Coroners (Suspension of Requirement for Jury at Inquest: Coronavirus) Regulations 2024

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Friday 24th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, this instrument is an important part of the Government’s ongoing support for coroners’ services in their continuing recovery from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. It extends for a further two years the disapplication of the statutory requirement for any inquest into a death involving Covid-19 to be held with a jury.

As noble Lords will recall, the Coronavirus Act 2020 removed the requirement for juries in coroner cases in many—indeed, at the time almost all—circumstances, following which the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 provided that juries should not automatically have to be empanelled in cases involving a Covid-19 death. That provision was extendable, and the present regulations seek to extend that exception for a further two years.

I have three points to make. First, it is entirely open to any coroner to empanel a jury if he thinks fit; it does not prevent there being a jury but simply gives the coroner discretion, rather than automatically having to have a jury. Secondly, there is, as I have just said, a sunset provision as the extension is limited to two years. Thirdly, this measure helps reduce the delays that I am sorry to say are still besetting coroner services and the system of coronial inquests. I understand, on the basis of a comment from the senior coroner in the north-west of England, that for each day of a listing for an inquest without a jury, it takes a week’s listing with a jury. So, to empanel a jury automatically in all these cases, irrespective of whether you need a jury, is, in the Government’s view, somewhat excessive provided that the coroner also always has the power to empanel a jury if he wishes to.

The Government are concerned about the impact of inquest backlogs, particularly on bereaved families, and feel that this measure, if the House agrees it, will support coroners in their continuing efforts to reduce those backlogs and promote the Government’s objective of putting the bereaved at the heart of the coronial process. Of course, in high-profile cases it always remains possible and open to the coroner to empanel a jury. For those reasons, I commend the regulations to the House.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister one question in relation to something he just said about the families and the fact that coroners will have discretion. If, for whatever reason, a family wishes a coroner’s procedure to proceed with a jury, what weight would a coroner place upon that in deciding in his or her discretion whether to empanel one?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot answer for individual coroners, but I would venture to suppose that such a circumstance would have great weight with most coroners.