---

Coroners and Justice Bill

What the hon. and learned Gentleman suggests is likely to be so in the vast majority of cases. I anticipate that the phrasing of the amendment means that applications will be few and far between, still more so the granting of those applications. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. I can envisage what may happen from my own experience of being responsible first for the Security Service and then for the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ, when some intercept or intercept-related evidence was so sensitive that one could not risk its going beyond a High Court judge. Any Secretary of State faced with that situation may decide to resort to not proceeding with an inquest but instead going down the route of an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, which would have the effect of dispensing with a jury. That would be article 2 compliant, because there is no provision for juries in the European convention on human rights. This debate may be slightly uncomfortable, but I do not want to achieve that—I want to achieve a situation whereby the Secretary of State is never faced with that decision but always has to go to the court.