Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will bring forward legislative changes to ensure deaths are registered within five to 10 days of the death occurring without it being necessary for the cause of death to be established.

Registrars of deaths are reliant on being informed by a doctor or coroner that
a death has occurred. The certification processes currently require a cause of
death to be given. Any changes would require doctors and coroners to change the
way they certify deaths in advance of the death registration. Neither the
Department of Health, for doctors, nor the Ministry of Justice, for coroners,
have any plans to change the death certification process to certify fact of
death in advance of cause of death.

The Department of Health is planning to consult on proposals to introduce
medical examiners in England and Wales who will scrutinise the cause of death
stated by an attending doctor on a Medical Certificate for Cause of Death
(MCCD). The draft Death Certification Regulations propose that a prospective
informant must provide a confirmed MCCD to the registrar within five days of a
medical examiner's confirmation of the stated cause of death.