Draft Coroners Bill
64. During our inquiry, the Department for Constitutional
Affairs published proposals for a reform of the coroners' system
in the form of a draft Bill.[54]
The proposals aim to improve people's experience of the coroners
service and bring about more effective investigations, replacing
the Coroners Act 1988 and adding substantial new provisions on
governance and structure. They would reduce the current number
of approximately 110 full and part-time coroners to 60-65 full-time
professionals with a requirement for legal qualifications. Coroners
would continue to be appointed and funded by their local authorities,
but the Lord Chancellor would have power to determine new area
boundaries. Local authorities would also be responsible for a
pool of part-time assistant coroners to support full-time coroners.
65. The draft Bill also proposes the creation of
a Chief Coroner's Office to oversee the system:
The Bill will introduce national leadership through
a Chief Coroner and support staff, and an advisory Coronial Council.
The Chief Coroner will be responsible for developing national
standards and guidance, supporting coroners and advising Government
and for considering appeals against coroners' decisions and responding
to complaints. Through the Lord Chancellor, he or she will be
accountable to Parliament.[55]
66. Speaking in advance of the publication of the
draft Bill, Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC MP, Minister of State in
the Department for Constitutional Affairs, said:
what we lack is the capacity for leadership and certainty,
which would enable the right inquiries to be made at the earliest
possible opportunity. I agree that it is unfair that an inquiry
has taken so long. The national leadership of the chief coroner
means that there will be someone at a national level to liaise
with the relevant parties and ensure that […] does not happen
in future. […] Coroners have mediaeval jurisdictions, which
they control—no one else is allowed to sit there, and they
are not allowed to sit in anyone else's jurisdiction—so
it is impossible to do something simple and straightforward such
as re-allocating a coroner to another jurisdiction to deal with
a backlog. That is the problem with the statutory legal framework,
and it is a simple but important thing that we will change.[56]
67. Lord Goldsmith seemed more cautious about the
potential for the proposals to speed up inquests, noting that
any improvements would depend not only on bureaucratic reorganisation,
but also on the provision of resources:
The question as to whether it is going to make things
better is one that you might want put to DCA ministers because
they are responsible for resources which coroners will have and
the way that procedures will operate. They will have a view as
to how much that will speed up inquests. There will though always
be some inquests which are opened and take a long time because
they will stop whilst criminal proceedings take place.[57]
68. If
the draft Coroners Bill succeeds in creating a more professional
coroners' system, and removing some of the bureaucratic obstacles
such as the local boundaries within which coroners are presently
confined, it might reduce some of the current delays in inquests.
We note, however, the Attorney General's caveat that additional
resources are likely to be necessary for a significant change
to be effected.
69. We also see potential in the establishment of
a Chief Coroner's Office. This Office would be well placed to
provide a central point of information for the House on the timing
and status of inquests. In oral evidence, we asked Mr Robert Rogers,
Principal Clerk of the Table Office, how House authorities currently
obtained information about 'active' cases:
One of the things that we have done fairly recently,
with the help of the Law Officers' Departments, is to change the
way in which we find out factual information about sub judice
cases generally. Whereas before we had to rely on individual government
departments, this was often not a very satisfactory way because
it might have been that the parliamentary branch did not have
the clout to get the quick reply or perhaps it was because the
department did not understand the importance to the House of Commons
of having swift factually accurate information. It was not the
ideal method. Thanks to the Legal Secretary to the Law Officers,
we now have a single point of contact in the Legal Secretariat
so we would certainly use that. You have mentioned the draft Coroners
Bill. If the streamlining and the structure of the Coroners Service,
which is dealt with in part four of the Bill, were to come about,
one would expect that there would be a single point of contact
there for authoritative factual information and, of course, we
would use whatever point of contact and source of information
was quickest and best'[58]
70. We
recommend that the proposed Chief Coroner's Office should be given
the responsibility of providing information about inquests to
House authorities. The Office should be well placed to offer timely
and accurate data. It might also be in a position to assist the
Speaker in making decisions on when to use his discretion to allow
debate by providing information on the timing of inquests and,
where appropriate, advice from the Chief Coroner on the likelihood
of causing prejudice in a particular case. We hope that the Government
will take account of these comments in the context of its current
consultation on the draft Coroners Bill.
47 
