Criminal Justice System: Families Bereaved by Public Disasters — House of Commons, 2021-09-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): Occasionally—very occasionally—a debate takes place in this House that has such searing force that it lodges forever in the memory because of the way in which it measures up to the gravity of the subject matter. This is one such debate. I thank the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for securing it, but even more for giving a speech that was of such exceptional clarity and force that I hope not just her constituents, but those more widely in the great city of Liverpool, will read it and, even better, listen to it I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), to whom I shall return in a moment; the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd)—what a joy it is to see him in his place—my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill); the hon. Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) and for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley); the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), who also made an exceptional speech; and the hon. Members for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) I want to mention the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, because it says an awful lot that, having acted as Home Secretary and as Prime Minister, she now acts as a Back Bencher. That can be encapsulated neatly, hon. Members may think, by the single word "duty". She encapsulates duty, and Parliament is the richer for it The Government recognise the fundamental importance of placing the bereaved at the heart of any investigation that follows a major disaster. That, perhaps, is taken as read. We remain committed to ensuring that bereaved people are supported. That means that they are not just treated with the basic humanity and respect, which I am afraid was not the case in the past, but provided with—the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood used this word—agency, given a voice and thought of not as spectators but as participants. The way she put it—I think she was absolutely right—was that the bereaved cannot be considered a mere adjunct to proceedings. I cannot put it better than that Stepping back from inquests for a moment, I think that there is a new and welcome culture in that regard in criminal courts, as well as in inquests, in so far as I remember that when I began prosecuting as a barrister, witnesses and the bereaved were considered to be completely incidental. In fairness, because of reforms made when the Labour party was in power and while we have been in government, there has been a welcome trend to ensure that witnesses are spoken to by prosecuting barristers, shown round the court, given a copy of their statement and so on. However, we do need to go further Before I turn to the IPA proposals specifically, I want to take a moment to set out a bit of context. Just before I do that, however, let me reiterate that the apology that was made from this Dispatch Box by David Cameron for the double injustice that the hon. Lady referred to is as relevant today as it was then. It is worth spelling out what that double injustice was: the first injustice for the families was losing their loved ones, and the second was being traduced Let me turn to that context. In recent years, as the House has discussed, a forensic spotlight has been shone on the experience of the bereaved, and on bereaved people in general. First, there was the report by Dame Elish Angiolini into deaths and serious incidents in police custody. Then, most pertinent to today’s proceedings, there was the report by Bishop James Jones, commissioned by the former Prime Minister, to ensure that the pain and the suffering of the Hillsborough families would not be repeated. I want to take a moment just to focus a little on what was said in that report, a copy of which I have here and have had the opportunity to re-read In section 2 of the report, on the proper participation of bereaved families at inquests, Bishop James Jones talked about two things in particular: first, legal representation for bereaved families in appropriate cases; and, secondly, cultural change. Legal representation can be so important. It was, in fact, the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, who ensured that in those second inquests the families did have legal representation. If one takes a moment to read what is in Bishop James Jones’s report, one can see that he included some of the testimony from the bereaved families. One said: "The second inquest gave me my children back." The opportunity to lodge pen portraits, and to have those lawyers to speak to, was transformational in terms of providing the very agency to which the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood referred Bishop James Jones went on to talk about another matter as part of proper participation: cultural change. Here, I wish to pick up the point made by the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead. Bishop James Jones, in paragraph 2.95, said: "I believe that ‘proper participation’ of bereaved families at an inquest is not just a question of funding, but also of cultural change." What he observed was the point that others have made: "the highly adversarial behaviour of some lawyers employed by public bodies suggests that additional training may be required for solicitors and barristers working in the inquest system." He was not the first person to make that point. The Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, in his judgment of 19 December 2012 which quashed the original inquests, described the original proceedings as having been "scarred" by having degenerated into "a kind of adversarial battle". That is something we need to consider as well The current Chief Coroner, his honour Judge Teague QC, said publicly that it is "precisely the inquisitorial nature of the coroner’s investigation that is important to the centrality of the bereaved. Where proceedings take on a more adversarial character, the focus is liable to be diverted away from the bereaved where it properly belongs and channelled instead into some extraneous satellite dispute, with the risk that it ends up as yet another form of litigation." I speak as a lawyer myself. I know that sometimes that can make the situation worse.