The Coroners and Justice Bill - Lords to move amendment

In a debate that lasted over 6 hours yesterday in the House of Lords on the provisions of the huge Coroners and Justice Bill, the case that juries should be automatically called to hear inquests into the deaths of those detained under the Mental Health Act received support from Lord Patel, who also spoke on behalf of Baroness Murphy.

The Coroners and Justice Bill is a huge piece of legislation which, among other matters, seeks to: overhaul the coroners court system, amend the defences to charges of murder, create new rules about the investigation of findings of treasure, amend the Information Act and its enforcement provisions, regulate profiteering of criminals by their memoirs, clarify the laws on assisted suicide and regulate the internet on this, clamp down on 'pseudo'-photos of children and paedopilia, amend the legal aid provisions, set up a new regime of criminal sentence guidelines, amend the rules of evidence to give witnesses to crime greater anonymity, introduce new offences of hate speech in relation to homosexuality, deal with the position of suspected war criminals, and regulate conditional fee arrangements in employment law cases amongst other things. (No, I'm not joking!)

The breadth of the Bill was roundly criticised by members from all sides of the house of Lords as, amongst other things, a 'rag bag Bill', a 'Christmas tree Bill, some of the baubles of which will undoubtedly fall of,' and by Lord Ramsbothan in the following terms:

"My Lords, as I read through this monster Bill I had an image of a civil servant going round the Ministry of Justice pushing a trolley and shouting, “Bring out your dead!”, and people putting in it any old scrap of legislation that had anything to do with the word “justice”. Coroners were the first, and all the rest came later."

Yet, its importance in respect of overhauling the coroners system cannot be understated and, in this vein, Lord Ramsbotham made an impassioned plea that the rights of families are placed in the centre of the debate about the reforms.

Lord Patel made the case about juries being called where the person died whilst under the provisions of the Mental Health Act:

"Another problem is that the Bill withdraws the requirement for inquests into deaths in custody to be heard automatically before a jury. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, has extensive experience of inquiry panels into the deaths of detained patients in special hospitals for mentally disordered offenders and in NHS mental health units, and she will be greatly concerned about this part of the Bill. Again, I believe that there will be amendments to explore this further in Committee.

The Bill provides that deaths in custody and detention will be heard before juries only if one of a limited set of circumstances is satisfied. This is not sufficient to ensure that such deaths are fully and independently investigated or to give the public the confidence that justice is being done. Deaths that occur in state detention are often complex and may require the detailed scrutiny of systems and procedures as well as of individual acts, and these cases are always best dealt with by juries." [emphasis added]

The Bill will now go to a Committee of the entire House of Lords on 9th and 10th June, a crucial point when the amendment can be made.

I would like to thank all those of you who wrote to members of the House of Lords in advance of the debate and in support of my proposition that juries should automatically be called. It is undeniably a simple question of morality and the protection of the most vulnerable people in our society; as Lord Patel points out, just must be seen to be done in these cases.

The proposition is not simply a point of morality, however, it is based on experience. The coroner investigating my mother's death, as I've previously explained, was responsible for a miscarriage of justice in refusing to hear the significant systemic failures that lead to my mother's death whilst in hospital. My family had no lawyers and the coroner at complete liberty to disregard all of our well-evidenced allegations, even choosing to disapply the Human Rights Act.

This situation cannot be allowed to continue. Families do not expect their loved-ones to go into hospital, suffering from mental health problems, and die in the first place. Where they do, it is simply unjust to say that a coroner has the authority to entirely disregard unrepresented families' representations, often where there will be extremely difficult issues to deal with such as the complex nature of mental health institutions.

Juries are thus vital to ensure not only that justice is done, but that justice is seen to be done. Remote judicial figues sitting on their own cannot discharge this legitimate need and juries will give families the confidence that normal citizens are able to properly scruitinize the actions of the state.

Please keep writing to members of the Lords to support this amendment at Committee stage: you can email individual members directly at http://www.writetothem.com/lords.

Many kind wishes to you all,
Steven