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So we are not convinced of the necessity for Amendment 2. On Amendment 3, the last in this group, we have no difficulty with my noble friend’s comments about accepting the accuracy of the list of circumstances that the amendment contains and which are to be regarded as constituting either custody or state detention for the purposes of triggering an automatic coroner’s investigation under Clause 1. They effectively replicate, as he said, the list contained in the Explanatory Notes. However, we do not think that it is necessary to include such a list in the Bill. I refer my noble friend and the Committee to Clause 39(2), which we think has an adequate definition of what constitutes state detention. It states:
“A person is in state detention if he or she is compulsorily detained by a public authority within the meaning of section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998”.
In addition, the Explanatory Notes that will accompany this Act, if and when it becomes such, will contain a list similar to that which appears in the Explanatory Notes to the Bill. I would anticipate with some confidence that the Chief Coroner will also include a similar list in any guidance that he or she may publish. I hope that that reassures my noble friend about our intentions, and I thank him for the compliments that he paid to the Government on introducing the concept of state detention within the categories mentioned. I also hope that he agrees that it is not necessary to have such a list in primary legislation and that, in the light of my attempted explanation, noble Lords will agree not to press their amendments.
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5.30 pm
Lord Kingsland: I am most grateful to the Minister for his response, both to my amendment and to the other amendments in this group. I should perhaps make it clear that the Opposition are, broadly speaking, sympathetic to both Amendments 2 and 3.
In fact, when listening to the Minister’s response to Amendment 2, I was struck by the recollection that on many occasions in legislation Secretaries of State are given specific powers, rounded off by a more general one to act in the public interest. I wondered whether one reason why the Minister was hesitant to grant this more general power to the coroner was because it might be felt that the coroner was less attuned to assessing the public interest. Was that why the Minister said what he said? On my amendment, however, I am content with the noble Lord’s clarification, which I found extremely helpful.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: Before we leave this group of amendments, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, for his support in principle for the point being made in Amendment 2. I thank the Minister for his response although, like the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, I have some anxiety about merely recording these concerns in regulation. Between now and Report stage, we shall of course look carefully at the Minister’s suggestions.
I come back to the recommendations made by the Shipman inquiry itself, of which there were 228. Without asking him to go through them in detail today, or even in response to my letter, it is reasonable to inquire now which of those have not been included in the recommendations contained in the Bill. Although the Government have decided not to pursue the route recommended to them by Dame Janet Smith, it would nevertheless be helpful to the Committee to know that. As the noble Lord said, so much of this legislation is based on that experience of the Shipman inquiry and the recommendations that were made.
My noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff made a very good point about the issue of childbirth and when babies die in natural or unnatural circumstances, how those are recorded and whether there would be a public interest requirement in triggering an inquiry. That specific point was made by Lady Justice Smith and Mrs Justice Swift when they responded to the Government’s original consultation; that is recorded on page 18 of the consultation document. As we consider this matter further between now and Report, I hope that the Minister will accept that there may be a need to persist with the amendment. However, it would be better if we could reach consensus.
Lord Dubs: I am grateful for the support from the noble Lords, Lord Kingsland and Lord Alderdice, for Amendment 3. I take the latter’s point about people leaving mental health detention when they can be particularly vulnerable. I understand that; it was not something that the Joint Committee on Human Rights looked into, but I am sympathetic to the noble Lord’s point. My noble friend explained why the Explanatory Notes and the advice to coroners would be sufficient. I would have preferred it in the Bill, but he explained the Government’s position and I do not want to move my amendment.
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Lord Kingsland: I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Clause 2 : Request for other coroner to conduct investigation
4: Clause 2, page 2, line 31, at end insert—
“( ) A senior coroner shall inform the Chief Coroner if completion of an investigation is likely to take more than 12 months from the time that the coroner was notified of the death.
( ) The Chief Coroner shall maintain a register of prolonged investigations.”
