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Coroners and Justice Bill

This is also a probing amendment. As I understand it, the clause expands slightly the list of interested persons as laid out in Rule 22 of the Coroners Rules 1984 and empowers the coroner to determine that any other person is an interested person. There have been a significant number of contentious deaths in detention where the deceased had no family, or no interested family, and as such their interests were underrepresented at the inquest. The experience in these cases is that there is a danger of the inquest becoming a mere rubber-stamping of the official version of events. In the absence of legal representation on behalf of the family, it is unusual for a coroner to ask the kind of searching questions that arise when there is representation. It is felt that some custodial deaths and other controversial deaths have not been as well scrutinised as they should have been because the family did not have the information or resources to be legally represented. When the deceased has no family interested in participating in an inquest it is tantamount to the deceased having no family at all. I would therefore appreciate the Minister’s clarification of the clause.