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Coroners’ System and Death Certification

I, too, welcome the debate, and I concur with the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), who is Chair of the Constitutional Affairs Committee, about the need for a wide-ranging examination of how the draft Bill becomes a Bill and of the particular issues that need to be addressed when that happens. The draft Bill made great strides forward in several areas, and I hope that the Committee’s report will be read on that basis. The Committee recognised the substantial nature of the changes proposed and how well thought out many of them were in terms of the situation that we face. As the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, it expressed a number of concerns about structural issues relating to those changes. I want to concentrate my remarks on one such area. The Committee’s inquiry originally wanted to undertake pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, but, as has been set out in various documents, the publication date of the original draft Bill made that difficult. Instead, it concentrated on several aspects of the draft Bill, particularly the relationship of its proposals to the inquiries that had preceded it—the Shipman inquiry and the Luce review on death certification. During the inquiry, a number of issues about the structure and accountability of the coroner service became apparent; in truth, they might not have been as apparent had the inquiry simply consisted of pre-legislative scrutiny. The late publication of the draft Bill perhaps did us a service, in that respect at least. I want to concentrate my remarks on those issues of structure and accountability. The coroner service occupies a curious position in the structures of local government, central Government and the judiciary, as it always has. It is perhaps because the coronial system generally works well that it has not been much of a matter for attention hitherto. The Committee examined not whether coroners in their actions over the years had or had not been conscientious, professional and expeditious, but whether those conscientious, professional and generally expeditious proceedings needed elements adding to them in the light of what we know from the Shipman inquiry, and whether the coronial system could work in a better way both to expedite justice and, among other things, to take account of the interests and concerns of bereaved relatives. The draft Bill does much to address both those factors. Coroners have life-time tenure of their position, as do judges. How they conduct their coroner’s court is up to them, but that is where the similarity with the judicial system ends. Coroners are appointed by local authorities, which is a relatively occasional process without clear guidelines. It is undertaken by a panel that probably makes one appointment, and then goes on to other activities. The coroner’s officers are normally provided by the police authority. The accommodation for coroners’ courts may be provided by the local authority or the police authority, perhaps by both, and sometimes by neither. Those facts alone mean that the staffing, accommodation and capacity of coroners’ courts varies throughout the country. Above all, the proceedings, except for informal arrangements, are effectively paid for by the local authority, but with no hold on the expenses to which they contribute—that is up to the coroner. Not only does the local authority have no say in the expenses that it underwrites, but those expenses may vary if, for example, the police authority decides that it no longer wants to underwrite the informal arrangements that have provided staff or accommodation. If that happens, an additional and unanticipated expense falls on the local authority. Conversely, the coroner has no hold over the expenses that the local authority provides because there is no direct relationship between the two. Likewise, the local authority has no hold over what the coroner does, or how effectively he or she does it. That is generally not an issue, but it can be, and there have recent instances when the ability of the coroner to undertake his or her duties has been called into question.