West London Coroner’s Court

Debate between James Berry and Dominic Grieve

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered standards of service at West London Coroner’s Court.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and to see so many colleagues here who have been so vocal on this important issue for their constituents and mine. Two years ago tomorrow, my father died unexpectedly. It was a devastating experience for my family, as death is for every family, but the seamless service from the local council and the coroner made the whole experience just that bit more bearable. Although the registration process itself was clinical, because it was efficient it did not compound our distress as a family. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the experiences of many bereaved relatives of those living in Kingston, Richmond, Hounslow, Ealing, Hillingdon, and Hammersmith and Fulham, which are the boroughs that comprise the jurisdiction of West London coroner’s court.

Since I was elected in May, I have received numerous complaints about the standards of service at West London coroner’s court and about the senior coroner there. Those complaints come not only from bereaved constituents, but from the council itself and, indeed, from our local newspaper, the Surrey Comet. The complaints include: long delays in issuing death certificates; inordinate delays in bringing on inquests; a telephone service that is never answered when relatives call for advice; crass errors on death certificates, such as getting the age or sex of the deceased wrong; and general rudeness to boot.

It is important to note at the outset—I note your guidance, Sir Roger—that I do not intend to criticise the senior coroner personally, because I know that there is a complaint against him by a number of councils, and that that is under investigation. I would not want to impede that investigation, but there are three issues that I would like to consider in some detail: delays, burials for certain faiths, and deprivation of liberty safeguards.

West London coroner’s court has one of the worst records for delays in the country. It takes almost double the national average time to process inquests. The delays are a shocking abrogation of the state’s responsibility to bereaved families, including those in my constituency. The estimated average time taken to process an inquest in England in 2014 was 28 weeks—a figure that has been effectively stable over the past five years. However, in west London and in inner south London, the average time taken to process an inquest is 50 to 53 weeks. The figure of 53 weeks is the worst in the country. In West London coroner’s court, the figure is 50 weeks—the second worst in the country.

In my borough, Kingston upon Thames, the target for registering a death is five days from the date of death, or seven days in a case where a post mortem is required. In 2013-14—the period during which the coroner was appointed, as he was appointed in November 2013—Kingston was meeting that target in 70% of cases. In this year, 2015-16, if we continue on the current trajectory, Kingston Council will meet its target in only 11% of cases, and that is because of delays at West London coroner’s court.

In terms of post mortems, prior to the appointment of the current senior coroner in November 2013, the waiting time in Kingston from a death to a post mortem was two to five days, yet between June and September 2015, the average waiting time was four to six weeks. I understand that the situation has since improved somewhat. Those statistics speak for themselves and do not need labouring, so I will return to the bereaved families who are at the heart of the debate.

For most people, an inquest is a new and somewhat unsettling experience at a very vulnerable time in their life. In most cases, bereaved relatives simply want to bury their dead as soon as possible. In a small number of cases, they want answers or an inquest is required by law, but in all cases, they want to have the system explained to them, and to be kept informed of the reason for and the length of any delays.

Ronke Phillips from “ITV News London” has done a lot of work exposing the problems at West London coroner’s court. In October, ITV London brought a number of families affected by services at West London coroner’s court to Parliament to speak to their MPs, a number of whom are here today. The accounts those families gave of the distress they had been caused were quite moving. There were unexplained delays, no updates, and a telephone service that was never answered and turned out not to be manned at all.

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend’s flow, but I do not want to take up the House’s time by making a speech. He highlights some of the issues very well. My constituent, Mrs Doreen Garcia, had what was essentially a completely straightforward issue in relation to her husband’s death. She needed to get a death certificate because it was essential for the administration of the estate, yet she had to wait more than a year for an inquest that, in the end, was a hearing on the papers because of the complete inefficiency of West London coroner’s court.

[James Berry]

That experience is by no means unique. In terms of the telephone service, when I called up on behalf of a constituent very early on in my role as a new MP, I had to wait on the telephone for more than 45 minutes, and then it became clear that the call was never going to be answered. Frankly, that plumbs the depth of poor service for bereaved families. As I understand it, the senior coroner’s position is that he inherited a backlog from his predecessor in 2013. Be that as it may, he has not cleared that backlog since November 2013, and has compounded the situation with an ill-conceived staff reorganisation and shocking failures to communicate with bereaved families.