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: The amendments in this group concern the time limits of inquests. At the moment, an inquest can be opened but because there is no requirement to keep the family informed and no time limit is set, some families have had an inquest opened but proceedings have not occurred, sometimes for years. The problem for a bereaved family is that they often look to the inquest for closure and for some unanswered questions to be answered. Sometimes they have unrealistic expectations of what an inquest will provide for them.
At the time, however, an inquest is also traumatic for a bereaved family because it reactivates their grief. They relive the events, and with doing that they relive the emotions, raising a whole lot of “if only” questions. Sometimes those had been dormant; sometimes new questions emerge. No one, then, should underestimate the role which an inquest can have in people’s bereavement: to take them back in time and almost to relive the shock of the original event, of hearing the news and all that went with it. The problem is that it can increase distress if new light is shone on what happened or a new slant emerges from something with which they had begun to come to terms.
I have tabled Amendment 6 because if an inquest case is referred to another coroner, it is important that both the first and second coroners are subject to the same requirement. The amendment does not set targets but requires some sort of monitoring process for delays. It is particularly important not to set targets, as it may be that a slow and thoughtful inquest is exactly what is needed thoroughly to investigate a death. The problem is much greater where a coroner has a high workload and one case falls to the bottom of the pile or the back of the queue, lingering on either because it is not a major case or something else very major comes along and bounces it down that queue of cases to be heard.
My view is that the Chief Coroner needs to know if one coroner has an undue workload or is failing to keep up with the workload for whatever reason. It is human nature for people, when they are somewhat snowed under, to take some time to call for help.
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The other area in which timeliness becomes particularly important is where deaths occur abroad. It is difficult for coroners to get information from other countries about a death. Despite repeated inquiries, sometimes they simply receive a note saying “heart stopped” or words to that effect, which sheds no light on what happened when in this country such a death would be extensively investigated. In the case of an accident or where the remains are dispersed or difficult to find, or they are returned to this country very late, it is extremely difficult to ascertain what really happened. The inquest can be unsatisfactory because currently coroners have no power in this area, and I do not see anything in the Bill that would give them a power to request information. I want to ask the Minister whether there have been moves in the European Union to empower coroners to request information from other countries within the EU and whether there are routes for coroners to get information from countries outside the EU. After talking to coroners, it is the case that information is more readily available from countries outside the EU, so it is not that the EU standard is higher than that of the rest of the world. In fact, sometimes it is quite the reverse.
An inquest can be opened and proceedings delayed because a prosecution is pending, and if the prosecution does not then proceed, so be it. Everyone understands that, and again that is why I would not want to see a 12-month time limit to be viewed in any way as a judgment on an individual coroner.
Quite apart from the difficulties for the bereaved, there may be delays in remedial action being taken if it is evident that it is needed following a death. It may be that another death occurs during the delay, which is a tragedy if it happens because somewhere there was a degree of negligence.
I think that everyone in this House welcomes the provision for one coroner to be able to transfer their workload to another coroner for a multitude of reasons. I hope that it will be possible within that framework to ensure that as a coroner develops expertise in a certain area or in a type of death, the Chief Coroner would be able to steer that coroner towards investigating deaths in their area of expertise. As we know, there are groups of deaths. At Second Reading I talked about the deaths in Bridgend. The coroners in South Wales are aware of the problem of suicide in young people, particularly those related to use of the internet. A pool of expertise has been built up which makes those coroners appropriate to conduct inquests into such tragic deaths.
The background to the amendments is to set a standard of timeliness and I hope that the Government will see the sense in trying to do that. I beg to move.
5.45 pm
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: Amendment 13 is grouped with Amendments 4 and 6. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, made several important points
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I have tabled an amendment that would simply insert the word “timely”. The noble Baroness is right to say that we should not try to define what “timely” is, but when delay results because authorities have not got their act together, being inefficient and not prioritising the work that needs to be done—I refer to the police, local authorities, the Crown Prosecution Service and so on—it is clear that it is not the coroner who is delaying the proceedings. However, I would accept that a lack of resources may be a problem for coroners, and I recognise that the Government are trying to solve it in this Bill by enabling certain geographical changes.
