Report (1st Day)

Part of Coroners and Justice Bill – in the House of Lords at 5:15 pm on 21 October 2009.

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Photo of Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Spokesperson for the Home Office 5:15, 21 October 2009

My Lords, it has certainly been a very interesting debate. I think that we all share certain concerns, one of which is for the security of this country—I do not think that that is in question. However, what is in question is the way of arriving at a solution that not only provides for modernisation of the coroners system—and which, as I mentioned, recognises that the use of intercept will necessarily become an ever greater part of the evidence that is produced—but has at its very heart an independent coroners and inquest service, and not a parallel system.

I listened to the very informed comments from the government Back Benches. Noble Lords spoke about the Chilcot inquiry. That was an extremely important inquiry whose findings I would not belittle in any way. Nevertheless, it must be possible for the Government and all their advisers to work out a way to put those nine conditions into the Bill in such a way—it may not be possible next month, but we have been waiting for two years already—that they can stay within the inquest system and the conditions can be fulfilled. That has not been tried; nobody has come to us with a draft of possible ways in which those safeguards could be used.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, said that this is about having sympathy with the families. All of us of course have sympathy with the families, but today's debate has not been about that; it is about the principle of what should be at the heart of the inquest system in those most difficult cases where it is the state which, for whatever reason, has been the cause of the death of the person for whom the inquest is being held.

We cannot believe that the solutions offered are something that we should be considering, when the Bill will be on the statute books for 20 or 30 years. Chilcot has reported, and we know what the conditions are; for all that the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, says, the implementation team is getting on very well with its work and can come to a conclusion in the very near future. So it is practical to look at this within the inquest system.

The other thing that gives me great confidence that this is so is that, when we debated this matter before, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, whom the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and I have both quoted this afternoon, was in support of this solution. As noble Lords will be aware, she chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee for some years.