Examination of Witness (Questions 1-19)
MICHAEL BURGESS
7 FEBRUARY 2006
Chairman: Mr Burgess, we are very grateful
to you for coming in to give us the benefit of your very considerable
experience in this field. It is a fairly timely inquiry because
after a long delay the Government produced its policy statement
yesterday and we anticipate dealing with the draft bill when that
comes along, but before we get to the draft bill we want to explore
some of the wider issues and also some of the detail surrounding
this. It is our practice to declare any possible interests that
might be relevant so we will just do that first.
James Brokenshire: I am a non-practising
solicitor.
Keith Vaz: I am a non-practising barrister.
My wife holds a part-time judicial appointment.
Q1 Chairman: Could you briefly indicate
to us the purposes, strengths and weaknesses of the coroner system
as you see it?
Michael Burgess: Thank you, Chairman.
The first point I would make is that there is no single system.
We do not have a national coroners service. What we do have is
a number of office holders each individually and exclusively responsible
in their own districts for carrying out coroner duties. It is
unclear from the minister's statement yesterday whether and how
that might be altered. One of the strengths is the loyalty that
there may be on the parts of individual office holders to their
own district. The great weakness that flows from that is that
there will not be consistency of practice and the resources available
to individual coroners will be very varied, ie some will be well
resourced and others will not be so well resourced and some will
be very badly resourced. The resource issue is something that
constantly comes to the fore. Thinking things through before I
met with you and before the minister's statement yesterday, I
formed the view that resources might be put into three broad categories.
The first is the legal resources that are needed, the laws, the
authorities and powers that coroners need to perform their function.
Before one even looks at that though it is necessary to understand
what the coroner's function is and currently in statute that is
not clear. All we have got is that we are to hold inquests and
those inquests are expected to find certain things as proved or
not as the case may be. So legal resources is certainly critical.
The second and equally important resource is the human resources,
the coroners, the coroners' officers and the deputies, that they
are sufficient and well meaning as well as being properly trained
and well disposed. I think we are fortunate in this country in
that broadly speaking we have got a good cadre of coroners, even
though on occasions they will fail, but we all fail at times.
Coupled with that, of course, is that they have to have sufficient
time to carry out their function. Many coroners I know spend long
hours, well beyond the European time constraints that we are all
supposed to work to, in order to get through their caseload and
give attention to their cases. Then there are the other resources,
which are the more inanimate, the financial and accommodation
resources that we need. Certainly, so far as courts are concerned,
we are very poorly off. We do not form part of the main court
structure of the country and therefore when it comes to requiring
and seeking court accommodation, we often are unable to use courts,
we are very much at the back of the queue. Indeed I heard very
recently of coroners who have had to adjourn inquests part-heard
with juries for months because their allotted time had expired
and the case had not finished and that cannot be good.
Q2 Chairman: Were you surprised when
the minister said yesterday that the fairly substantive programme
of reforms she had announced might be accomplished for £5
million?
Michael Burgess: Yes. I am not
a mathematician but it does surprise me.
Q3 Chairman: Do you think that coroners
generally recognise that there is a case for substantial reform?
Michael Burgess: I have no doubt
about that. Many of us, individually and together in the Coroners'
Society, have spent many hundreds of hours working with the two
inquiries which resulted in the two reports. I think all of us
see the need for reform. Maybe some of us see the need in quite
different ways, but broadly speaking we have no difficulty at
all in putting our hands up and saying reform is needed and the
sooner the better.
Q4 Jessica Morden: We understand
that referrals to coroners have risen in recent years. Why is
this the case?
Michael Burgess: I surmise it
is because since Harold Shipman has been exposed coroners are
much more likely to have cases referred where doctors in the past
were confident about not referring cases and about signing medical
certificates. What we find quite often is that doctors have not
the experience and indeed the training to sign medical certificates,
it is not covered at most medical schools and they only come across
it when they are out there in the field for the first time. One
source of some consolation is coming to the coroner's office,
whether to an officer or to the coroner, and saying, "Can
you help me here? How do we address this particular case?",
and we will try and guide them through it. I think that certainly
is one reason for the substantial increase, at least in my district
it appears to be.
Q5 Jessica Morden: Overall coroner
activity rates seem to be higher in England and Wales than in
other countries. Why is that the case?
Michael Burgess: I suspect doctors
abroad may be more confident than they are over here, but other
than that I cannot really explain that.
Q6 Jessica Morden: So they are doing
the same work but they are just called something else?
Michael Burgess: We have a much
more precise form of death certification over here. Certainly
in Europe, for example, they do not have to be as precise on causes
of death as we do or we are expected to be.
Q7 Jessica Morden: How well does
the existing system of local authorities appointing coroners function
in your view?
Michael Burgess: There is a broad
common path that most appointment processes go through. There
is an advertisement followed by a selection process, normally
a paper sift and then an interview, but it will vary enormously
because the members of the panel will be drawn from the local
authority who probably have had no previous experience in making
any judicial appointments of this sort. It is not an appointment
which they can make conditional upon certain things being done.
Once a coroner is appointed only the Lord Chancellor is able to
remove him from office. It is not as easy as appointing somebody
else, even quite a high senior officer in local government; it
is a very different kind of appointment. So there are variations.
