Q
85Mr.
Boswell: Does that remark also bind on the function of the
coroner’s office in trying to get a degree of consistency in
practice? Is that also a concern of
yours? Professor
Furness: That, too, varies. I would regard that as
the local responsibility of the coroner, but it comes under the same
point.
Q
86Mr.
Boswell: You may wish to comment on that, Mr.
Rebello. André
Rebello:
No.
Q
87Mr.
Boswell: Before I finish, I will make two quick points
about your evidence, Mr. Rebello. First, you talked about
having some sense of natural justice when you were discussing whether
doctors could discharge the
quasi-legal— André
Rebello: I am not saying that doctors do not have a
statutory
role.
Q
88Mr.
Boswell: Is that not also true of rules of
evidence? André
Rebello:
Absolutely.
Q
89Mr.
Boswell: I have a blank on whether my final point is
referred to in the papers. Do you have any strong views that you wish
to share on the age of retirement of
coroners? André
Rebello: My wife does. The big difficulty I see is
that each coroner, even with the Bill, has to negotiate locally for
terms and conditions. It surprises the Bar and the main judiciary that
I have to work for 40 years to get my pension. The judiciary has a
judicial pension after 20 years. It is not surprising that, apart from
the more senior members of the judiciary, most judges retire in their
early 60s. Most coroners have to keep going until they are 70 or nearly
80 because they cannot afford to retire. That is an historical
issue. When
I left private practice in 1999 to become a full-time coroner, after
having been a part-time coroner, my income halved. At that stage, I was
buying into my partnership. The money I got from my partnership paid
off my loans and I had no pension. I started from scratch. If I was a
circuit judge or a High Court judge, after 20 years I would have a full
judicial pension. I could retire and leave it to other people to get on
with the work. As a coroner, I have to pay into the local government
pension scheme for 40 years. It seems nonsensical that nothing in the
Bill sets national standards for terms for coroners. Parliament has an
opportunity to put things right and to set the right tone. That
opportunity should be
taken.
The
Chairman: You had the opportunity to do some lobbying and
you have done
it. I
should have said this at the beginning, so, before we move on, I remind
hon. Members and witnesses that we are bound by the internal knives
that the Committee agreed under Mr. Cook’s
chairmanship this morning. That means that this evidence session must
finish at 5.30 pm, the second at 6.15 pm and the third at 6.55 pm,
because there will be a vote in the House at 7 pm. I hope that I do not
have to interrupt anybody mid-sentence, but if I have to I
will.
Q
90Jenny
Willott (Cardiff, Central) (LD): To follow on from
Mr. Boswell’s questions, and before going on to the
next subject, I have a couple of questions about
resourcing. Mr.
Rebello, you were talking about what could be done to ensure proper
resourcing for local coroners. What would you like to see introduced?
You talked
about judicial review, which is clearly not an ideal scenario. What
would you like to see in the Bill that you think would get around
that? André
Rebello: The Bill says that the local authority must
do various things, but it does not set any standards. If the Bill
referred to rules that were to be made later with regard to that type
of accommodation—what needs to be provided—and if the
chief coroner, when in post in shadow, could start a shopping list, if
that was possible, saying that on such a date, when the law comes in,
this is what we would expect every local authority to have and this is
what the law expects them to provide, local authorities would have time
to get ready.
Q
91Jenny
Willott: As precise as
that? André
Rebello: But I do not know what sanctions there are,
because we are not having a national service. There is no point
devolving power to local authorities and then telling them what to do
with their money. That is the difficulty.
Q
92Jenny
Willott: If that were not to happen, do you think that
some dispute resolution mechanism should be introduced? At the moment,
coroners are pretty much left to argue with their local authorities,
are they not?
André
Rebello: They are. To be fair to officials in the
coroners unit in the Ministry of Justice, when the situation becomes
extreme officials intercede and on many occasions local authorities
have provided what they refused to provide in the
past.
Q
93Jenny
Willott: Is that
official? André
Rebello: No, it is not official. Basically, coroners
could embarrass their local authorities. You could summon the chief
executive to give evidence and ensure that all the media were there.
You can be very hard headed about it. That would be my style; most
coroners are very nice and would not do it.
Alison
Cox: To endorse what André says, I want to say
that some of our bereaved families would be very happy to do that. If
there was a failing of the service, they would be the ones to suffer.
The coroners put the issue in place, but I do not want anyone to forget
that the people at risk here, if the service is not improved, are the
families. I tell you this—they would not hesitate to cause
embarrassment, especially with a bit of encouragement from
me.
