Robert Flello
Main Page: Robert Flello (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)Department Debates - View all Robert Flello's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(13 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Djanogly
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the absolute priority as far as we were concerned was to put the reforms in the legislation into practice but in a way that was not going to incur the cost that I am afraid we cannot afford at the current time. That is what I believe our proposals will do.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Following the Secretary of State’s most recent announcement in June, Chris Simpkins, director general of the Royal British Legion, has said:
“Ensuring there’s a functioning Chief Coroner is the least we can do to honour the ultimate sacrifice made by our Armed Forces and to ease the pain those left behind will always feel.”
Helen Shaw, co-director of Inquest, has said that instead of having a chief coroner,
“the government proposes to dismantle the office of the Chief Coroner and add yet another layer to the current, fragmented structure where lines of accountability are opaque and clear leadership is absent.”
How many organisations that, unlike the ministerial team, actually know what they are talking about will the Secretary of State ignore? As he is in the mood to do U-turns, will he do the right thing and leave the chief coroner out of the Public Bodies Bill?
Mr Djanogly
If the hon. Gentleman looks at the RBL manifesto he will see that we are meeting most of its requests for reform without having a chief coroner. If we were simply leaving the office on the statute book and not implementing any changes, I would agree with that claim. However, regulations about training for coroners, including for service personnel cases, will be possible for the first time under our proposals. We will be implementing powers to transfer cases more easily within England and Wales—and for the first time to Scotland—when required for cases involving the deaths of service personnel abroad. Those are real and significant improvements to the system that will directly improve the experience of service personnel families who come into contact with the coroner system.