---

Coroners and Justice Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, told us earlier today that some 500 inquests are heard with a jury in this country. The Minister has suggested that the cost of providing bereaved families with legal aid would be somewhere in the region of £250 million, which means that something like £500,000 per inquest would be paid to defence representatives. These are ludicrous figures. I challenge the Minister to tell us how much the taxpayer has paid over the past two years, or 12 months, or whatever period he chooses, for funding representation for the Ministry of Defence at inquests. Let us see what the comparison is. How much has gone to the Ministry of Defence to appear at inquests, and how much has gone to families? How many of those families have been means-tested? Those figures should be readily available, which is why I confine it to the military, but could he also find how much it cost the taxpayer to represent the Prison Service or the police service at inquests, and compare that with the amount of legal aid that has been spent on bereaved families? Let us get the facts before the Minister tells us that it is quite impossible to exceed the legal aid budget, which comes from the Ministry of Justice. We must bear that in mind all the time. Whenever the state is involved, or wherever there is a possibility of blame at an inquest, then the state will be represented, and who is paying? We are paying. It may not come out of the noble Lord’s budget or the Ministry of Justice’s budget; it may come out of different budgets—those of the Home Office or the Ministry of Defence—but we are paying those expenses.