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Coroners and Justice Bill

I cannot go much further at this moment. My understanding is that the position is as the noble Lord is requesting, but we will look at the words very carefully and see if we can be even clearer that the essence of what we are saying is that no coroner will be out of pocket for doing his duty. We will try and craft that in proper language, and send even more assurance. The reason we are where we are on this is that there are local arrangements in a number of areas where local coroners of local authorities feel that they are best served by maintaining those arrangements, and we do not wish to bring into law restrictions which would stop those local arrangements, where they are proving satisfactory to the coroners concerned and the local authority.