Deaths in Custody (Legal Aid)

Debate between Liam Byrne and Keith Vaz

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

Thank you, Mr Speaker; I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) for her intervention.

In the months that followed the death of my constituent’s son, the family and I sought, together with the Independent Police Complaints Commission, to ensure that the police officers involved were judged. I am sorry to say that they were judged to have been so negligent, and to have fallen so far short of their sworn duty, that they were found guilty of gross misconduct.

Now, the family are approaching the last trial of their strength: the inquest. It will be their final opportunity to find the truth of why and how their son died. Yes, it might bring grief, but I hope that it will also bring closure. The inquest is also important for our community, because it could provide critical insights that would help us to ensure that others need never suffer the same fate.

Despite my representations and the arguments that we have put forward, the family have been told that they must pay to have questions put on their behalf during the proceedings. Like me, they are outraged. The original bill was going to be nearly £7,500. It is true that their costs have now been reduced, but our system has become perverse. The fact that the family are having to provide a smaller cut of their savings cannot be judged a great success.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I thought that my right hon. Friend would like to know that the Home Affairs Select Committee will be opening an inquiry into the issues of deaths in police custody, and policing and mental health, later this year. It will also look into legal aid provision for the families involved.

[Mr Byrne]

That is very welcome, and I hope that my right hon. Friend and his Committee will be able to draw the right conclusions and, perhaps, use some of the evidence from the case that I am raising here tonight.

My point is very simple: when a family have lost their son while he was in the custody of the state, and when servants of the Crown have been judged guilty of gross misconduct, it is a gross injustice to tell that family that they must now help to pay their costs at the inquest into how their son lost his life.

I know the objections to my arguments. There are few in the House who know the pressures on the legal aid budget as well as I do. As Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I too had to negotiate reductions to that fund. However, if we cannot fund an inquest into a death of which the state appears to be culpable, we have got it wrong. Our article 2 obligations demand a thorough investigation of state action and culpability in cases such as these. Like me, the Minister knows that, following the case of Main in 2007, a wider public interest test must be satisfied if legal aid is to be awarded. A death in state custody, especially when Crown servants have been found negligent, must surely satisfy that test. We in this House agreed to that principle when we passed the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. Section 51 of that Act extended the principle of public funding for advocacy at inquests such as these.

As a parliamentarian, I want to know what happened on that night. That is the wider public interest test that is being satisfied here. I want to know whether we need changes to the law, or to the organisation of the police service. I want to know that, so that I can help to bring those changes forward. I do not want this House, this Government, or this Minister to be kept in the dark. I do not want the comfort of ignorance. I want to know why my constituent’s son died, and I want to know what we must do together in this House to ensure that none of our constituents ever has to face the same fate.