HC Deb 29 April 1983 vol 41 cc1151-62

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr. Christopher Price

I am sure that the hon. Member for Paddington (Mr. Wheeler) will want to add his comments on this clause.

Clause 3 has five subsections, all of which are self-explanatory, except for subsection (4). Had I been in one of my less than royalist moods, I might have been moved to try to exclude subsection (4) and to make a speech such as those sometimes made by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton). Subsection (4) refers to a quaint little nook of our constitution which it would be fun to sweep away, but perhaps the dying days of a Parliament are not the right time to do so.

Subsection (4) provides that the Bill shall not apply to any inquest that is begun before the Bill comes into force, which is acceptable, or to any inquest heard by the coroner of the Queen's household. When I started preparing the Bill, it was the first time that I had realised that there was anyone who was called the coroner of the Queen's household. Even today I have never met the coroner of the Queen's household and I doubt whether the Minister has either.

The coroner of the Queen's household is governed by section 29 of the Coroners Act 1877. He, or perhaps she —I am certain that it is a he as there is only one female coroner in Britain and she is about to retire — has jurisdiction exclusively within the limits of any of the Queen's palaces or any other house where Her Majesty is residing.

The jurors on an inquest held by the coroner of the Queen's household must consist of officers of that household. I can only say that that breaches' my principle of a jury which is a clean spectrum of the British populace. Although I understand that officers of the Queen's household include what one might describe as downstairs as well as upstairs people, I suspect that most of them are upstairs rather than downstairs people. Such a coroner's jury would not be one of which I should approve. Nevertheless, I cannot say that it is any purpose of the Bill to interfere with Her Majesty, her household or even her coroner and I am content to commend the clause to the House.

Mr. Wheeler

I may row address myself to clause 3. Like the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price), my comments are in respect of subsection (4).

I welcome clause 3 in its entirety and I hope that it will remain a part of the Bill. I am delighted to hear that the hon. Member for Lewisham, West is in a magnanimous mood today and does not feel disposed to probe too deeply and disturb a part of the Bill which has its origins in the mists of time, if not the middle ages.

I think that I am correct: in saying that we in this House have some modest interest: in the exemption from the Bill of the Queen's household inasmuch as none of us is able to die in this royal palace and that, too, is associated with the historic nature of subsection (4). I suppose that it relates historically to the origins of the office of coroner, since in the middle ages the coroner was the king's or queen's man with the prime duty to inquire into the findings of treasure which was then defined as gold or silver. The monarch always had a vested interest in laying his hands upon anything of value in the kingdom in order to sustain the treasury. The office of coroner has that additional role still laid upon it.

It is also true to say that in the middle ages what happened in the royal palace was sometimes of a political nature—for example, should a prince of the blood royal have the misfortune to fall into a butt of wine and not survive. Therefore, we bow to the mists of time and history in acknowledging in this small subsection a the Bill the special relationship with the monarch and the royal palaces. I for one believe that there is an occasion for turning a blind eye and not pressing too far into the cause or reason.

Mr. Mellor

The hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) has drafted this clause to assist what can best be called the maintenance of the courtesy properly due to Her Majesty and Her Majesty's household. We agree with him and believe that the limited exemption does not in any way reduce the effectiveness of the measure and that it should therefore be granted.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

1.10 pm
Mr. Christopher Price

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

It is a great pleasure to me that hon. Members have seen fit, in a comparatively short time, to go through the Bill line by line and to report it to the House. The Minister said on clause 1, and I agree with him, that the Bill could make a great difference to the conduct of coroners' courts, and that is extremely important.

I wish to quote what the Brodrick report said about coroners' juries, and what led Brodrick to recommend the change. In paragraph 16.48 he said: Several of our witnesses suggested, and we accept, that the role of a coroner's jury today is no more than symbolic. Despite the habitual care of coroners in explaining to their juries the procedure of an inquest, we believe that jurors often approach their task with a sense of bewilderment as they realise the extemely limited nature of the role they have to play. Unless they have some expert knowledge upon which to base pertinent questions to witnesses as, for instance, in an industrial accident case—and it is rare for jurors to be selected with this sort of consideration in mind—they can claim no effective part in the proceedings until the time comes for the verdict to be given and a rider, if any, attached. The range of verdicts is limited and in many cases the final verdict is effectively, and of necessity, dictated to them by the coroner. Where juries have returned a verdict contrary to the guidance of the coroner—most notably a verdict of 'manslaughter' in road traffic cases—subsequent proceedings have usually shown that their judgment was in error. So long as it has remained one function of an inquest to determine the responsibilty of an individual for the death of another person, it has been difficult to consider the abolition of a coroner's jury. But this situation will be changed by our recommendations, which should alter the whole character of a coroner's inquest. In this new situation, we see no reason why it should continue to be mandatory for a coroner to summon a jury to deal with any particular category of death. That was one of its recommendations.

