Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (Consequential Provisions) Order 2013

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord McNally]

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (Consequential Provisions) Order 2013.

Relevant documents: 2nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, the order amends two key provisions in the Coroners Act 1988. The first is Section 4A(8), which governs the jurisdiction of coroners in Wales. The second is Section 13, which allows applications to be made to the High Court by, or under the authority of, the Attorney-General, for an inquest, or fresh inquest, to be ordered. These provisions of the Coroners Act 1988 will not be repealed when the bulk of Part 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 is implemented later this month. The purpose of the draft order is simply to amend the terminology of these provisions to make them consistent with the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

Part 1 of the 2009 Act contains a number of important reforms to the coroner system. It creates the new post of chief coroner, the new judicial head of the system, and makes a number of changes that will help to speed up the inquest process, improve consistency between coroner areas and drive up standards.

Part 1 of the 2009 Act also introduces new terminology, including new titles for coroners and the areas they are appointed to. It also introduces the new concept of an “investigation” into a death, of which the inquest will form part. Under the 2009 Act, the coroner or jury will make “determinations and findings” at the end of an inquest rather than reaching a “verdict” and making an “inquisition”.

Following a consultation exercise earlier this year, we intend to commence the majority of the 2009 Act provisions, and new coroners’ rules and regulations, on 25 July. When we implement the 2009 Act, we will repeal the 1988 Act but with two important exceptions. The first exception relates to the deployment of coroners in Wales. Section 4A(8) of the Coroners Act 1988 provides that a coroner appointed to a district in Wales is to be considered a coroner for the whole of Wales. This gives additional flexibility in the deployment of resources in Wales. It means that a coroner with specialist skills can temporarily act outside his or her own district without having to be appointed as a coroner in the other district. This is particularly useful for urgent matters which may arise, such as the need to request a post-mortem examination or to facilitate organ donation. The draft order, therefore, updates the language of Section 4A(8) to make it consistent with the 2009 Act. It does this by changing the word “coroner” to “senior coroner” and “coroner’s district” to “coroner area”. We will repeal the rest of Section 4A.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I have some second-hand acquaintance with the coroner system because I was articled to a coroner and subsequently became his partner. He was a part-time coroner in the north-east of England. I cannot resist the temptation—I rarely do—to recount a couple of incidents from that time. The first was the remarkable theory constructed by the coroner’s officer, who is a police officer attached to the coroner’s office, about a chap who was found drowned in the bath. The officer came up with the wonderful theory that this man had committed suicide by deliberately banging himself on the back of the head so that he would become unconscious and drown in the bath. My principal was not entirely convinced by this theory, and accidental death was recorded instead. On another occasion he had to show a bereaved widow the body of her husband for identification purposes. The body was produced from the cabinet and uncovered, and she acknowledged that this was indeed her husband. She turned to go away and my partner, as he then was, began to put the drawer back into the cupboard, but then she said, “Do you mind, Mr Henderson, if I have another look?”. “Oh yes, my dear”, he said, and pulled the thing out again and uncovered it. She looked down at her husband and said, “Well, there you are”—I will not repeat the expletives—“may you rot in hell”. So a coroner’s life can be quite an interesting one.

With regard to the order, my honourable friend Robert Flello raised a couple of points in the other place. The first was to regret the fact that it did indeed take something of a struggle to persuade the Government to retain the office of chief coroner. However, they did that, and I join the noble Baroness in commending that and, up to a point, the changes before us today. She and the Minister are right to refer to the continued availability of Section 13 of the 1988 Act and the possible process of obtaining an order from the Attorney-General. However, that is by no means a simple procedure; rather, it is convoluted and, given that the noble Baroness has reminded us of the state of mind of bereaved families, it is one that is difficult to pursue.

The point is that in the 2009 Act there was provision for an appeals procedure. My honourable friend asserted, and I agree with him, that it would have been better to have retained or implemented that provision, particularly as the alternative to the Attorney-General procedure, cumbersome and protracted as it is, will now be only to rely upon judicial review. Judicial review, of course, poses a question of cost and of course will largely be out of scope of legal aid. It will be yet another difficult process for someone, particularly in the circumstances of bereavement, to negotiate, both practically and emotionally. It is unsatisfactory that the Government have not retained—or, rather, implemented—that provision for an appeals process, and are leaving the potential applicant with an unsatisfactory choice between the Attorney-General process and JR, the access to which is highly questionable .

In replying to my noble friend, the Minister, Mrs Grant, said simply:

“The right answer is to raise standards”.—[Official Report, Commons, Sixth Delegated Legislation Committee, 26/6/13; col. 7.]

As my noble friend pointed out, the two things are not incompatible. Of course it may well be, as both the Minister and the noble Baroness have said, that standards should indeed be raised, but that does not necessarily mean that there will not on occasion be the perceived necessity on the part of bereaved members of the family or others to challenge a decision. There ought to be a proper scope to facilitate that, and the concern is that that is not easily available under the order as it will stand.

The other aspect that the Minister might perhaps touch on is what is left to be done. Just last week we had a response to the consultation on other aspects of implementing the reform, and I assume that there will be further orders to come. I do not know if he is in a position to indicate when that might happen—I hope it will not be for a while so that some of us, the Minister included, can take a breath in the mean time from the tide of regulations and orders that we will be discussing over the next couple of weeks. One might have thought that it made sense for the whole thing to be brought together, but we have to deal with the order today. In the circumstances, we cannot object to it but we have regrets about the limited way in which the 2009 Act is being implemented. We look forward to seeing how the other aspects of it that remain to be dealt with emerge in due course.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I am grateful to both the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for their contributions. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness. Whenever a Government listen to wise advice and make an adjustment of policy, the Opposition immediately and churlishly brand that a U-turn rather than what good government should be, which is to listen to wise advice. I think that everyone now believes in the campaign that the noble Baroness very successfully worked on to restore the office of chief coroner; I do not think that anyone would now go back on that decision. Indeed, one of the more welcome things about what has happened is that His Honour Judge Peter Thornton has hit the ground running in his job. He has been visiting coroners across England and Wales, meeting stakeholders, issuing guidance to coroners on issues such as the location of inquest hearings and less invasive post mortem examinations, and drawing up proposals for specialist cadres of coroners to conduct certain types of investigation. He has been working very closely with my own office, the MoJ, on the rules and regulations under the Act, and has set up a new coroners’ training group and is working with the Judicial College to deliver training for coroners. Therefore, the hopes and expectations that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has for the office are justified by the new chief coroner’s “hit the ground running” attitude to his appointment, as I described it. He certainly has my support in that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Beecham]

I am very grateful to the Minister for raising this matter, which I confess I have also been approached about and had intended to raise, but immersed as I have been in several regulations and debates and preparation for them, I am afraid I had overlooked that. I am particularly grateful to the Minister for making that clear. I suppose that I ought also to declare an interest as a member of the Jewish community in that regard.

[Lord McNally]

I sincerely hope it is a facility that the noble Lord does not need to use personally for a very long time. As he says, both the Muslim and Jewish communities have raised this issue, which again proves the value of having a chief coroner. It means that when communities raise an issue it can go to the chief coroner, who will now take responsibility for issuing guidance and getting the right responses. I thank the contributors and again hope that this SI will be accepted by the Committee.

Motion agreed.