Home Office.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 7 May 1930.

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Photo of Sir Kingsley Wood Sir Kingsley Wood , Woolwich West

I am grateful for that suggestion, and I will put it in that way, though I think it has been the custom to criticise public officers who do not stand in the position of High Court Judges. I will recite the events and put a question to the right hon. Gentleman. There is another case well known to Members of this House, and I am glad it is over, because we can look at it from a more sensible point of view than that of a great deal of the hysteria which surrounded it at the time. There is the Reading case. The coroner stated that that inquiry had been reopened for the convenience of Scotland Yard, and questions were openly passed to the coroner from the senior police officer present and put by the coroner to the witness. The Court was definitely turned into an inquiry against a particular man. The coroner doubled the part of prosecutor and Judge.

I want the Home Secretary, if he can, to lay it down definitely that a coroner's inquest shall not be used to get over the restrictions recently placed on the police in the matter of cross-examining prosecuted persons. If the police have not sufficient power, and the restrictions placed on the police do not give them sufficient authority to detect crime, the right hon. Gentleman's proper course is to come to this House and say so, but a coroner's inquiry should not be used for the purpose of adding bit after bit of evidence against a particular person who is not charged with any offence, whose rights of representation by counsel are limited, and when it is obvious to everybody that the whole inquiry is directed not to the cause of death, but, if possible, to make a case against a particular individual.

I would be the last to say that every legitimate step ought not to be taken to detect crime. I often think that in these cases we forget the family and perhaps the widow of the man who has been murdered, and our sympathy may go out to the man who is accused. There is no doubt, however, that it is a most unfair course to permit a coroner's inquest to be used for the purpose of detection of crime in that particular fashion. I press it upon the right hon. Gentleman that the whole question of coroners' administration ought now to be inquired into. I have not been able to find out—and perhaps the Home Secretary can help me, for his sources of information are greater than mine—whether there is any particular code of laws laying down what coroners may or may not take in evidence. A man as a result of a coroner's inquest may find himself in the position that evidence which would not be admitted in the Court of law is taken at the inquest, and ultimately the man may find himself charged on a coroner's warrant for murder. It becomes very difficult in such a case as that to secure a fair trial. In Scotland there is no such officer, and all these cases which in England would come before a coroner's court are dealt with by the Procurator-Fiscal, who ensures an efficient and speedy inquiry without all the grave danger to the liberty of the subject which exists in this country. I hope, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon will be able to make some statement about what many eminent lawyers and members of the public—for it is not simply a legal matter—regard as a serious question.