(14 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly good point. As I indicated, the matter is not at an end. There will be an inquest and there is the IPCC report to the Home Secretary. If it were, indeed, the case that further evidence emerged, I have not the slightest doubt that the CPS would wish to consider it.
The issues causing my constituents concern are, first, the seeming failure of the Metropolitan police ever to learn from their past mistakes and, secondly, that the CPS seems to have endowed the medical evidence with undue weight and ignored the other manifest evidence that was in the public domain. If there is to be an inquest, will the family of Mr Tomlinson be afforded any kind of financial support by the Government, given the swingeing cuts that have been introduced to the legal financial service?
On that latter and final point, I have to tell the hon. Lady that it is a matter for my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Justice. As she is aware, provision is available to help families in certain inquests and that matter would have to be considered. It would also have to be considered by the Legal Services Commission to which application would be made.
May I return to this point: I do not think it is a question of the application of undue weight on anything? The responsibility of the CPS is to apply the code and test of Crown prosecutors as to whether there is a basis on which a prosecution can be brought. In a case of prosecution for manslaughter, that is not possible for the reasons I have already given the House and the hon. Lady. In a case of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, if the CPS were to depart from its own standards and guidelines, which have, I think, been in existence for some 15 years—I seem to recollect they were introduced following some criticisms that there were excessive variations in when assault occasioning actual bodily harm was charged or not—that decision could be open to criticism and challenge.