My Lords, I will make some brief observations. When the Government come to consider the recommendations concerning funding at inquests, I hope they will agree to the concept of parity of funding, for all the reasons that have been ventilated on previous occasions. But I repeat what I have said to your Lordships’ House before about the triggering mechanism: I do not believe that the police and crime commissioner should be the trigger for that. The coroner should be the trigger for it. There are three very brief reasons for saying that.
First, the coroner is much better placed to form a view as to the relevance and importance of the representation in question. I do not see that the police and crime commissioner would necessarily have access to the relevant information. Secondly and differently, in some inquests, where the conduct of the police or, indeed, the police and crime commissioner could itself be in question, there is a danger of a conflict of interests. Thirdly, sometimes the integrity of the decision of the commissioner will be in question. What happens when the commissioner is facing an election in short order? He or she may well make a decision influenced by the electoral consequences of that decision. All these things seem to suggest very powerfully that the trigger should be the decision of the coroner, not of the police and crime commissioner.