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Coroners and Justice Bill

I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, for pressing this issue. It is not just a question of deaths in detention in prisons; there are also many circumstances where people are detained under mental health legislation. These people are often without family, or their family has let them be and wants nothing to do with them. They are precisely the kind of people who get in trouble with medication properly prescribed, or with drugs, alcohol or other things, and their management is a significant problem. One might find with people of this kind—and there is a substantial number of them—that the official version, as the noble Baroness has described it, is simply biased. It should be possible for the coroner to recognise other interested persons. So this is simply an opportunity for the Minister to say on record that when coroners are giving consideration to these matters, they should be prepared to consider including appropriate bodies—non-governmental organisations, charities and others—which have an interest in people who are otherwise neglected.