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Coroners and Justice Bill

I support the amendments in principle. I particularly support the amendment tabled by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, which makes an important addition to Clause 7. I wondered why the Government had not applied to leave out line 18, since they are proposing to leave out Clause 11. However, that is a small point, which will no doubt be put right at some later stage. I have one caveat. The view of coroners to whom I have been speaking is that any considerable additions to the list of inquests that should have a jury will add fairly substantially to the delay and expense of running cases and that, therefore, if one is to have these additions one must bear that in mind. If the Minister will forgive me, I support the Government on the wording of Clause 7(1) and (3). My recollection of the Coroners Act 1988 is that an inquest into a death must be held without a jury except in certain circumstances—the same situation. That is very important because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, said, only about 4 per cent of cases are with juries and there would be considerable pressure on coroners to hold a large number of quite unnecessary cases with juries if you did not have the starting point that you must do it without a jury. Furthermore, under subsection (3) I take the view that it is very important that the senior coroner should have a very broad power to have a jury. I was personally rapped over the knuckles by the divisional court in the case to which the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, referred. Sitting in my capacity as a deputy assistant coroner, I had continued that case on Princess Diana without a jury. It is very important that the senior coroner should have a board remit on this. I do not think that, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, the "may" and "must" should be transposed or that that would be in the public interest.