Q
94Jenny
Willott: I have a couple of questions about the issue of
certified inquests, or secret inquests. I wonder if anyone on the panel
can give us any examples of “real harm”, as the wording
is in the Bill, that has been done to the public interest by holding an
inquest in public, or if there are any examples that anyone can give of
inquests that were unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion as a
result of information that could not be made
public. Helen
Shaw: In answer to your question, no, there are no
inquests that we know of that have not been able to reach a
satisfactory conclusion. That is inquests that we know of, in terms of
clause 11. There are a number of cases that have involved sensitive
material and the
combination of existing provisions has been sufficient to deal with
those inquests concluding properly. Can you remind me of your question
about “real
harm”?
Jenny
Willott: Yes. The Bill says that one of the reasons that
an inquest could be held in secret would be on the grounds of
“real harm to
the public
interest”. Can
the panel think of any examples of
that? Helen
Shaw: No. We were thinking through our 20
years of working at inquests around a lot of contentious custody deaths
and we could not think of any examples. We know that this clause has
arisen because of two particular cases and there are very particular
issues that need to be addressed. We think that the clause is much too
widely drawn and we hope that we can speak to the Secretary of State
for Justice and Lord Chancellor to find a more sensible solution. The
clause is a hugely wide proposal, which we think is not necessary. We
hope that we can find something that is much more precise, that deals
with the matters that arose in those two particular cases and that will
refer to issues under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act
2000. Deborah
Coles: Look at the inquest into the death of Jean
Charles de Menezes—we will be supplying the Committee with a
detailed briefing, including a case study, on that—which was a
very high profile case involving many interested parties, a family who
were desperate to find out the truth and a lot of public interest. That
inquest managed to perform its vital function in terms of
accountability and a jury narrative that identified any
concerns. There
was evidence heard as part of that inquest that had to find alternative
mechanisms other than being held in public—public interest
immunity certificates and the like. If we look at that inquest as being
an extremely good example of a high profile case where people might
have suggested that there could be harm in terms of security and the
issues in which it was engaged, it is an example of the coroners
inquest system being able to deal with a case of such
complexity.
Q
95Jenny
Willott: My final question is about the role of families
in secret inquests. Are you happy with the provisions in the Bill for
the protection of families and their involvement in certified inquests?
Are you reassured by what the Government said, or do you have concerns
about the impact of certified inquests on the families
involved? Helen
Shaw: We have huge concerns because the proposal
effectively excludes the family and their chosen legal representatives
from the part of the inquest dealing with the sensitive material. We
think that that means that the inquest would not comply with article 2
of the Human Rights Act 1998. On a more human level, the family would
be excluded even if the material goes into exactly why somebody died.
We think that is wrong in terms of an inquest process that they are
caught up in through no choice of their own, but through which they
obviously want to find out why their loved one
died. We
feel that family involvement in those cases is not sufficient, and
neither is the proposal that there be special counsel to the inquest.
Special counsel to an inquest is, in a sense, a friend to the court.
Their role is to assist the court. They do not have a role to take up
the interests of any particular person who is represented in that
inquest. That is not a sufficient safeguard to ensure that the
family’s legitimate interests are properly protected. We really
hope that some different proposals will come forward and we are
encouraged by the comments made by the Secretary of State for
Justice—he also found this quite a difficult set of proposals
and was minded to look at amendments. At the moment the Bill does not
allow the family to have access to some of the most important
information about how their loved one
died. Q
96Ian
Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab): If we can turn briefly to
resources. When I dealt with coroners’ inquests in my somewhat
distant and limited previous role as a solicitor, they tended to be
held in magistrates courts—that is the way it is set in my mind.
