Coroners and Justice Bill

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken to this group of amendments, which relate to the question of resources for this important service. I shall seek to establish how we intend to make obligations to get resources up to standard and the responsibility that the Chief Coroner will carry with regard to this matter, although the responsibility for actual provision rests locally. I do not have a national survey to hand, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, may note; I am not sure that there is one, but if there is I will make sure that it is available for later stages of the Bill. It is clear, though, that resources vary between different localities. The burden of the remarks made by all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate is that resources should be available to make the service as effective as possible. I emphasise the point with which I am utterly in agreement: we need to place the interests of the bereaved at the centre of these concerns. Amendment 5, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, seeks to place an obligation on the Chief Coroner to consider the resources available to the coroner who will receive a transferred case before deciding whether to give a direction requesting that coroner to conduct an investigation into a person’s death. I must emphasise the obvious fact that the issue of funding inquests that have been transferred in the manner mentioned in the amendment will be covered in underpinning regulations. I do not have those regulations to hand at present, but the general principle within them will be that with regard to deaths that occur in England and Wales, the relevant authority for the area in which the coroner would be under a duty to conduct the investigation will continue to be responsible for meeting the costs associated with the case, even if it has to be transferred to a coroner in another area to investigate. For deaths that occur overseas, the local authority for the coroner who is directed by the Chief Coroner to conduct the investigation will be responsible for the costs. These are general principles only and do not meet the points of detail that have been identified in the amendment. I will go on to those in due course. There may indeed be scenarios where a case is transferred within England and Wales and it is appropriate for the authority of the receiving coroner to meet the costs or for the costs to be shared between the two authorities. These are matters that we will need to work through, given the issues that noble Lords have identified in this debate about the necessity of ensuring that facilities are adequate for the inquest to be held properly. These principles provide a fair and appropriate way to fund such investigations. With regard to the obvious aspect of inquests into Armed Forces personnel who die on active service overseas, not only will the procedure that we envisage enable cases to be transferred to jurisdictions nearer the home of the bereaved family, thereby meeting the principal point that was adumbrated by several noble Lords in this short debate, but it will relieve some of the funding pressures that jurisdictions such as Oxfordshire or Wiltshire and Swindon have faced in the past while carrying out in such an admirable way—we all applaud and recognise the service that has been provided—the vast majority of inquests that have arisen from the death of service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have fallen under their jurisdiction. We are looking to share this burden on the basis that the inquests will be conducted nearer to the homes of those who are bereaved, which bears somewhat on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, about the problems of travel for the bereaved. I shall come on to that in more detail in a moment. Amendment 23 and Amendment 79 seek to place an obligation on coroners and the local authorities that fund them to consider the needs of the bereaved when deciding on the location of an inquest. I hope it will be appreciated that this is an important part of how the Bill sets out to provide for the needs of the bereaved. Clause 24 already places a legal obligation on local authorities to provide sufficient coroners’ officers and other staff, along with suitable accommodation and facilities to enable the local coroner to carry out all of his or her functions. The accommodation will need to be adequate for coroners to fulfil their additional obligations under the charter for the bereaved—an important part of the Bill which will be issued under Clause 34. The charter is designed to put bereaved people at the heart of coroners’ investigations. It will obligate the coroner to take into account a bereaved family’s views about the timing of an inquest—an important point we have already debated considerably today—as well as providing information to the bereaved about the location of and facilities available at the inquest’s venue. The charter also states that, wherever possible, there should be an appropriate private room for the use of bereaved relatives and that reasonable adjustment will be made—to take the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—to meet the needs of those with disabilities. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for emphasising that point. We recognise that we have a great deal of work to do before these charter provisions can be fully met. Officials have already set in train some preparatory work with local authorities to ensure that they are aware of their future responsibilities under the Bill and that they can take steps now to ensure that families are better served than perhaps they have been in the past, as identified by several of the contributions we have heard in the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, emphasised difficulties with rural communities. I am not sure that my valley was ever green enough to be called a rural community—I hasten to add it is a good deal greener these days with the disappearance of the coal industry. The noble Baroness is right. The difficulties rural communities face in travel can also be reflected in the geographical features of the Welsh valleys and many other places. There has been a widespread welcome for our plans to move towards a largely full-time coroner service. This will mean an end to some of the existing, smaller jurisdictions. In planning new areas—which will be done in full consultation with the local authorities concerned—the geography of a particular region will need to be taken into account. In the larger geographical regions, the presumption will be that the coroner travels to an inquest, rather than that the bereaved family travels to an inquest centre. That is an important principle. To achieve this, it may be that we will retain a small number of part-time coroners, perhaps in support of a full-time senior coroner for an area, so the workload can be appropriately shared and a disproportionate amount of time is not spent travelling. Amendment 78 seeks to place a requirement on all local authorities to benchmark their provision of staff and accommodation against other coroner areas. In the reformed system to be created by the Bill, it is likely that the Chief Coroner will indeed gather evidence to establish some key national benchmarks on quality, on service levels and on resources. As I mentioned earlier, some of this work can be completed during the implementation period for these reforms. The Chief Coroner will also have an ongoing monitoring role. In this, he will be assisted by the new independent inspection regime we are proposing under Clause 31. Under this clause Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Court Administration will inspect all coroner areas in England and Wales and will report to the Lord Chancellor and to the Chief Coroner on the administration of the system in different coroner areas. If it appears that there is a problem in any particular area with resources, including accommodation, the Chief Coroner in his or her role as national leader of the coroner system will be able to liaise between coroners and the local authorities that fund them to ensure that, as far as possible, improved resources are made available and that these are used in the most effective way. Although I cannot give to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, his survey at this stage, the Bill envisages that there is a full appreciation of national resources, that there are benchmarks and that deficiencies can be identified with a view to remedy. Should there be—