Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

Should the UK Government wish to accept an IHR amendment, changes to domestic law to reflect proposed obligations may indeed be required. The Government would therefore prepare draft legislation and bring it before Parliament in the usual way. Let me repeat that in all circumstances, the sovereignty of the UK Parliament would remain unchanged and the UK would retain control of any future decisions around national public health measures.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

19. If he will publish the results of the consultation on giving powers to coroners to investigate stillbirths.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

The consultation on giving powers to coroners to investigate stillbirths received 334 responses, including from bereaved parents, charities, the Chief Coroner, clinicians and a range of other organisations.

[Tim Loughton]

Mr Speaker, you are very familiar with the problems over the implementation of my Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019, which passed this House in February 2019. Section 4 remains incomplete. The consultation was completed in June 2019. Mr Speaker, you are aware that I made six attempts to get a meeting with the Minister and a Justice Minister. Eventually, I got it in March, after the Leader of the House intervened. Four months on, I have heard nothing and the consultation remains unpublished. What will it take to get this legislation, which everyone wants and which was passed unanimously, into law?

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work in this space and I apologise for the delay in publishing the consultation. I met him along with a Justice Minister, and I assure him that we hope to publish it very soon.