---

Coroners and Justice Bill

I support in particular the first of the two amendments, although I support both. It is important that the coroner in charge of a particular area who will know the local people and lawyers should have a say in who should effectively be one of his deputies. The current system is that the coroner for a particular area chooses his deputy coroner and his assistant deputy coroners. It is important and he knows who are the suitable people to ask. It is possible that from further afield they would have to seek the advice in any event of a senior coroner for an area. It seems that they should be asking the coroner of the area who he would recommend. They do not have to accept it, but in the areas it is important. Taking the second point, there are members of the medical profession who have acted extremely efficiently as coroners. They have acted with enormous enthusiasm and energy to learn about the law. Lawyers have to learn about medicine; in particular, lawyers sitting as coroners need to know something about how to understand what the medical examiner is saying or about medical evidence that may be given. It is possibly unjust to the medical profession to assume that a distinguished doctor would not be able to pick up as much law as a distinguished lawyer picks up medicine.