Ministers bowed to pressure yesterday and promised to provide extra funding for hard-pressed coroners’ courts holding inquests into military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Harriet Harman, the Leader of the Commons, said that additional funding would be made available to the Wiltshire coroner, David Masters, who took charge of such inquests in April this year.
Mr Masters had previously given warning that he would be unable to cope with the additional workload without help and that families could face a long wait to find out exactly what happened to their loved ones.
When fresh fears of a backlog were raised at the Commons yesterday, Ms Harman said that resources would be made available.
Mr Masters told The Times that he was “very encouraged” by this. “We have had 35 bodies flown into RAF Lyneham, Wiltshire, since April,” he said. “It is a considerable additional burden and it is ongoing. It is already having an impact.”
Advertisement
Before April the Oxfordshire coroner’s office had been dealing with most military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. It had 58 cases outstanding at the end of June. It has received about £115,000 in central government funding on top of its normal budget from the local authority.