Coroners and Justice Bill

I support the amendment. I am somewhat concerned, reading the Bill, that the responsibility for coroners of the individual area remains with the local authority and there is not a national coroner set-up, as I know was suggested by Mr Luce and, I think, by Dame Janet Smith. The result is that each individual coroner will be paid for by the area in which he or she will be carrying out his or her duties. Some areas are richer than others. If an area is in financial difficulties or has particular burdens on it—particularly some of the London areas with huge immigration problems—but faces the request that its coroner try a particular case, for some reason, and that case is likely to be long, arduous and expensive, it might well be extremely difficult for that area to deal with the case with the finances available to it. I think that the amendment is extremely sensible in that the practical movement of cases from one area to another should be determined with an eye to whether the area designated as the area in which the coroner tries a case will have the financial resources to do it.