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Coroners’ System and Death Certification

I very much appreciate what my hon. Friend says. What he describes might well be the next step, but the Bill sets out the important first steps. That is the best I can say at this point. We want the system to be prompt, sensitive, contestable and professional. We want its proposals and findings to be acted on. That is all in the Bill. We have listened to what people have said about deaths abroad. We will not restrict coroners’ inquests in relation to deaths abroad in the way that was in the draft Bill. We are changing our mind on that. We are making a U-turn, because of what people have said. We are making a U-turn on juries for deaths at work as well. We put proposals in the draft Bill. People came forward with views, such as the one about the case of the young man, Christopher Rochester, who died on Rhodes. We thought about whether our Bill would be all right in those circumstances. It did not look as though it would be. Therefore, we have changed our position. Resources were mentioned. I have to say to the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk that the new service would not be cost-neutral; it would cost an additional £6 million a year and implementation or start-up costs would be £15 million. Death certification is mostly the area of my colleagues in the Department of Health, but hon. Members have complained about where we differ from what has been proposed by Dame Janet Smith and Tom Luce, and they asked about death certification. We have been working across the Government to identify ways in which the system can be improved. In responding on behalf of the Government to the Shipman report, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health said in the House on 21 February that her Department would produce proposals to improve the death certification system. That is likely to involve an independent check on all certificates, carried out by a medical professional employed in a clinical governance capacity and attached to a hospital or primary care trust. There is no blueprint for that medical capacity, but there is a determination that it should be available. The individual would scrutinise the first doctor’s death certificate and investigate as necessary—for example, by looking at the medical history and interviewing the certifying doctor or the family. If there were concerns, the death would be referred to the coroner in the usual way. Our Bill would provide an opportunity for families to make a referral to the coroner. One of the problems is that if families are suspicious, they do not necessarily have the ability to make a referral directly to the coroner. The Bill would make that possible.