Inquests are delayed for many reasons. An organisation known as INQUEST has furnished me and, I am sure, many other noble Lords with a lot of examples of young people who have died in custody and the inquest has been delayed for four or five years. That is really unacceptable. There seems to be no good reason except that perhaps these deaths are not regarded as being worthy of being given the same priority as the Government now recognise needs to be given to deaths in the Armed Forces. We should not have a two-tier system of investigations into citizens’ deaths, whether they fought for this country or died in prison. People have families and lessons need to be learnt.
I have kept my amendment simple because it can then be taken that an inquest was not held in a timely manner and a hook is available to go to judicial review. So far as I can see, if the process is unfair on a family and an inquest is not held, there is no means of going to judicial review. Although I accept that there may be other ways of doing this—and certainly the solution proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, is elegant because at the least a record should be kept and coroners should notify each other about delays—it may be best to go back to first principles. The Bill ought to recognise that an inquest should be timely.
Lord Williamson of Horton: I support these amendments. In this part of the Bill we are concentrating on the substance of coroners’ inquiries, the skill and experience of coroners, and so on. However, it is right that we should be attentive to the timeliness of inquests. If we are going to have a Chief Coroner, it seems appropriate that he should have the role of monitoring cases that go on for a considerable amount of time. I regularly read the local press and I always look at the regional news. It is quite remarkable how often families are concerned about the time taken for an inquest to be held. In London we may not feel it so much, but when delays arise you realise how badly this affects families because they cannot see any closure. It is quite traumatic for them. A system of monitoring is right. I
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Baroness Butler-Sloss: I support these amendments. There is nothing unusual in monitoring the progress of cases. The Heads of Division in the High Court each have a responsibility to see that cases are dealt with in a timely fashion. For instance, certainly when I left, civil cases were supposed to be complete within three months. Family cases should be dealt with within one month; that is, judgments had to come out in that length of time. I can remember spending a considerable amount of time with Ministers discussing the delays in the family courts, particularly delays concerning children, which were monitored very carefully. There is nothing unusual in monitoring. But now that we are to have a new and better system of dealing with coroners, and a Chief Coroner, it would be very important that the Chief Coroner knows, from the moment that the inquest is in its incipient state, when monitoring is likely to be done.
There are all sorts of reasons why cases take a long time. When I sat briefly as an assistant deputy coroner, I was engaged in probably one of the longest of all cases, even before I left it, and other cases have to take a considerable time. It is extremely important that there should be both the requirement of the Chief Coroner to keep an eye on the progress of cases, that individual senior coroners should keep an eye on the cases within their areas, and that the Chief Coroner should know of their progress. Having “timely” in the legislation would be a useful provision for the Chief Coroner, rather than having a judicial review. The effect of judicial review is to slow down a case, rather than to increase its speed. “Timely” would be a useful provision for both the Chief Coroner and for the senior coroner of the area when saying to an assistant coroner, “Perhaps you can let me know how you are getting on, because that is what the legislation requires”.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: I support these amendments. In another context, Gladstone famously said that justice delayed is justice denied. Any of us who have had any kind of encounter with people who have been waiting for the outcome of coroners’ inquiries know that that is very much a feeling that is in their own hearts and minds when they have been bereaved, especially when the circumstances have been tragic. During my time in another place, I was heavily involved with victims of the Hillsborough disaster, and with families whose children’s body parts had been used at the Alder Hey children’s hospital. Noble Lords will recall the trauma that both of those events caused to many of the families involved, and those traumas continue to this day. Delays in dealing with these kinds of tragedies are simply unacceptable, so it seems completely reasonable of my noble friend Lady Finlay to suggest that we should put into the system some requirement to keep a check on where we are in the process.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, also made a very good point about the effects of the passage of time. The memories of witnesses and people involved in these events sometimes become clouded, and their evidence is sometimes not so reliable, simply of because of the period that has elapsed since they occurred. So we are putting in place reasonable checks and balances, first, as regards the passage of time and, secondly, to provide for closure. Perhaps, given the suggestion in the second subsection of Amendment 4, that:
“The Chief Coroner should maintain a register of prolonged investigations”,
it would be helpful to the Committee if the Minister, when he replies to this brief debate, could tell us how long it usually takes. What is the average length of such an inquiry? That would give us some indication of whether there are long delays, and could he tell us not just the average but what are the longest outstanding inquiries currently before coroners?
