My Lords, I support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, taking into account the contributions that have subsequently been made. I will reinforce some of the points I made in Committee and some of the points the noble Lord made.
Hillsborough was not unique. A more recent case I was a participant in was the inquest of Jean Charles de Menezes. Noble Lords will remember that Jean Charles de Menezes was accidentally killed by armed officers in 2005, having wrongly been identified as one of the suspects who had attempted to carry out a suicide bombing. I gave evidence for the family. I experienced first-hand the tactics deployed by some police counsel at inquests—a search for the truth turns into a bruising adversarial encounter. As I said in Committee, the coroner had to warn the police counsel over the aggressive tactics he was using in cross-examination.
As far as the family of the deceased is concerned, I do not believe there can be any argument. It cannot be right that the police can employ as large and as eminent a legal team as their considerable budgets will allow to represent them while the families of those who die at the hands of the police struggle to raise the funds to be represented at all, nor should it fall to public interest lawyers to have to provide pro bono representation. If the Government are looking for a low-cost or no-cost option, perhaps the police could be forced to divide whatever budget they decide to deploy at an inquest equally with the family of the deceased. Any death at the hands of the police is a tragedy, and it is as important for the police as it is for the family to ensure that the true facts emerge in order to reassure the public that the police have acted fairly and reasonably and to enable the police to counter those with a political agenda, who often accuse them of a cover-up and of having given a misleading account of what happened. Spending public money on establishing beyond doubt what happened when someone died at the hands of the police is worth every penny, and I believe the police themselves should fund both legal teams to the same extent.
I accept what the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said about the issues with this amendment, and I accept what the noble Lords, Lord Blair of Boughton and Lord Dear, have said on this issue. Having served in your Lordships’ House for only three years, I do not
know whether I should dare say that my understanding is that, as we are on Report, it is only the Government who could bring forward an alternative amendment at Third Reading. If we are, as we should be, trying to establish the principle of equality of arms in an inquest situation, if this is the only amendment we can divide on and if the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, decides to divide the House, we will support him.