long way to resolving the issue.

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