Lord Craig of Radley: I support these amendments. The Minister wrote to me stating that the overriding aim of the reforms of Part 1 of the Bill is to improve the service that bereaved people, whether service families or otherwise, receive from the coroner system. I am sure that that is the right aim, but at the moment the Bill is missing this important point of timeliness, or some way of ensuring that the bereaved have an awareness of when the coroner inquest will be heard. At the moment, they are left very often with no firm indication of when the inquest will be heard. This is not satisfactory from their point of view.
Lord Bach: I thank noble Lords for this interesting debate on the timely hearings of inquests. I start by stating the obvious. No one would disagree with the principle that inquests should be held as soon as possible, as soon as all the relevant information is to hand, and when all related investigations or proceedings have been completed. The average time to complete an inquest is 26 weeks, and the vast majority, 90 per cent, are completed within 12 months of the death. That is an acceptable timescale for the completion of an inquest. It ensures that the families have the opportunity to go through the main challenges of the grieving process and to consider what questions they would like an inquest to answer, before necessarily being confronted by the public nature of those proceedings. We want to ensure that the remaining 10 per cent of inquests are held within a similar timescale wherever possible, provided that the coroner has the appropriate information before him or her.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, there are delays for a variety of reasons, very few of which are the responsibility of the coroner. For example, in many cases the coroner may be waiting to hear reports from authorities with a statutory or other duty to investigate the particular death. This might be the Health and Safety Executive, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the transport accident investigation branch, to name a few. Alternatively, the coroner may be awaiting the outcome of criminal proceedings, which generally take precedence.
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We have already taken some steps to reduce delays, particularly with regard to inquests into the deaths of military personnel, which we will discuss later. This Bill will bring forward further ways of dealing with backlogs of work and reducing delays. For example, the flexible new appointments process will mean that a local authority can recruit and deploy a pool of assistant coroners to expedite caseloads or to tackle particular peaks of work. This is in addition to the Chief Coroner’s power to transfer cases, which noble Lords have already praised, and the power for coroners to transfer cases between themselves by agreement as a way of tackling backlogs. Coroners will also no longer be restricted to holding inquests within their own areas, if they and their local authority are unable to locate suitable accommodation for the needs of a particular inquest. Clause 24 of the Bill places a statutory duty on local authorities to provide sufficient officers, staff, accommodation and facilities to enable coroners to carry out their functions.
I emphasise that the Bill will not require coroners to do more work per se with the same or fewer resources. The reverse is the case. The introduction of medical examiners will remove a considerable volume of work from coroners, enabling them to focus their resources on the cases for which they have jurisdiction. We estimate that once the role of medical examiner beds down, some 130,000 to 150,000 deaths per year will be referred to coroners, rather than the approximately 235,000 cases per year which are reported to them under the present arrangements. The reduction in that caseload will, we think, lead to significant savings which can be redirected to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the service. So we are confident that the overall effect of this package of measures will ensure that inquests are carried out in both a timely and thorough manner, with quality and the appropriate speed.
6 pm
On Amendments 4 and 6, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, I can assure her that it is the intention that the Chief Coroner will carry out the functions that she talked about so persuasively. Clause 35(3)(e) sets out that regulations may make provisions giving the Lord Chancellor and the Chief Coroner powers to require information to be provided to them by senior coroners. This will include an annual statistical return, which coroners are required to provide to the Lord Chancellor currently. Within this statistical information is a requirement to report on coroners’ oldest cases. We can be confident that the Chief Coroner is likely to want to make inquiries as to the reasons why cases have been apparently delayed, although, as I have pointed out, the responsibility may well be beyond the control of the coroner. I hope that that assists noble Lords in at least appreciating that we see this as a real issue that needs to be sorted out, which we believe that the Bill, as drafted, will do.
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