At the same time, we can see that occasionally a coroner may feel the need for a jury to assist him, or he may feel that the finding might be more acceptable if given by a jury than by himself. We recommend that the mandatory requirement to summon a jury for inquests in certain categories of death should be abolished, but that the coroner should retain the power to summon a jury where he considers that there are special reasons for doing so. If in these exceptional cases a jury is summoned, care should be taken to ensure that those who are summoned are fully representative of the local community. In particular, we think that women, who are rarely, if ever, called for service on a coroner's jury, should in future be given the opportunity to perform this service. When a coroner decides to sit with a jury, we recommend that it should be summoned in accordance with the same rules as are used by the High Sheriff in summoning juries for other courts. Brodrick used those three paragraphs to introduce his recommendations. I am not totally in sympathy with the tone of those recommendations, because events have moved on a great deal. Brodrick was subjected to pressure completely to abolish the coroner's jury. Brodrick wanted to retain the jury and made recommendations along the lines of the Bill, because he had an inkling, which is found throughout Brodrick, that it is rather dangerous to let one person have the enormous jurisdiction to decide the cause of death in a public inquiry.

If there is an allegation that a serious crime has been committed, or that a death has occurred in suspicious circumstances — particularly if it has occurred in the custody of the police, prison service or other authority —it would be extremely dangerous to allow the coroner to give a verdict without assistance from anyone else. That is particularly true, as the coroner is relatively unaccountable to anyone, for the reasons that the Minister has given. That is why I welcome the strengthening of the provisions with regard to the circumstances in which a coroner must summon a jury.

I am also glad that the jury will now, as far as possible, be selected completely randomly, so that there is no suggestion that the coroner has deliberately selected those whom he thinks will return the verdict he wants, or that the selection is done so inefficiently that the jury is not a proper jury. Brodrick said that if his other recommendations were introduced, a proper jury in a coroner's court would be fully able to understand what was going on. As was rightly said, at the time of the report—not long ago — in most cases juries did not understand what was going on. They were merely decorative and did exactly what coroners told them.

We cannot simply achieve our aims by changing the rules for selecting juries. If juries are to be taken seriously they must receive guidance not only from the coroner, but from others. That is what makes the Select Committee's and Brodrick's recommendations about legal aid so important. I am trying to remain in order, but if a properly selected jury simply obtains guidance from the coroner, who will often ask a succession of leading questions based on police reports, it will be unable to do its job properly.

It behoves us to ensure that a jury can do its job properly, just as a Crown court jury can do. A Crown court jury can perform its task properly not only because it receives directions from the judge, but also because counsel represent the various parties, cross-examine the witnesses and make closing speeches that are addressed to the jury. No one could imagine a Crown court jury operating properly if it simply listened to what the judge had to say.

The coroner's inquest is not adversarial but inquisitorial. I fully accept that. Although coroners' juries will be selected on exactly the same basis as Crown court juries, we can never expect the procedure with which they have to deal to be on all fours with the procedure in the Crown court. But I do not believe that that necessarily means we must leave the matter as it stands. The juries, which will now be selected in a different way, would do their jobs immensely better if they had the benefit of listening to counsel, particularly in cases where extreme distress has been caused and where the conduct of the police or the prison service is in question.

Mr. Lawrence

The hon. Gentleman is in slight danger of misleading his listeners into believing that counsel never appear at inquests. Counsel and solicitors often appear at inquests, although not under the legal aid system. That does not necessarily mean that a great injustice is caused. Sometimes it is possible for people of quite low means to be able to gather enough money together to be able properly to instruct their solicitor and learned counsel to a reasonably high standard. The position is not as bad as the hon. Gentleman says, although I see some merit in his argument.

Mr. Price

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman, who is a sponsor of my Bill, for leading me in this direction. I was choosing my words carefully as on Third Reading one must consider the Bill as it is and not the Bill as one would like it to be. I am most conscious of that point, which is why I approached this obstacle along the path in the way that I did. The hon. and learned Gentleman is correct. At many inquests, particularly in well-known cases such as the Blair Peach inquest, the New Cross fire inquest and the Helen Smith inquest, the relatives and the authorities have been represented by the most eminent Queen's counsel. The money for those Queen's counsel has been raised by a variety of means. The Queen's counsel representing the police get their money from what the Prime Minister would call "handouts", if that is the right phrase—I do not know what the right phrase is—but I know that we pay, not them.

