The Coroner Service

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the First Report of the Justice Committee, The Coroner Service, HC 68, and the Government response, HC 675.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir George, and to introduce the debate. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for the debate. This is an important matter that deserves further attention. I am sorry in some respects that it requires further attention, because had the Government responded more positively to what is a detailed report based on careful and substantial evidence, it might not be necessary to highlight the measure of deficiencies that are revealed in the Government’s response.

I welcome the Minister to his first justice debate in Westminster Hall, having congratulated him warmly on his debut at the Dispatch Box in the main Chamber yesterday. I appreciate that the Government response was not his responsibility, and I am not sure if he can avail himself of the young and naïve defence that was used yesterday.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (James Cartlidge)]

It was Tuesday.

[Sir Robert Neill]

Tuesday. Now that he is in post, I hope that, once he has read the Government response, he will take the opportunity to ask his officials to review it, because there are compelling reasons, which we will set out, why the Government should look again at a number of issues.

It is good to see a former member of the Justice Committee appear for the first time as a shadow Minister in Westminster Hall. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) certainly knows the full detail of the report because he played a substantial part in contributing to it. I hope that he will be able to agree with the contents of the report when we get to the end of the debate.

I also want to mention the presence of the hon. Member for Wallasey—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (James Cartlidge)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. My huge congratulations to the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill); he spoke fantastically on Second Reading this week, and he has done so again today. In terms of speakers today, it has been more a case of quality than of quantity on display.

I will try to cover all the points raised as far as possible, but I will leave my hon. Friend two minutes, so if I fall short in covering points in order to give him those two minutes, my apologies. I not only thank the members of the Justice Committee for their thorough and wide-ranging inquiry, but express my gratitude to the previous chief coroner, his honour Judge Mark Lucraft, QC, coroners’ charities, faith groups, medical professionals and organisations, bereaved families and many other stakeholders who provided written evidence to the Committee.

Like other public services in England and Wales, coroner services have faced, and continue to face, unprecedented challenges, exacerbated by covid-19. Despite those challenges, however, the coronial system continued to deliver. While we might say that, relative to other parts of justice, particularly criminal justice, this area arguably attracts less attention, coroners provide a vital public service that has a significant impact on bereaved people at their most vulnerable, and the Government are committed to ensuring that bereaved people are at its heart.

The Justice Committee’s report highlighted a number of key areas of concern and made 25 recommendations. My hon. Friend is very kind in what he says about a can-do attitude, but I think that responding in just two months, and then having some of those recommendations in a Bill a couple of months later, is not a bad performance time-wise. But, of course, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) was right that we are still considering some of them. That is absolutely correct.

Five of the recommendations were for the chief coroner to consider, and we expect that Judge Teague will respond directly to the Committee on them and that the Committee will publish his response in due course. The remaining 20 recommendations were for the Government. The Government’s response explained that the Government accepted six of the recommendations outright, and we are already undertaking work on those recommendations.

One recommendation was to improve access to the Ministry of Justice’s publication, “A Guide to Coroner Services for Bereaved People”. The Committee acknowledged the value of the guide to bereaved people, and we are looking at how we ensure that hard copies are made more widely available.

Two of the Committee’s recommendations that the Government accepted relate to provisions that we are now bringing forward in the Judicial Review and Courts Bill, which is currently before Parliament. I look forward to debating the provisions with the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) in the Bill Committee that starts shortly. There are five coroner measures in the Bill, and the provision to make it easier for coroner areas to merge precisely meets one of the Committee’s recommendations. Taken together, the five coroner measures in the Bill are aimed at streamlining processes in the coroner’s courts and supporting the chief coroner’s post-pandemic recovery plans, thereby meeting another of the Committee’s recommendations.

Successive chief coroners have proposed a change to the legislation to give the High Court greater flexibility when it is asked to quash or request a fresh inquest, which speaks to the point about appeals. There is, of course, a route of approaching the Attorney General for an inquest verdict to be challenged in the High Court. I do not say that that is precisely what we would call a legal route of appeal, but it is there and it is important. The Government accepted the Committee’s recommendation to adopt the proposal on quashing verdicts and we have committed to introduce this measure when parliamentary time allows.

