Government backs down on secret inquests

The Government is willing to modify plans under which some inquests would be held in private, the Justice Minister Bridget Prentice said in an interview for the rozenberg.net website today.

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, is hoping to persuade his Cabinet colleagues that a judge — rather than a minister — should decide whether an inquest should be held without a jury.

Under clause 11 of the new Coroners and Justice Bill published this month, a Secretary of State would be able to “certify” a coroner’s investigation if the minister though it involved matters that should not be made public, and provided other conditions were met.

Unless the minister’s decision was so irrational as to satisfy the grounds for judicial review, the effect would be to transfer the inquest to a judge who would be required to exclude the press, public and relatives when “secure evidence” was being considered.

In practice, the decision to certify an inquest in this way would be taken by the Home Secretary or the Foreign Secretary.

During the Second Reading debate in the Commons yesterday, Mr Straw said several times that he would consider amendments to what he accepted was a “controversial” proposal.

Asked today whether the Government had any amendments in mind, Mrs Prentice told me: “You might argue that the Secretary of State should apply to the court for that certification, so that it is the High Court judge who would make the decision.” The judge would see the secure evidence, she suggested.

But before such an amendment could be accepted, there would need to be cross-government support. Mrs Prentice made it clear that neither Jacqui Smith nor David Miliband, the two Secretaries of State involved, had yet agreed to give up their powers under the Bill as currently drafted.

As I reported here when the Bill was published, secret inquests would not be confined to cases involving national security: they could be ordered merely “in order to protect the interests of ... preventing or detecting crime”. I suggested to the minister that this was an unnecessarily broad power.

“Again, I think that’s an area that is worthy of further debate,” she replied, adding that she would consider whether the power could be narrowed.

Mrs Prentice had previously promised that there would be no general reporting restrictions at inquests, subject only to a “narrow provision” to protect the families of UK special forces. But I put to her my concerns, first expressed here, that the Bill would still permit the coroner to ban disclosure of the deceased’s identity and any “other matter”.

“I’ll have to look at that again,” the minister conceded.

She recalled out that families bereaved by suicide had told her that reading about the inquest was a “doubly traumatic” experience for them. But surely it was now government policy that any restraints on reporting public inquest should be matters for media bodies and not for the courts?

“Perhaps that has been worded in that way because of the earlier conversations we have had with bereaved families,” Mrs Prentice suggested. “We’ll have to look at that again.”

Opposition parties have promised to vote against separate proposals in the Bill under which government departments would be allowed to share personal data — including medical records — with other departments and private companies. Had Mrs Prentice expected the Government to come under such sustained attack from the Tories and Liberal Democrats on the subject of data-sharing?

“I don’t think we were surprised but I’m a little bit disappointed because I do genuinely think that proper data-sharing is beneficial for the majority of people,” she told me. “Instead of having to go through endless bureaucratic hoops to get something sorted out, if that can be done through one gateway so much the better.”

But as Dominic Grieve, the shadow justice secretary, pointed out in the Commons yesterday, the British Medical Association believes her proposals would strip patients the right to control their medical records.

“I think that’s up for debate,” Mrs Prentice said.

Did she mean the Government might change its proposals?

“Again, we can look at whether it goes — whether some details could be excluded.”

And sharing with private bodies?

“Again, I think we have to look at whether the protections are sufficiently tight on that.”

Private companies already had access to some data, she explained. But ministers would have to ensure that the rules were “sufficiently robust” to ensure that data did not cascade from one department to another.

It is not unusual for Bills to be amended during their committee stage. But opposition parties may wonder why the Government is willing to “look again” at so many details of a flagship Bill, just a day after its main debate in the Commons.

Posted at January 27, 2009 11:35 PM