The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
the
immediate problem and “explore alternative arrangements to ensure
that the issue
does not
reoccur”.
210.
On 24 May, the
Home Office provided £80,000 to allow Mr Gardiner’s
office
to recruit
an additional Coroner’s Officer to help manage inquests into the
deaths of
Service
Personnel in Iraq.120
211.
Mr Don
Touhig, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence,
told
the House
of Commons in early June 2005 that the decision to provide support
to
Mr Gardiner’s
office predated recent press reports on delays in holding inquests
into
the deaths
of Service Personnel.121
212.
A June 2007
DCA briefing assessed that that support had “little effect” on
the
backlog.122
The main
constraint was the time that Mr Gardiner himself was able
to
devote to
considering case papers in preparation for inquests.
213.
On 6 February
2006, Ms Harriet Harman, Minister of State for the DCA,
informed
the House
of Commons that she intended to bring forward legislation to
reform the
coroner service:
“Under
the current coroner service, families frequently get overlooked
during the
inquest
process ... The system is fragmented, with no national leadership,
and it
is not
accountable ... Standards are not uniformly good; everything rests
too much
on the
personal qualities and abilities of individuals within the system.
The legal
framework
is downright archaic. For most coroners, this is not even their
principal
occupation;
it is a secondary one, added on to their main work as solicitors
in
private practice
...
“The
coroner service must serve the public interest and meet bereaved
families’
concerns in
a way that, frankly, it currently does not ...”123
214.
In May 2006,
in response to renewed Parliamentary concern over delays in
holding
inquests
into the deaths of Service Personnel, Ms Harman was charged
with “dealing
215.
On 22 May,
Ms Harman wrote to Mr Browne suggesting that they meet to
discuss
how to
clear the backlog of inquests in Oxfordshire.125
It was
important that all coroners
conducted
inquests in good time; she was particularly concerned that the
families of
Service
Personnel should not face a long wait before an inquest was
concluded.
120
Paper MOD,
May 2006, ‘Coronial Issues’.
121
House of
Commons, Official
Report, 6 June
2005, column 982.
122
DCA [junior
official] to Harman, 12 June 2007, ‘Request from Wiltshire and
Swindon Coroner
for
Additional Resources to Deal with Military Fatalities Repatriated
via RAF Lyneham’.
123
House of
Commons, Official
Report, 6 February
2006, column 607.
124
DCA [junior
official] to Harman, 17 May 2006, ‘Oxfordshire Coroner and Inquests
into Iraq Fatalities’.
125
Letter
Harman to Browne, 22 May 2006, ‘Oxfordshire Coroner and Iraq Deaths
Inquests’.
114