Looking at the circumstances for witnesses, for example, is there a
variation in the venues? If there is, what kind of venues are used for
coroners’
inquests? André
Rebello: Absolutely. If I could explain: I am
co-located with the registration service in Liverpool—I have a
purpose built courtroom with a jury room off the courtroom. My personal
office is about a third the size of this room. We have interview rooms
for families, five interview rooms upstairs for advocates and two other
ceremony rooms. We have lots of space for registrars to report deaths
to me, we have a video presenter in court, all the
equipment—loop systems—anything you want, we have got. My
authority is
brilliant. Other
coroners, if they hold a long inquest, will move from village hall to
village hall. There is nowhere for anyone to go, they borrow
magistrates courts—with families mixing with criminals in the
court corridor. The inquest that has been mentioned was held at
Kennington Oval, which is totally inappropriate for a coroner’s
court. I am sure that within the court service there could have been a
proper court for an inquest of such importance. The system is
outrageous. In 2009 coroners should not be borrowing the same type of
venue to hold a court that people would use for a silver wedding or
21st birthday party. It is just not on. Of course, the law is now there
for local authorities to provide it. The difficulty is that such are
the demands on local authorities that the budget is already accounted
for. They are inspected in other areas and they have to deliver in
other areas. There is not the spare money for them to develop a
coroners system. This is all new money that needs to be found to build
an infrastructure. We have also had the closing down of magistrates
courts and the grouping together of magistrates benches, such that
courts are no longer available because the land has been sold off. Yet
we have magnificent places such as the civil justice centre in
Manchester and a smaller centre in Liverpool. We have these across the
country and many of them are grossly under-used. The difficulty with
the current law is that coroners cannot hear a case outside their own
jurisdiction. Hopefully, with this Bill coroners will be able to hear a
case anywhere even if it means going across a couple of
boundaries. Deborah
Coles: In terms of the number of inquests that we are
involved with at the moment, one is taking place in a football ground
and another in a room that is probably about a third of the size of
this. There are four interested parties to that inquest and there is no
private
waiting space for the family. We did some research where we talked to a
lot of families who have been involved in inquests over the years and
so many of them mentioned how difficult it was to attend an inquest, as
you would imagine, but not have any kind of private waiting space
before they were about to give evidence—nowhere to have a cup of
tea, nowhere to meet with their lawyers. It is a real issue. We did
welcome the fact that the boundary limits are going to be relaxed and
maybe there can be better use. If we were talking about the ideal
system, there would be purpose-built coroners’ courts that were
able to engage with the bereaved in particular on a much more personal
and humane
basis.
Q
97Mrs.
Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab): Do you think it would be
appropriate for a chief coroner to have powers to request or require
additional resources and facilities where perhaps there needs to be a
greater in-depth investigation, perhaps where there has been a cluster
of deaths, so that further examination can take place—I am
thinking in particular of my own constituency where we had a cluster of
deaths by suicide—so that the families could have a better
understanding of why those deaths took place, that could inform local
services, that could give some satisfaction to families as to why
people have died but also do some work to help prevent future deaths?
Should that be a nationally or locally based
study? André
Rebello: What you are describing is the
coroners’ system in New Zealand and Victoria, Australia. This
Bill is an awful long way from there. Like we exported cricket, we
exported the coronial system with the empire. Everywhere else moved on
but we have stayed back in 1887. Even under this Bill, coroners look at
individual cases, an individual body. There is not the facility to hold
more than one inquest into one case at a time. If you have a train
crash—one incident that has caused many deaths—there will
be different registrable particulars and a different cause of death
with regard to each of the individuals. However, the means and
circumstances in which those deaths occurred will be the same, so it
would be a nonsense to hear that evidence several times. It is not
really possible for a coroner to cluster together cases. The other
thing is that individual families might not welcome it because each
death is as special as any other. It does not matter if your child
falls downstairs and dies or if your child dies in the street. It still
hurts as much as anything can ever hurt. We are dealing with
individuals here—individual people and families—and to
cluster cases together is not
right. If
there is a trend and if a few cases perhaps need an overview, it may be
possible to have a public inquiry, or something of that nature looking
at those circumstances together, but I am not sure that the coroner
system, as mentioned in the Coroners and Justice Bill, will be able to
achieve that. Perhaps the chief coroner might be able to pull together
findings from a few cases and hold some kind of inquiry, but there is
not the mechanism or facility for that to
happen. Deborah
Coles: The coroner is right. The current
system could not cope with that. But inquests are really
interested in that kind of proposal. We certainly looked at this when
there was a cluster of deaths in Styal women’s prison, where six
deaths occurred in a period
of a year. We felt that rather than having a separate inquest into each
of those deaths that would take place over a period of years, because
of the delay in the system, an inquiry would have benefited everybody
concerned. I take on
board the coroner’s point about each individual death being
personal to that family. Of course, you should not lose sight of the
fact that you would need an inquiry into the individual death. But
where those deaths point to possible systemic failings and a pattern of
concerns, certainly you could have a broader inquiry that
would be meaningful for everybody
concerned. That
leads me to an additional point on the purpose of the inquest system.
The coroner mentioned the system in Australia and New Zealand. What we
really like about that system is that its priority is death
prevention—that is its key purpose—and learning lessons.
All the families that we talked to said that, although nothing will
bring their relative back, they take comfort in knowing that lessons
are, perhaps, learned. We are disappointed that there are not effective
mechanisms in the Bill to ensure that there is accountable learning, so
that something is done with regard to the outcomes of inquests: the
coroners’ rule 43 reports and important jury narrative verdicts.
There is no proposal in the Bill to deal with the collation, monitoring
and publication of those things. That is an important
omission.
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