West London Coroner’s Court

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[James Berry]

Finally on the delays at West London coroner’s court, it would be easy to blame the situation on cuts, but they are not to blame. I wrote to the chief executive of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which is responsible for funding the coroner service in west London. He made it clear that although the council has had to make cuts to various areas, the coroner service has been protected from those cuts. The responsibility for sorting out this shambles lays squarely with the senior coroner for west London. He needs to get his house in order for the sake of bereaved families living across the boroughs represented here.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the comment that the hon. Gentleman just made. I have been copied into the letter that he received from the chief executive of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, dated yesterday, which points that out. I am sure it was done in good faith, but on the hon. Gentleman’s website, he has said that the situation could be the council’s fault. I hope that he will correct that. One of the issues that we will deal with is putting blame for this matter where it lies.

[James Berry]

I do not intend to go into the technicalities of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, but it is a matter of interpretation as to whether the local council or the police are responsible for providing administrative staff. However, the council is quite clear that there have been no cuts to the funding that it believes it ought to be providing.

Moving on to the subject of religious burials, Jewish and Muslim families have to bury their dead in a matter of days, and the pressure on those doing so is compounded by the situation at West London coroner’s court. I need not say any more about that, because I can simply welcome the Minister’s recent announcement of a review into the interaction that some faiths have with the coroner service across the whole country. I simply observe that in diverse communities, such as those served by the West London coroner’s court and by MPs here, a reliable out-of-hours process for death certificates that are required over the weekend would seem to be the most sensible way forward.

The third point I would like to make is on the matter of national application—the requirement to hold an inquest when someone dies while subject to deprivation of liberty safeguards. Section 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 requires that a coroner holds an inquest in certain defined circumstances such as a death in state detention, or a violent or unnatural death. In other cases, the coroner has discretion as to whether to open an inquest, depending on the facts.

Since the Mental Capacity Act 2005 came into force, the definition of whether someone is detained or deprived of their liberty has been tested in the courts on numerous times. In March 2014, the Court of Appeal considered the cases of P v. Cheshire West and Cheshire Council, and P and Q v. Surrey County Council. In those cases, the Court of Appeal gave a very broad definition of deprivation of liberty. The result of that decision has been that authorisations now have to be sought for deprivation of liberty in many more cases than they used to. That includes most cases where a person suffering from dementia lives in a care home and would be prevented from leaving if they attempted to. An inquest must be held in each of those cases because the individual is deemed to be in state detention. In my constituency, we have a nursing home in which 90% of the residents are subject to the deprivation of liberty safeguards. On the current interpretation of the law, there would have to be an inquest into each and every one of those individuals’ death, even if they died entirely predictably in their sleep.

I am not saying that there should be no inquests at all into deaths where the deceased is subject to the deprivation of liberty safeguards—far from it. I am arguing that inquests should be opened at the coroner’s discretion; they should not be mandatory. It was certainly not the intention of this House in passing the Coroners and Justice Act or the Mental Capacity Act to mandate an inquest in every case in which the deprivation of liberty safeguards apply, nor was it the Court of Appeal’s intention in the P and Q cases, so far as I can work out; the issue was not canvassed before the Court at all because the case did not concern inquests.

In support of my point, the Chief Coroner of England and Wales highlighted the problem in his 2014 annual report to the Government, and highlighted the massive increase in the number of deprivation of liberty safeguards from 11,300 in 2013-14 to some 83,000 in the first three quarters of 2014-15, which will inevitably lead to a huge number of additional inquests. I ask the Minister to find legislative time, as a matter of real priority, to exempt people who die while they are subject to deprivation of liberty safeguards from the mandatory requirement to hold an inquest. That change would reduce the pressure that is building on coroners across the country. It would help, but by no means resolve, the problems at the West London coroner’s court, to which I return in closing. It is clear that something must be done to improve the terrible standards of service in that coroner’s court.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I will be brief, not least because this matter, although it is not sub judice, is potentially subject to an investigation by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office, which is the appropriate body to deal with it. Indeed, in answer to my parliamentary question on 9 November, the Minister confirmed that that is the case. The chief executive of Hammersmith and Fulham Council sent a letter to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry), whom I congratulate on securing this debate on a subject of great concern to all MPs in the six boroughs, stating that the council expects to hear back from the JCIO in the second week of January on whether it will launch a full investigation, but clearly that is already under consideration.

