Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (England and Wales) Regulations 2024 on the timely registration of deaths.

The Government is monitoring the impact of the death certification reforms, including the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death Regulations 2024, which came into legal effect on 9 September 2024. The median time taken to register a death since the introduction of the reforms in England and Wales has typically been eight days. This figure is for all deaths, as it includes those certified by a doctor and those investigated by a coroner. The median time taken to register a death varies depending on the type of certification. Deaths certified by a doctor, that comprise approximately 80% of deaths registered each week, have typically had a median time to registration of seven days. It’s important to note that the medical examiner system was active on a non-statutory basis before the introduction of the statutory system on 9 September 2024, and this makes direct before and after comparisons challenging to draw conclusions from.

The core purposes of the death certification reforms are to introduce scrutiny of the cause of death to detect and deter malpractice, to improve reporting, and crucially to put the bereaved at the centre of the process by offering a conversation with the medical examiner about the cause of death. The expectation on doctors and medical examiners is clear, that they should complete certification as quickly and efficiently as possible, and the Department is working with all stakeholders to make sure this is the case.