Norman Baker MP Member of Parliament for Lewes constituency
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Families of soldiers killed in Iraq should not be forced to pay for answers, says local MP
Local MP, Norman Baker, has called on the government to reimburse the families of troops killed in Iraq who have been forced to pay up to £600 to buy paperwork relating to the deaths of their loved ones.
Speaking on Radio 4’s PM Programme yesterday in the wake of a private meeting between the Minister for Constitutional Affairs, Harriet Harman, and the relatives of 11 service personnel killed in the conflict, Mr Baker also called on the government to make the process easier for bereaved families by changing existing arrangements so that inquests are carried out by local coroners who are based nearer to families’ homes.
Under the current system, most of the inquests of personnel killed in Iraq have been returned to the UK via RAF Brize Norton and inquests have therefore been allocated to the Oxfordshire Coroner, Nicholas Gardiner. The Oxfordshire Coroner built up a backlog of more than 100 cases before Ministers finally intervened. A substantial backlog still exists.
Norman Baker says:
"The system as it stands is startlingly insensitive and simply cannot be the best that we can do for the families of servicemen and women who are coming to terms with the loss of a loved one. This is why I am calling on the government to not only scrap the charges for official paperwork in these cases but also to reimburse those families who have already had to pay and change the current system to give the responsibility for inquests to local coroners who are based nearer to bereaved relatives.
"It is outrageous that, at what is already a terribly difficult time, families are often being forced to not only wait months for inquests to be completed but also to fork out considerable sums of money for copies of official papers containing details of how their loved ones died.
"What is more, the contact between families and the coroner responsible for the inquest of their deceased relative is often made harder by the fact that the coroner is often based miles away from where they live, sometimes even at the other end of the country."