Coroners and Justice Bill

The amendment would insert a sixth subsection in Clause 3 between subsections (1) and (2). As your Lordships can see from the text of the Bill, Clause 3(1) reads as follows: ""The Chief Coroner may direct a senior coroner (coroner A) to conduct an investigation under this Part into a person’s death even though, apart from the direction, a different senior coroner (coroner B) would be under a duty to conduct it"." Our amendment would place, in a separate subsection under that, the words, ""the Chief Coroner must take into consideration the resources available to coroner A"." There are circumstances—your Lordships, I am sure, have come across them more than once—when, for various reasons, there is intense pressure on one coronial area. There might, for example, have been a disaster, such as the one that occurred on the London Underground, in which a large number of people have been killed instantaneously and the task of dealing with the inquests proves intensely onerous. There might, for no apparent reason, be a large number of deaths in a particular area. Alternatively, a separate situation might arise whereby the witnesses in a particular inquest, or, indeed, the family, live a long way away from a particular coronial area and it is appropriate to see whether a better way forward would be to give the responsibilities to another coroner. Of course, we have absolutely no quarrel with this, subject to one caveat, and that is that we believe it critical for the Chief Coroner, before he makes his direction to coroner A, to ensure that the resources at coroner A’s disposal are sufficient for the task that he is about to be given. We see nothing about that in the Bill. That is the background to our amendment, which I beg to move.