I fully accept that relatives are often represented and that the money is raised in one way or another, sometimes with extreme difficulty, by relatives who are in great distress at the time. That cannot be right. If I continue on the subject of legal aid, I will be ruled out of order, but I have made the point about the context in which the juries will operate.

I should like to make a further point about that context, and I hope at the same time to remain wholly in order. If, as the Bill seeks, we are to modernise our jury service, it is important that we treat the members of the jury as intelligent human beings and not as characters swept in off the street to be given instructions by someone who calls himself a coroner. The jurors are an integral part of the court and the system of justice. They are not, as Brodrick calls them, a simple decoration in the system, to make it look better than it really is. If we are to treat them like that, they deserve to be treated as intelligent human beings and to receive as much information about the death as it is proper to give them.

As the Brodrick report states, coroners' juries are restricted in the number of verdicts that they can give. Coroners' juries would often like to say far more about a death than the coroner tells them they are allowed to say. They can say that the death was an accident, that the person was deliberately killed or that there was lack of care. The latter verdict was recently returned by a brave jury in Surrey following a death in Ashford remand centre, which I hope will be taken into account by the Home Office.

The Home Office is responsible for remand centres as well as juries, and that is why it is right to say that it has great responsibility in these matters. The number of verdicts is limited in a coroner's court, but is for the jury and not for the coroner to decide whether the verdict shall be misadventure, unlawful killing, lack of care or perhaps suicide, in which case the blame lies with the individual. It is the jury's job to return a verdict, but in case after case recently coroners pushed juries as hard as they could to come to one particular verdict.

If anyone reads the last stages of Mr. Gill's summing up in the Helen Smith inquest, he will come to the conclusion that Mr. Gill wanted the jury to bring in a verdict which it did not return. The jury returned an open verdict, as in the New Cross incident. It was an intelligent jury and it stated, in effect, that it could not make up its mind how the death took place. Coroners love certainty. They love to be able to say, "This is how it took place." There was considerable pressure during the Helen Smith inquest to say that the accident took place because of a story that turned out to have much less relationship to the truth than was first thought. The story was that the two persons concerned had fallen off a balcony, which almost certainly Helen Smith never did.

If coroner's juries are to be treated as intelligent bodies with a proper role to play in the process of justice, they need to he allowed access to all the information that is available. The situation now in the coroners' courts is that counsel for the police and the coroner read all the police reports on how an individual died, but counsel for the relatives and the jury are normally denied any access to those reports. The new and intelligent juries that will be empanelled in coroners' courts when the Bill is enacted will see that counsel for the police have briefcases that are stuffed with papers. They will know that the briefcases contain information that would help them to reach a verdict. They will know also that the coroner has read all the police reports and that that information has been denied to counsel for the relatives and to them. That cannot be right.

If we are to go as far as the Bill seeks in initiating reform, one day Parliament must go a good deal further and allow proper and full disclosure. I agree that the degree of disclosure to the jury is in the coroner's hands, but it is a matter of convention that he will never allow police reports to be read by the jury. An important implication of the Bill is that we must not allow the new juries to become frustrated by being treated as though they are less important than they really are.

Although it is called the Coroners' Juries Bill and prescribes the way in which coroners' juries should be selected, the Bill puts on coroners a new responsibility to take their juries seriously; to give them, as they have the right to do, as much information as they can; to allow, as they have the right to do, as much legal representation as possible to the parties involved who want to be represented; and, most important, not to push juries so hard and fast towards one verdict that they devalue the whole point of having a jury in the first place.

It is in the nature of a coroner's job that he reads the evidence first and, probably a week or two before the inquest, makes up his mind as to the verdict he will reach, because that is inherent in the inquisitorial nature of the process. I do not object to that. But when the inquest takes place it should be the role of the coroner who has a jury before him not so to lead evidence from police reports and not so to make clear his view of what the verdict should be that, unconsciously or in many cases deliberately, he pushes the jury in a particular direction.

