Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, up to now, those who have spoken have all been experts in the field. It may be a relief to have a non expert such as myself simply commenting on these proposals. I limit myself to Amendments 47 and 48. With great respect to those who are proposing the amendments, I do not think that in their present form they are of the necessary quality if we are seriously saying that there should be a national medical adviser to the Chief Coroner. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, uses the word "may" in his amendment: ""The Secretary of State may appoint a person as the National Medical Adviser"." That conveys a lack of clarity and lack of necessity about the appointment. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, on the other hand, boldly, and I think quite rightly, says: ""The Secretary of State shall … appoint"." With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, there is nothing in his amendment about the nature of the responsibilities. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, however, says in subsection (1)(b) of her proposed new clause that, after consultation with the Lord Chancellor, regulations should be produced, ""concerning the responsibilities of the Chief Medical Advisor"." I would hope that before the Bill leaves this House an attempt will be made by those who are behind this proposal to draw up the basic responsibilities that one would expect the chief medical adviser to carry out. The only specific that the noble Baroness mentions is in subsection (2)(c) of her proposed new clause, which states: ""The Chief Medical Advisor must … monitor the performance"." That would no doubt lead to a report from time to time. However, that is not a chief advisory role. I hope that we will have a further and better definition of that. The noble Baroness also referred to this officer’s powers being important. If you are giving the officer powers, the place to find those should be in the primary legislation. She referred to prosecutions. Will this officer have some role in connection with that? Will the finger point to him at some stage of the prosecution? I am not at all clear about that. I am anticipating that the amendments will not be pressed to a Division today. I may be wrong; I do not know what the Minister is going to say. I respectfully suggest to the proposers of the amendments that we should have a quite different and clearer text to look at and report on. We will then have a grip of who this new officer that we want to have in place is so that when the Bill goes back to the other place they will know what we are backing. At the moment, that is lacking.