16.3 |
Military fatalities and the bereaved
272.
Ms Harman
informed the House of Commons on 29 March that the
Government
had made
further resources available to the Oxfordshire Coroner office’s to
enable
Mr Walker
to remain as Assistant Deputy Coroner and to enable one Coroner’s
Officer
to be
retained, to handle the new (post‑June 2006) backlog of
inquests.173
273.
Ms Harman
advised Mr Browne at the end of March that, since the
Oxfordshire
Coroner was
now routinely transferring inquests to the appropriate local
coroner, there
had been no
need to repatriate bodies directly to a local coroner without any
involvement
by the
Oxfordshire Coroner.174
Ms Harman
understood that the practice of transferring
single
death inquests would be followed by the Swindon and Wiltshire
Coroner (when
fatalities
began to be repatriated through RAF Lyneham from 1
April).
274.
From 1 April
2007, due to essential repair work at RAF Brize Norton,
ceremonial
repatriations
took place through RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire.
275.
In May, the
DCA took on certain responsibilities from the Home Office and
was
renamed the
Ministry of Justice (MOJ). Ms Harman retained Ministerial
responsibility
for
coronial policy.
276.
Mr David
Masters, the Coroner for Wiltshire & Swindon, wrote to the
Ministry of
Justice on
21 May, requesting additional resources for his office to enable it
to deal with
the bodies
of Service Personnel killed in Iraq and
Afghanistan.175
277.
An MOJ
official advised Ms Harman that she should resist providing
additional
funding,
but offer Mr Masters a meeting with MOJ and MOD officials to
discuss his
workload
and possible options. There was a risk that without additional
funding
a backlog
could develop (as it had in Oxfordshire), but there was also a case
for
challenging
the argument that Mr Masters could not cope without
it.
278.
Ms Harman
replied to Mr Masters on those lines.176
279.
Subsequently,
against a background of Parliamentary concern over the
possibility
that the
backlog of inquests was increasing, she agreed with Mr Jack
Straw, Secretary
of State
for Justice and Lord Chancellor, that he should meet
Mr Masters.
280.
Mr Straw
and Ms Prentice met Mr Masters on 23
July.177
Mr Masters
said that
he had
transferred 17 cases relating to single deaths to other coroners,
but retained
173
House of
Commons, Official
Report, 29 March
2007, column 124WS.
174
Letter
Harman to Browne, 27 March 2007, ‘Proposals Arising from Meeting
with Relatives of Service
Personnel
on their Experience of the Inquest System’.
175
Minute MOJ
[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’.
176
House of
Commons, Official
Report, 12 July
2007, column 1623.
177
Minute
PS/Prentice [MOJ] to MOJ [junior official], 23 July 2007, ‘Meeting
with Wiltshire Coroner –
23 July
2007’.
125