Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the report entitled, The Report of the Morecambe Bay Investigation, published in March 2015, what steps he has taken to extend the medical examiners system to (a) stillbirths and (b) neonatal deaths to ensure that appropriate recommendations are made to coroners on the occasional need for inquests in individual cases.

Medical examiners will scrutinise all non-coronial deaths and ensure the right deaths are referred to coroners. This includes neonatal deaths. We remain committed to establishing a statutory system in the National Health Service, that will scrutinise all deaths which do not involve a coroner, as soon as Parliamentary time allows. This will build upon the non-statutory system already being implemented.

There is currently no provision for the medical examiner to become involved in the certification for stillborn babies. This is because the functions of medical examiners, as set out in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, are limited to scrutinising causes of death. Stillborn babies are not legally classified as having died because Common law does not see this as a death, as they were not born alive. Officials have been analysing responses to the consultation that sets out proposals for giving coroners new powers to investigate term stillbirths. The Government plans to publish a response in the spring or early summer.