Requiem for the ‘people’s judge’

02 December 2009

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Matthew Hall deplores a new law that undermines the age-old authority of the coroner and lets the government hold secret inquests into suspect deaths

A police shooting following a tip-off from an intelligence source is precisely the sort of case you can expect to see Jack Straw and his successors remove from your local coroner. And the families of future Matty Hulls won’t be reassured to know that from now on only coroners ‘suitably trained to do so’ will be permitted to inquire into the deaths of service personnel.

For the best part of two centuries, we did indeed have a people’s judge prepared, now and then, to take on monstrous Goliaths, but we must now mourn his passing — another, but hopefully the last victim of New Labour’s constitutional wrecking-ball. The sins of mighty superpowers will no longer be exposed in a village hall near you.

M.R. Hall is a former barrister and author of the novel The Coroner. His new novel, The Disappeared, is published by Macmillan in January 2010.

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Herbert Thornton

December 10th, 2009 8:25pm Report this comment

Is Matthew Hall irritated because it may reduce the opportunity to indulge in America-bashing? Does he feel frustrated because it will also now be more difficult to defame our own armed forces when they make mistakes? Is he indignant because it will make it more difficult to mollycoddle terrorists?

In short, is Matthew Hall really perturbed by the restriction on coroners' functions, or is he motivated by political correctness?

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