Like everyone here, I have had complaints about the West London coroner’s court, and this week I have corresponded with my constituent Angelita Rodriguez about the sad death of James Rodriguez, her late brother, which exhibits many of the problems that the hon. Gentleman identified. It is not necessarily appropriate to go into the individual details of these cases today, but it is not sufficient to blame others for what is going wrong in the coroner’s office. Whatever is going wrong and causing the problems we have heard about, it ultimately falls at the coroner’s door to resolve. I am not impressed by the fact that, at different times, the local authority, administrative staff, the coroner’s officer, the Metropolitan police and even the previous coroner have been passed the buck. I declare an interest, because I chaired the panel that appointed the previous coroner, Alice Thompson, some 15 years ago—I was then the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council. She had more than a decade of distinguished service and conducted some of the most difficult and complex inquests.

This is a matter that concerns literally millions of people across west London, because the six boroughs have a population in excess of 1.5 million people. The coroner’s court deals with people at a time of great stress and in extremis. It is often considered a bit of a Cinderella service. I am very glad that we managed to persuade the coalition Government not to abolish the post of Chief Coroner before it was introduced, and Peter Thornton is doing a very good job. Coroner services can and do go wrong from time to time, but they are an essential and ancient part of our judicial system. It is vital that those services work well, so I hope we will see a full investigation in the new year. I am pleased to hear that there has been some improvement, and I know that the borough council, which is the providing authority for these purposes, is taking the matter seriously in respect of its responsibilities, and I am sure the Metropolitan police are doing the same. In the end, the buck does have to stop with the West London coroner.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

The West London coroner is not here to defend himself, so I will cite the case of James Rodriguez that I mentioned earlier. The post mortem was carried out on 30 April. By the coroner’s own admission, five months later they had not chased up the results, and he says now to the bereaved relatives, who have no death certificate at this stage, nine months later,

“I will not guess at this stage”

when that will happen. That is not in dispute, and that is the level of service we are dealing with.

[Caroline Dinenage]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing that to my attention. I am absolutely clear that the needs of bereaved people should be at the very centre of all coroners’ services. That was supposed to be the main aim of the coroner reforms that we implemented in July 2013.

The West London coroner’s office in Fulham is very busy. It covers a large geographical area, as we know. In 2014 the office received 3,437 reports of deaths and 383 inquests were held. However, that is no excuse for poor, inefficient, rude and insensitive services, or, in some cases, a lack of communication, particularly at such a difficult time when people are grieving. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton is not the only Member whose constituents have been unhappy with the level of service they have received from the West London coroner’s office, particularly with regard to the responsiveness of the office. Several Members have written to me detailing individual cases of constituents who have encountered delays, lack of engagement and rudeness from the coroner’s office, and other Members have raised that today.

My officials and the Chief Coroner’s office have also been alerted to problems. These include bereaved families not being able to access death certificates in a timely manner; delays in holding inquests, which is particularly stressful for bereaved families when they are already going through a very upsetting time; and not having staff at the end of the phone to deal with queries and concerns when they are needed. I understand that a number of complaints have also been lodged with the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton has written to the council’s chief executive on this matter as well.

Earlier this year, the Chief Coroner went to Fulham to visit the senior coroner and his staff. Along with him were representatives from the local authority, which provides the funding and infrastructure for the local coroner service, and also representatives from the Metropolitan police, which provide the coroner’s officers, who are the front-line staff who deal with bereaved people. The senior coroner, the local authority and the police all have a role to play in improving the service. They discussed the issues together and looked at ways to resolve them, and an action plan was agreed. I am pleased to note that, as a result, we are beginning to see signs of a more positive picture emerging from west London. The office has reached its full complement of administrative and investigative staff, including a coroner’s officer manager and six new coroner’s officers. There is now a new way of managing the telephone system so that administrative officers deal with all phone calls in the first instance to relieve the burden on the coroner’s officers, thereby allowing them to focus on progressing cases. However, I take on board the recent instances that the hon. Member for Ealing North has raised about his own experiences with the telephone service. I have made a note of them and my officials will certainly deal with that, because that is not acceptable.

Members will be pleased to hear that west London has now reduced the backlog that it inherited. The senior coroner inherited 400 outstanding inquests when he took up post. That has now been reduced to 70 cases and it is anticipated that these final historic cases will be cleared by the end of February, which will allow staff to focus fully on new cases. The senior coroner has attempted to clear the backlog by making sure there are two courts running in parallel with his assistant coroners hearing cases alongside him.

As the Minister with the coroners portfolio, I share the wish of all Members in the Chamber to resolve matters as quickly as possible. As they have already articulated, the process is not straightforward. The Ministry of Justice has overall responsibility for coroner policy and law, but the responsibility for the delivery and funding of coroner services is a local matter for the appropriate local authority, in this case the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It is for it to decide how to run and fund the coroner services.