Lord Lemos (Lab)

I start by thanking all noble Lords who have spent time with me on this issue, in particular the noble Baronesses, Lady Sanderson and Lady May, who have been extremely generous with their time. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, is absolutely right that this is an area where the Government and I feel strongly. We will work together on it. I want to set out properly the responses to the amendments, but we will undertake to take this forward. The Government fully recognise the importance of openness, transparency and accountability following major incidents. Victims and bereaved families must be able to have their voices heard and have confidence that public authorities are acting appropriately. The Independent Public Advocate plays an essential role in achieving this—I make that absolutely clear. The role of the IPA was deliberately designed as a victim support and representation function complementing existing investigative mechanisms. These would otherwise be duplicated. We would also want the IPA to be involved as promptly as possible—a number of noble Lords referred to this—as inquests and inquiries may not take place immediately. I made this point at Second Reading: early support for victims, the bereaved and family members is vital in the aftermath of a major incident. Timely deployment of the IPA is therefore essential to ensure that support is available from the outset and to help mitigate the impact of delays before formal proceedings begin. A number of noble Lords mentioned whether the deployment of the IPA at an early stage would save costs on inquiries. Perhaps it would and perhaps it would not, but it seems to be a good thing to do in itself. I certainly would not align myself with the view that the reason to deploy the IPA is to save money on public inquiries. I therefore think we need to be clear about the issue of principle here. However, these amendments would significantly expand the standing advocate’s role by introducing investigatory functions and requiring the advocate to assess whether these are reasonable grounds to believe that legal duties may not have been complied with. The Government’s view is that establishing the facts of a major incident and determining whether legal duties have been complied with are rightly matters for existing investigative and accountability mechanisms.