Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Viscount Slim Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, I, too, share many of the reservations that have been expressed about what is a pre-emptive strike against the chief coroner and the centralised medical functions set out in the Coroners and Justice Act. Although, having been brought up in the days when we had to consider public expenditure cuts, I know that it is often a wise strategem to abort projects that have not been undertaken rather than to remove those that have become established, nevertheless I do not think that it is just my personal and extensive involvement in Committee on the Coroners and Justice Act in another place that leads me to the conclusion that we should have at least some unease about the Government’s proposal. I will listen very carefully to my noble friend's justification of that.

As I understand it, the argument for a centralised chief coroner was essentially that, although coroners have performed their functions for centuries at local level, the demands of a more modern, more mobile society for a more technically and legally accountable service require a measure of concentration of effort, a perceived professionalism and—to paraphrase the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham—declared leadership in a single figure, such as the chief coroner. Those requirements seem to me to be very difficult to discharge by committee. In that legislation, exactly the same argument resonated across the parties about whether there should be a coroner for treasure, which is a specialist area that also had to be considered.

The House needs to remember that, although coroners have little day-to-day impact on the bulk of the population, coroners have an intimate and dramatic impact on those who are bereaved, particularly in the case of a sudden death. That is the more enhanced whenever there is any suspicion—whether or not it is justified—that the authorities may have failed in their duty of care under Article 2 of the European convention. That is probably often, but certainly by no means always, an issue in military inquests.

I can imagine that some of the centralising functions that would have been otherwise attributed to the chief coroner or to his medical adviser under the Act could be carried out administratively within the Ministry of Justice—although if that happens, I hope that Ministers will get a grip in ensuring that the outturn administrative costs are less than those that are attributed to the chief coroner under the present schema—but I come up against the basic problem about whether it is wise to remove the judicial function of detecting the need for an appeal and to have that function carried out in a way that is not perceived as being independent of government. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said in her introduction, the outcome will almost certainly be more expensive judicial review and more cases going to Strasbourg because of the apparent lack of integrity in the process.

Finally, we all accept that the need to tackle the Government’s deficit means that some bodies—even those for which there is some justification—may need pruning or abolishing, but this process of pruning should never be a one-way street of unrequited losses. From time to time, it will still be necessary for us to introduce a modest but effective social advance. I regret that this particular initiative provided under the Coroners and Justice Act seems to be in any kind of danger.

[Viscount Slim]

I spoke in one of the previous debates on this issue. I think most of us had some hope that the previous Administration would change their mind and agree to the position of chief coroner. We had a tough debate and actually defeated the Government of the day. We were hopeful that the previous Administration had seen some sense and we felt that they would, eventually, give us a chief coroner. I have seen one or two new faces on Front Benches and in your Lordships' Chamber and I want to, if I may, for a few minutes come a little closer down to earth. After any military action, it is a fairly awesome job—not a pleasant job and a very moving job—to gather one’s dead who have made the supreme and final sacrifice for King or Queen and country. They are dead. Dead is dead. Why then does it take one, two, three or more years to declare such a person, man or woman, officially dead? What about the grieving widow? What about the mother? What about the family waiting, not really understanding what a coroner’s inquest is, not being told, not being supported, not being moved to the inquest, not being paid for, not being looked after? That is one of the reasons why we need a chief coroner.

We need a leader in this outfit somewhere. We need someone who can administer, speed the process and make certain that everything is done more speedily and correctly. The chief coroner must be rather special. He must be a leader and an administrator. I do not mind whether he is a judge or not, but he must be competent. He must grip these coroners who are scattered around the country, a little lethargic and not necessarily working every day of the week. There needs to be a little bit of cohesion here. The chief coroner is vital.

Is an unproven, newly constituted Ministry of Justice good enough to do this? I do not think so. Who is the leader who will emerge from this legal morass? I wonder. I do not think that this is possible. Surely the Government have heard enough today to realise that they are on the wrong track and that there has to be a chief coroner.

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, I offer a somewhat different point of view. What worries me particularly about the speech given by the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, is that the way in which the chief coroner is set up in the Act of Parliament will not deliver the things that this House so far in this debate seems to believe are within the power of the chief coroner to deliver. I am somewhat surprised when it is said that the problem is with officials. Surely if there is a problem, it is with the Lord Chancellor of England and not his officials. Why do we elect Secretaries of State and the Lord Chancellor, now that we elect the Lord Chancellor? We elect them presumably because we believe that they can deliver, not that they cannot.

I think that there is very general agreement across the House about the objectives. The situation has not been satisfactory, and that has been exposed at great length. When I reread the proceedings on that Bill at Second Reading, in Committee and on Report, my very strong impression was that the arrival of the chief coroner was a given; it was not debated in any depth or detail. That illustrates that we have got into the habit of believing that if we have serious problems, we cannot rely on our existing institutions. We must have a new one, a silver bullet institution, to solve problems.

I urge noble Lords to read Chapter 6 of and Schedule 8 to that Act. I have had quite long experience of having been on public bodies. I have been chairman, chief executive and vice-chairman on all sorts of public bodies. In fact, one of my noble friends said to me the other day, “I’m glad you’re taking part in proceedings on the Public Bodies Bill, because there are hardly any bodies in it that you have not been on”. As I think I told the House the other day, I once got a letter thanking me for being on a body that I had never been on. So I have had experience of advisory bodies, executive bodies and even a public corporation—an endangered species of which there are very few left.

The way in which the chief coroner is set up in that Act is more advisory than executive. It in no way puts the chief coroner in such a position that John Humphrys will wish to interview him or her, rather than the Lord Chancellor, if something goes wrong in the future. The accountability chain has not been changed in a way that dilutes the responsibility of the Lord Chancellor. All that has happened is that another step has been put into it, so I say to my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill that the chief coroner does not have the independence that my noble friend is looking for. There is some space within which the chief coroner can operate, but there is no independence.

I give noble Lords only one illustration. The Lord Chancellor can decide how many staff the chief coroner shall have and what each member of staff shall be paid. In my submission, this is not just a done deal or a solution for doing the things that need to be done to improve the performance of the coronial system, to achieve consistency and to do all the things with which we would all agree to make sure that things are done in a timely fashion. If one reads that debate, and what the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said at the time, one will see that they qualified what they said very carefully all the way through. They talked about the problem of expense and the problem of it taking two to three years to set up the Chief Coroner’s Office. They did not promise this House that the office would have executive authority, which I think is what people are looking for. I am not an expert on appeals, but it seems to me that even in that matter, the chief coroner is not the final word. I hope that he is not, or would not be. The final word is in the Court of Appeal.