That said, most councils approach it very seriously and take quite
a long time and quite a lot of effort to try and get the choice
right.
Q8 Jessica Morden: Do you think the
system could be improved, and what would you like to see happening?
Michael Burgess: I have no doubt
that consistency could be introduced if there was some central
way of appointing coroners, maybe with some sort of local participation
as well.
Q9 Chairman: Could it still happen,
as I was told by a colleague yesterday it happened where he was
serving a local authority, that a great argument arises on the
appointment panel for the coroner between those who want a particular
coroner appointed and those who say but it has always come from
this particular practice, why should we change the practice?
Michael Burgess: I think those
instances are now much fewer than they used to be. Certainly,
you are right, in the past I have heard of firms that have kept
the coronership in their firm for generations, ie I am the seventh,
eighth, ninth senior partner to be coroner for this particular
district, but I would hope that that nepotism, for that is what
it is, is now a thing of the past.
Q10 Keith Vaz: Mr Burgess, do you
think that there is relief and delight at the fact that we are
now in the middle of a reform process on the part of coroners?
At the next coroners annual ball will you be raising a glass of
cheer to the Lord Chancellor and saying, "At last, after
all these years, we're going to have a better system"?
Michael Burgess: I think we will
wait until we see the detail.
Q11 Keith Vaz: What struck me yesterday—I
do not know whether you were watching the proceedings in the House—was
the criticism that there was from MPs of individual coroners and
obviously the system as well. Were you struck by that?
Michael Burgess: I am afraid I
was actually in court and therefore was not able to share the
joys and the immediacy of television. However, I have seen the
Hansard reports and I quite agree with you that there does
appear to be redolent through them concerns and complaints about
individual coroners. I am afraid I cannot address those as I am
not familiar with them and I do not think it would be right for
me to try and defend or prosecute them as the case may be. I am
well aware that there are individuals in any forum who will have
justifiable complaints and, as I say, we are human and we do err
and when we do I think, quite justifiably, we should expect not
only to apologise but recognise that we have failed. I think the
other side of the coin is those who pass through the process and
have found it uncomfortable but who come out the other side without
a complaint and do not necessarily put pen to paper. So we are
not necessarily seeing the other side and the numbers of people
who have maybe no major complaint to make such that they would
get in touch with their MP. I quite agree with you, there are
a number of significant complaints that do not do the system and
the holders of the office any good.
Q12 Keith Vaz: Do you think that
there are examples of serious mistakes that have been made by
coroners which would cause you, as a fellow member of the profession,
problems? Have you heard of these errors?
Michael Burgess: I have heard
of most of those that have occurred and were reflected in the
questions in the House yesterday and certainly if and when I was
ever approached by these I was extremely concerned and expressed
that concern to the individual concerned.
Q13 Keith Vaz: Tell me a bit about
the training regime that coroners have. At the moment obviously
there are proposals that are before Parliament. Is it a good training
system? What happens? Do you all have to go away on a coroner
course where you share information and learn new techniques? How
is it done?
Michael Burgess: First of all,
there is no compulsory training. A coroner can be appointed by
his relevant council today and be expected to be running a major
district tomorrow without any training intervening and that does
cause problems. The Lord Chancellor's Department does run residential
courses three times a year. They run for three days, normally
on Fridays and ending on a Sunday. These have been taken over
from the Home Office when the Home Office was responsible for
coroners. They are primarily programmes that are worked through
with coroners and with guest speakers coming in from other disciplines.
Q14 Keith Vaz: How effective are
these training schemes?
Michael Burgess: The really big
problem is that we have got a cadre of maybe 300 or 320 coroners,
deputies and assistant deputies and only the capacity for about
150 people to pass through this per year.
Q15 Keith Vaz: Of the current 350
coroners, how many do you think have had the DCA training?
Michael Burgess: I would hope
most of them at some time have passed through that training, but
the training course is revised every 18 months or two years. We
would expect a particular course to run for five or six repeats.
Q16 Keith Vaz: Would you have to
bid for it?
Michael Burgess: You apply to
be included on it and then hopefully you go on it. There are no
fees, of course. It is not a compulsory course. In addition, the
DCA and other groups, the Medical and Legal Society for example,
run specific half-day or all-day training courses with a particular
emphasis on topics that might be useful in the course of one's
professional life.
Q17 Keith Vaz: Do you think there
is a case for a structured induction course at the start of an
appointment and then continuing training after that appointment
has taken place?
Michael Burgess: The DCA, taking
over from the Home Office, does have an induction course but it
is run irregularly depending on the number of applicants. We may
find that a coroner, a deputy or assistant deputy has been in
post for several months before an induction course is run. My
ideal would be for a compulsory training scheme with all people
inside this sector, including coroners' officers, having training
and regular professional development every year. It should not
be left to when there is a vacancy and a two year waiting list.
Q18 Julie Morgan: Is there any specific
training given to deal with people who are bereaved and who are
in a state of shock and upset?
Michael Burgess: Outside the weekend
residential course, no.
Q19 Julie Morgan: And that is a significant
part of that course, is it?
Michael Burgess: It may or may
not be in that in the past we have included elements that have
focussed on particular groups, whether Muslim, Jewish or minority
religions. We have also talked to people with particular experiences.
It is not something that has monopolised a whole weekend but it
has been an element in many training courses.
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