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Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I imagine that it was also quite a moment for his counsel. The case that I was going to refer to was not the noble Lord’s well known case, but another quite well known case, back in 1975, when a coroner’s jury named the missing and—I should say it properly—noble Lord, Lord Lucan, as guilty of the murder of his children’s nanny. There was widespread concern about that, so a possible repeat was prevented by the Criminal Law Act 1977, which excluded the question of criminal liability from the matters to be determined by an inquest. The purpose of Clause 5 is therefore to ensure that the coroners system remains based on an inquisitorial process charged with finding fact rather than apportioning blame or determining liability. The prohibition on framing a determination that may appear to determine criminal liability on the part of a named person or to determine civil liability is to ensure that the proceedings are fair. An individual or body who might be identified as liable would not have been afforded the safeguards to enable them to defend such a conclusion, as they have no right to call evidence.