Let me come to the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). The Government also accepted the Committee’s recommendation about the consultation on coronial investigation of stillbirths. Publication of the Government’s response has unfortunately been delayed due to the impact of covid-19 on wider priorities, but a response to the consultation is expected to be published in due course. I note my hon. Friend’s point about the sunset clause, which I will look into further.

On the terrible tragedy at the Shoreham air show, as noted by the chief coroner’s office at Shoreham, the inquests are legally and logistically complex, with large numbers of participants, and are being progressed as quickly as possible. I understand from the West Sussex coroner service website that the next Shoreham pre-inquest review is on 6 January next year. I also understand that the coroner very much regrets the delay in holding the Shoreham air show inquest—the delay is because of the pandemic—and that the coroner has applied to the High Court for permission to access material from the criminal trial. The coroner cannot continue with the inquest until the outcome of the application to the High Court is known. As we say, we expect the next pre-session in January.

I turn to the points raised by the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, who has quite a background. She has had this job, been a solicitor, served on the Committee and, perhaps most importantly of all, has many constituents who have an interest in Hillsborough—as you do, Sir George—and has spoken on the issue many times with great passion. I very much admire the way she has done so. Of course, I can do nothing to change the amount of time that has elapsed. It is not my Department but the Home Office that will be responding in due course, and I am afraid I cannot say more than that today.

The hon. Lady made some very good points. On change of approach and the number of lawyers of either type that can be there to support public bodies, there is a protocol in the Government’s guide to coroner services that Departments must consider the number of lawyers, bearing in mind the commitment to an inquisitorial rather than an adversarial approach. The protocol is designed as a “model of behaviour”.

We are considering the independent public advocate. I know that the hon. Lady led a debate on this issue recently, which was answered by my predecessor, who is now the Solicitor General. He said there are details we need to look at, and I stress that point.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst raised many points. On the non-publication, shall we say, of the 2015 post-implementation review, I am afraid this is not a can-do answer. The work is almost six years old. I take my hon. Friend’s point about what happens if we sit on something long enough, but I am afraid that is our position. I am happy to speak to him further on that point offline.

The Government decided that 10 recommendations needed further consideration to determine whether the proposals could be delivered. They were not rejected, but need further work to determine whether they would be affordable and aligned with the Government’s priorities.

I will turn to legal aid, which is obviously very important. I realise that even in a Second Reading debate, several right hon. and hon. Members raised the issue of the inequality of arms and so on. We said that more work was needed on the recommendation around non-means-tested legal aid for legal representation for bereaved people at inquests. There have also been numerous calls from stakeholders for the Government to consider their position on the provision of legal aid funding for legal representation at inquests, in particular where the state is represented. The Government remain of the view that legal representation is not necessary for the vast majority of inquests because they are an inquisitorial, fact-finding process.

It is, however, one of the Department’s long-standing priorities to ensure that families are put at the heart of the inquest process. We acknowledge that there will continue to be instances where bereaved families are entitled to legal aid, for example where the state or public authority’s acts or omissions have arguably contributed to a death or where having representation at an inquest would be beneficial in the wider public interest. We believe that, where there is an exceptional case for legal aid, the process to access that support should be as straightforward as possible—not least to relieve the stress and anxiety that the application process brings to the bereaved family. With that in mind, we are in the process of amending legislation to remove the means test for exceptional case funding; I am pleased to confirm that that is currently being drafted and that we hope it will come into force early next year.

The Committee also asked the Government to consider adopting a charter of rights for bereaved families. The Government are keen to explore those issues, but explained that they would respond as part of their response to Bishop James Jones’s review of the Hillsborough families’ experiences, which is expected to be published in due course.

On the matter of—shall we say—a national service, the Government rejected the recommendation to unite coroner services into a single service for England and Wales. The Government recognise that many calls for a national coroner service stem from the view that such a service would address inconsistencies or a postcode lottery. We do not accept that nationalised organisations are necessarily the answer to such inconsistencies or postcode lotteries. I would make two points on that matter. This is about not only the cost per se, but the question of how it would be funded, given the service is currently operated by local authorities. That raises a lot of issues. We are moving from around 85 coroner areas to around 75, so there is amalgamation and there are therefore more economies of scale. However, we remain of the view that this is best as a local service.

I will wrap up there, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst that he would have time to finish. It has been a very high-quality debate, with lots of passion and very good points, some of which we are still considering and some that we have responded to. I congratulate my hon. Friend on a very thorough report on a very important matter.