The organisation Inquest, with which I have been working and which has put a great deal of work into the Bill, has recently raised the subject of deaths which have occurred in recent years in custody, so demanding a jury, where the characteristics to which I have referred have been present. I need not list them all, but they have included Blair Peach, the New Cross fire, Paul Worrell, Terry Smerdon, the case of Simeon Collins in south London, James Ruddock in London and Oliver Clairemont in Maidstone. There was recently a worrying programme on Television South about some deaths in Canterbury prison and a death in a police station in Canterbury.

The organisation Inquest is, in my view rightly, trying to get far greater public awareness of the dissatisfaction which people feel after inquests. That dissatisfaction will be allayed and public confidence in the system restored only if we have properly selected juries serving on inquests with the jurors being given a responsible job to do by a properly trained coroner.

It would be wrong of me to go into the whole business of the accountability of coroners, legal aid, the disclosure of documents and the training of coroners as well a; their appointment and dismissal. The job of reforming a part of our legal system that is nearly 1,000 years old and which has hardly been touched during that time will not be complete until all the other issues I have mentioned, but which are not dealt with in the Bill, have been tackled. I I have strayed just marginally from Third Reading rules, I ask you to forgive me, Mr. Deputy Sepaker, but it has enabled me to put in a wider context the way in which this narrow Bill should properly be seen.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I have deliberately allowed the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) a good deal of licence, as the promoter of the Bill. However, I remind the House that on Third Reading it is in order to discuss only the contents of the Bill.

1.36 pm
Mr. Wheeler

In view of your advice to the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and of the passing of time, I shall seek to be brief and to the point.

Following the speech of the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price), I should simply like to say that the Bill that we propose to pass makes an important contribution to the coroners' system, which is many centuries old. I believe that public confidence both in the office of coroner and in the way in which inquests are conducted will have been advanced today by the proposal to call juries in accordance with the normal Crown court rules. The Select Committee on Home Affairs took up the question of deaths in police custody because, between 1970 and 1979, 274 people died while in police custody. It must be a fundamental principle of our judicial system that when inquiries are made into matters of great concern both to the public and to the Crown, they should be made in circumstances that engender maximum public confidence and respect. The Bill is a significant step in the direction of providing that public confidence.

I hope that on a future occasion the Home Department will extend the professionalism of the coroner's court requiring that appointments of all coroners and deputy coroners to full-time posts are made by the Lord Chancellor after appropriate consultation with the local authorities and that only banisters or solicitors of at least five years' standing in their profession should be eligible for such appointments.

It follows very much the thinking of the hon. Member for Lewisham, West that if the coroner's court is to be made more professional, in the sense of drawing its juries in the way that is proposed, the office of coroner should be strengthened and improved to ensure that the person who presides over an inquest and advises the jury is of the highest professional competence and standing.

I give my unreserved welcome to the progress of the Bill, which I hope will soon be on the statute book. It will do much to further public confidence in the jury system.

1.39 pm
Mr. Mellor

I begin my speech on Third Reading as I began my speech in Committee by thanking the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) for introducing this measure and for the way in which he set it before the House. This most useful Bill will enable coroners' juries to be selected by the same machinery as is used for the selection of jurors in other courts, and it is none the worse for being a modest measure that lies within a narrow compass. I know that the hon. Gentleman would wish more progress, but I hope that in Committee I showed him that the Government do not believe that we have reached the end of the road in changes in the coroner's system.

The hon. Gentleman would not expect me to endorse every word that he said on the matter, but I pay genuine tribute to him for his distinguished record of interest in such matters for many years, which one can respect and admire even if one disagrees with some of his points. It is fitting that if, as we hope, the Bill succeeds in another place and becomes law, his name will be attached to it as concrete recognition of the interest that he has taken in such matters, on which he has become an expert, and of his influence across the party divide.

I am glad that we had a generous amount of time today to get to grips with an important area of our judicial system, upon which not as much light is thrown as it should be, to reveal the problems and the extent of the business that coroners' courts must transact. We are very much in the debt of the many good coroners for the way in which they carry out their duties.

The hon. Gentleman began his Third Reading speech appropriately by mentioning the Brodrick committee. It recommended that care should be taken to ensure that coroners' juries were fully representative of the local community. To do that, the Brodrick report recommended that the jury should be summoned in accordance with the rules that are used by high sheriffs in summoning juries for other courts.

