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Coroners Bill

I remind the Committee of my interest: I am a serving TA officer. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, I too am disappointed that there was no coroners Bill for very similar reasons: military inquests and delay. I served in headquarters, 1 (UK) Armoured Division, between March and May 2003. We recorded several fatalities arising from operations, and I know the details very well. Of course, there is no need to go into those details or to draw the Committee’s attention to them—particularly the problems of the current system. However, it was not until three years after the events that inquests were held, which had a very serious effect on the families. Clearly, there was no way the widows could restart their social lives prior to the conclusion of the inquests, so they could not achieve closure on the disaster in their lives for years. Of course, that was no doubt to the delight of the solicitors’ profession. In my opinion, there are other serious problems related to inquests arising from military operations. The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, talked about transparency and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in her submission on different issues, talked about the need for the families to have transparency and to understand what went wrong. I think she was talking about a situation in which the family found out what went wrong 15 years later. The MoD is very poor at telling families what happened in a frank manner. It is very difficult to do but it is poor at that. In the past, repatriation, especially from operations, was rare because it was impractical. We can do it now, but we did not in the past. I think that it was a court case in the 1980s, some time after the Falklands campaign, which determined the need for inquests. During the Cold War, there were very few operational casualties. If World War 3 had occurred, the need for inquests would have been the least of our problems. I do not know the answer to these problems but I know that they are very sensitive. I urge the Minister to give inquests arising from military operations urgent and careful attention.