Medical Examiners and Death Certification

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I think that the difference here is between handling mass deaths, which would obviously be an emergency situation—so we are talking about contingency and resilience planning—and looking at all deaths. About half a million people die each year. At the moment, only those who go through coroners receive that additional level of investigation, except in those pilot sites and early adopter areas that I mentioned. The new arrangements are about making sure that there is a system of verifying deaths from normal causes.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, when considering these issues will the Minister look at the proposal made by bereaved parents and raised by the chief coroner in his report in 2016 that there should be coroners’ investigations of cases of stillbirth, so that the causes of stillbirths could be better understood and such tragedies could be averted in the future?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness is quite right to highlight this point. Medical examiners are not involved in stillbirths, because the cause of death is before the point of birth. However, there is clearly a need for the involvement of coroners. I will look into the detail of that. I can tell the noble Baroness that the Government are taking the issue of stillbirths seriously. A new perinatal mortality review tool is looking at that and it is integrated into the learning from deaths scheme now going on in the NHS.