Since that report, the Juries' Act 1974 has come into force, and the Lord Chancellor has become responsible for summoning juries in other courts. However, because the function of the coroner's jury differed so widely from that of juries in other courts, it was decided that the 1974 Act should exclude coroners' courts. At that time it was thought that the Brodrick recommendations might be implemented in one Bill. However, that did not happen, and in 1980 the Select Committee on Home Affairs, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington (Mr. Wheeler) is a distinguished member, dealt with some of those matters in its report on deaths in police custody. It recommended that the Brodrick proposal to secure a more random selection of jury members than has sometimes been achieved by current methods should be brought into law. That is what the hon. Member for Lewisham, West, with the leave of the House, will do in a few moments.

However, it is no longer possible to implement the Brodrick recommendation as it stands, because events have moved on during the 12 years since it was published. Under the Juries Act 1974, the Lord Chancellor became responsible for summoning juries in other courts, and it has not been possible to lay down detailed rules about the way in which that should be undertaken. Therefore, it seemed best to ensure that the selection of coroners' juries should be made by the same process as is used in other courts.

In a statement in the House on 11 November 1980, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary responded to the Select Committee's report and accepted, among other recommendations, the principle that coroners' juries should be selected by the process used for juries in other courts. That has been our view for some years, and that is why we warmly welcome the hon. Gentleman's initiative.

The Brodrick committee recommended that the mandatory jury should be abolished. That important recommendation was brought into law with the Criminal Law Act 1977, which abolished the mandatory jury in cases of homicide and deaths in road traffic accidents.

Mainly as a result of that change, especially the provision about road traffic accidents, the number of inquests with juries fell dramatically from 40 per cent. of all inquests in 1976 to 4 per cent. in 1982. Nevertheless, even though today fewer than 1,000 inquests per year are held with a jury, it is important—for many reasons, including some raised by the hon. Gentleman such as the real and proper public interest in some inquests—that there should be impartial selection.

At present, the coroner issues his warrant under section 3 of the Coroners Act 1887 to the coroner's officer, commanding him to summon a specified number, not being less than seven or more than 11 "good and lawful" men. The selection of the jurors is left to the coroner's officer under the general supervision of the coroner. If the inquest is into the death of a prisoner who died in prison, an officer of the prison, a prisoner in it or a person engaged in any sort of trade or dealing with the prison is prohibited by the 1887 Act from serving as a juror on the inquest. A similar prohibition exists where the death is that of a sailor in a naval prison. For the rest, the matter is left to the common law, which considers it undesirable that a person having any personal knowledge of the facts, or such strong prejudices as to render him biased, should be summoned as a juror. The qualification "lawful" is held to imply that the juror must not be an outlaw, but that ceased to have more than historical interest since outlawry was abolished by the Administration of Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1938.

If the Bill becomes law, all that will be a thing of the past because the qualifications that will then apply will be those laid down in section 1 of the 1974 Act—that the person concerned must be registered as a parliamentary or local government elector, be not less than 18 or more than 65 years of age and have been ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man for a period of at least five years since attaining the age of 13. The person must also not be for the time being ineligible or disqualified for jury service as shown in parts I and II of the schedule to the 1974 Act.

Persons ineligible for jury service under that Act include the judiciary, others concerned with the administration of justice — including governors, chaplains, medical officers and other officers of penal establishments and members of any police force—the clergy and the mentally ill.

Persons disqualified for jury service are those who have at any time been sentenced in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man to imprisonment for life or for a term of five years or more or to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure, during the pleasure of the Secretary of State or during the pleasure of the governor of Northern Ireland, or who have at any time in the last 10 years in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man served any part of a sentence of imprisonment or detention, being a sentence for a term of three months or more, or been detained in a borstal institution.

I have mentioned all that because the Bill incorporates those provisions of the 1974 Act, but they are not themselves free from controversy. Much dissatisfaction has been expressed—rightly, in my view—about some of the present disqualifications. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who is anxious above all else to protect the integrity of the jury system, announced last year the Government's intention at the earliest suitable opportunity to widen the present criteria for disqualification, because we believe that they no longer adequately cover all those who, by their way of life as evidenced in their convictions, are not fitted to sit in judgment upon their fellow citizens. In part that is a consequence of the greater availability nowadays of non-custodial disposals, such as suspended sentences and community service orders, for offences which would previously have carried a prison sentence and the use of which, in appropriate cases, we fully support. Whereas in such cases it may be possible as well as desirable to avoid the use of imprisonment, it does not follow that such people should continue to be eligible to serve on juries.

