text_body: --- DIVISION TITLE ---
  
  Coroners and Justice Bill - against secret hearings - rejected
  
  --- MOTION EFFECT ---
  
  The majority of MPs voted against the motion to condemn the [http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2008-09/coronersandjustice.html Coroners and Justice Bill].  
  
  The motion, which was rejected, said:[1]
  
  **This House ''declines'' to give a Second Reading to the Coroners and Justice Bill because it provides for inquests in private and without a jury, at the behest of the Secretary of State and on grounds that are overbroad; 
  * because it unduly restricts what coroners and inquest juries may say about a death; because it proposes reforms to the law of murder that are ill-thought through and incomplete; 
  * because it fails to deal with legitimate criticisms of the legislation on anonymous witnesses, and in particular because it fails to make adequate provision for the use of special counsel; 
  * because the system of sentencing guidelines it proposes fails to incorporate adequately the aim of reducing re-offending; 
  * because it will allow unlimited data sharing to occur between any organisations or persons for the purposes of supporting unspecified government policies, regardless of the safeguards contained in other legislation; and 
  * because, to the extent that other measures proposed in the Bill are welcome and not merely symbolic, those measures should have been brought forward in separate Bills to allow them to be scrutinised more carefully.
  
  No Conservative MP voted on this.
  
  * [1] [http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2009-01-26a.26.0#g60.0 David Howarth MP], House of Commons, 26 January 2009
  
  --- COMMENTS AND NOTES ---
  
  (put thoughts and notes for other researchers here)
  