Coroners and Justice Bill

I am most grateful to the Minister for his comments in his summing up on the previous group of amendments. This amendment is pertinent to the creation of what I believe we might be now calling a national medical adviser, if we do get to that point. The need to have work indemnity has become more important within our society. I will let my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss speak a little bit about indemnity of the coroners as she is leading on that amendment, but certainly for the medical examiners and for the chief medical adviser, indemnity will be particularly important, and it is something which needs to be clarified—it needs to be crystal clear. In the Minister’s summing up on the previous group of amendments, he reminded the Committee that the coroner has no responsibility over natural death. In a way, that is exactly the problem, which is defining where the responsibility begins and ends. While a death may be unnatural, it is only after investigation that it is demonstrated to be natural, and similarly a death which is assumed to be unnatural may then during investigation be found to actually have had a natural cause. It strikes me that within this system, and with the charter for the bereaved—which I do not dispute at all, and I think everyone welcomes and commends the Government on it—that there will be increasing room for certainly complaint, if not more. At the moment, as I understand it, those working as medical examiners should be indemnified by their PCT if their PCT is their employing body, but that has not been explicitly clarified. We know that indemnity by the PCT for routine medical work is in fact inadequate. Doctors are advised to have their own medical defence cover over and above the indemnity provided by the PCT or the trust, because the indemnity does not cover very much, but it is essential that it is there from whoever employs them. Of course if the medical examiners were to be transferred, as suggested in the previous group of amendments, to come under the separate employment line and answerability to the Chief Coroner, then the indemnity issue would be through the Chief Coroner, but it would not go away. The new clause for indemnity for medical examiners and for the chief medical adviser to the Chief Coroner is there specifically to clarify first that indemnity will be provided by the PCT for the medical examiners that are in the Bill, and secondly by whoever turns out to be the employer of the probable national medical adviser. So the title of this proposed new clause is wrong and would need to be amended anyway because there is more work to be done outside Committee in clarifying who does what. Similarly another amendment in this grouping relates to expenses and it is important to know who is responsible for paying expenses for those people when they incur expenses in the course of their work. I beg to move.