In order to ensure that people with previous convictions who, nevertheless, have not served a period of imprisonment are disqualified from jury service, my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) has introduced a Bill which received its Second Reading on 25 February. As hon. Members may be aware, the Bill extends disqualification for jury service to all those who, within the last 10 years, have been convicted of an imprisonable offence unless they received only an absolute or conditional discharge or an order for bind-over. This exemption recognises that, for offenders in respect of whose conduct the court was able to take a lenient view, disqualification is not appropriate unless and until another conviction carrying a more severe penalty ensues. The Committee stage of that Bill is expected soon. I very much hope that it will receive a favourable hearing and, ultimately, succeed in strengthening the present provisions for disqualification. The relevance today is that if that Bill is successful, the disqualifications which it seeks to impose will also apply to coroners' jurors. I think that that meets the point so eloquently made in Committee by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence).

I shall deal briefly with the reason why it is thought right to apply to coroners' jurors the qualifications and disqualifications which apply to jurors in other courts. The selection will be from the electoral roll. Nothing about this selection appears in the Bill, because it will be effected by administrative means. The court staff who select juries for other courts at random from the electoral roll will provide the coroner's officer with a list of names, selected in the same way, of persons within the coroner's district and these will be summoned in strict rotation.

Hitherto, although Home Office guidance to coroners has suggested that jurors should be selected at random from the electoral roll, practice has varied between different coroners' districts. That has been commented on today. About 50 years ago, in 1936, the Wright committee produced its report on coroners. It said: As to the personnel of the jury we have heard from several quarters very striking evidence, which seems to be worthy of credence, that the class of jurors is often of a most unsuitable character… The Courts have condemned the practice of employing the same persons again and again as jurors at inquests, and have insisted on the importance of having proper persons to act as jurors … The evidence given before us establishes that in various places the coroner's officer in practice still has a regular body of men who are summoned from time to time to act as jurors. We were also informed of a town where the coroner's jury was regularly constituted of the inmates of a workhouse. The committee recommended that it should be provided by law that coroners' juries should be chosen from the jury list, and that coroners should take steps to ensure that service on a coroner's jury was a duty more evenly borne by all classes of society.

In cases which involved difficult industrial and other investigations, the Wright committee considered it particularly important, if inquests were to command any respect, that fit and proper persons should form the jury. The committee also noted that many coroners appeared never to summon women as jurors—that was the subject of comment by the hon. Member for Lewisham, West today — which shows how little change occurs sometimes in this long established jurisdiction. The committee recommended that, as a matter of practice, in an inquest on a deceased woman, child or infant, at least two women should serve on the jury if one were summoned.

The House will note that, far from advocating the random selection of jurors, the Wright committee envisaged a kind of enlightened selection process that perhaps would be out of keeping with the way that we think of these matters today.

The proposal that women should form part of a coroner's jury in circumstances which the committee considered suitable may be noted because, traditionally, women did not form part of a coroner's jury. In the past, the property qualification meant that few women were qualified to serve. After it was abolished, the feeling that the often unpleasant medical details and evidence concerning violent or unnatural deaths would be too shocking to members of the gentle sex was prevalent among coroners.

The Home Office issued some advice in 1974. It said that there should be no discrimination between the sexes in selecting juries for inquests; but, relevant to what the hon. Member for Lewisham, West said, it is right to point out that as recently as December 1981, in the case of Richard Campbell, a coroner's officer deposed: I do not generally ask women to serve as it has always been my practice and habit to call at a house and ask for the husband. The aim of the Bill is to enable random selection from the electoral roll. That will mean that men and women are equally likely to be selected. I hope that we all agree that that is the right way to proceed.

Mr. Lawrence

The reason given by Brodrick for summoning juries in a different way from the ordinary rules is that coroners' juries often have to be called together quickly. That seems to be the only dissenting view about the need for the rules to be changed. Will my hon. Friend deal with that? In his otherwise thorough, careful and distinguished speech, he has not yet dealt with it.

Mr. Mellor

On occasions, coroners' juries need to be brought together quickly, but we see no reason why the normal mechanism that is applied in the Crown courts—which, after all, are summoning juries on a daily basis for the time ahead—should not be applied. However, it will make even more important the right of people on reasonable grounds to be exempted from jury service.

I do not know that it is necessary for me to go through any of the detailed provisions of the Bill. It creates some new offences, but I think that the House has been satisfied in Committee that it is necessary for that to happen. The Bill will come into force, if it is passed in the other place, on a day to be appointed by the Secretary of State. The reason is to allow time for the new rules to be made to give coroners proper discretion over those issues which were rightly of concern to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton.

It only remains for me to give the Government's warm welcome to and support for the Bill and to hope that it will commend itself to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Back to