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Coroners’ System and Death Certification

We have had an extremely interesting and productive debate. I thank the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) for his leadership of the Select Committee and for his attention to the subject. I welcome the Committee’s work, because its focus, which has provided an opportunity for all organisations to consider where we are going and to broaden the debate, enables the Government to acknowledge the subject and to take it forward with the seriousness and importance it deserves. I welcome the Committee’s work, despite the fact that it described my responses to it as evasive. I do not plan to evade any questions today. There is some disagreement about the practicalities of the structure and the way forward, but there is a lot of agreement about the problems. I shall say a little about what we all think the problems are. There is a lot of agreement about what should be the end result of the processes of change that we want to see. I want to say something about what I am doing in the meantime to try to improve the system, and I shall conclude by saying something about progress on the Bill on death certification. There is a problem with the system. I think that we are all agreed that we would not start from here if we had the choice. Although we all recognise that important work is done in the system, it is incredibly variable. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) said that the fact that there are so few complaints—despite the fact that 30,000 inquests a year take place, against the background of a shambolic, antiquated structure—is testimony to the dedication of coroners, coroners’ officers, the voluntary organisations that support them and local authorities and police authorities, all of whom have all put their shoulders to the wheel. I agree absolutely and pay tribute to that work. However, I agree, too, with my hon. Friends the Members for North Durham (Mr. Jones) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), who have highlighted some real horror stories. Both are true: for the most part some incredibly good work is going on, but some terrible problems occur in the system that no bereaved person should come up against. Let me identify some of the agreed problems with the system. First, I shall deal with the question of delay. It is unacceptable that it should take years after a death and after the opening of an inquest for the family to able to come to that inquest, sit in the coroner’s court and hear answers about how their relatives died. Many relatives have told me that, if they are trying to fight for answers, they cannot start the grieving process. They have to fight the system, rather than moving on and mourning the person whom they have lost. The idea that the delay can sometimes last years is totally unacceptable. We have started to collect and collate the figures by coroner’s area to find the average length of delay and the oldest case in each area, and it has become clear that the variation is unacceptable. We must work with our colleagues in the Coroners’ Society of England and Wales and in local government to try to iron out that variation, as some areas have a prompt system, while unacceptable delays are the norm in others. I shall deal separately with the situation in Oxfordshire. People do not want delay, because not only can they not get on with the grieving process, but if lessons are to be learned, it is better that they are learned at the time and not six or seven years later. We have inquests, and they are important, not only for the bereaved relatives but for the public interest, as we learn lessons about how someone has died in order to do things differently in future.