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Public Bodies Bill [HL]

I declare an interest as patron of The Compassionate Friends, which is a support group both for parents whose child has died and for their families. I should have liked to put my name to Amendment 26, but three others got there before me. I support everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, said. I feel that the charter for the bereaved being offered by the Government will be a fob-off if it is not backed up with meaningful changes in the Coroners and Justice Act, so I do not think that what is being proposed is acceptable. What was striking when that Act went through was the degree of political consensus. Indeed, your Lordships’ House was particularly important in pushing the Government to give a concession on the timeliness of inquests because, up until that stage, the chief coroner was not going to have the power or duty to enforce timeliness. That is an important issue not only for the bereaved but for witnesses, because when years have passed, it is much harder to recall the circumstances of what went on. I also echo the comments made on the costings. My noble friend Lord McNally gave us the costings on a previous occasion, but the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has explained that those are the Rolls-Royce costings. All that we are asking for is a trustworthy car to get us from A to B, not a Rolls-Royce. My second point concerns the independence issue. As your Lordships will remember, from time to time the Government come into conflict with coroners. For example, sometimes the Home Secretary might think that a secret inquiry would be better, as happened under the previous Government and under Governments before that—perhaps the most notorious being the so-called ““death on the rock”” case—and as I am sure will happen again. If such cases do not promote the need for an independent coronial system, nothing does. That is the reason why this House has a duty to stand firm and why I shall be supporting the noble Baroness’s amendment.