Coroners and Justice Bill

Amendments 70 and 71 relate to the relationship between coroners, medical examiners and statutory health inspection organisations. This arises because of a difficulty mentioned by the Mid Staffordshire inquiry, which said that it had not received any co-operation from the coroner. This made it difficult to carry out a thorough investigation. The inquiry said: ""We considered that information from the coroner would be useful for the investigation. We were disappointed that he declined to provide us with any"." I do not suggest that this is common practice. Nor do I suggest that when there are new medical examiners they will, as a matter of course, take that approach. However, it is not the sort of thing that should be happening at all, so Amendment 70 reflects the proposition that the Care Quality Commission might have the power to require coroners—and, in the case of Amendment 71, medical examiners—to co-operate with investigatory tribunals. At present, the coroner can co-operate if he or she wishes, but in the case of the Mid Staffordshire inquiry the local coroner made it clear that he had no real interest in helping out in any way. If we are to ensure that the sort of investigation undertaken in such cases is as thorough as possible—and it is in all our interests that this is the case—perhaps it is necessary to do more than simply request or encourage coroners and, subsequently, medical examiners to co-operate and require them to do so. There is no reason to believe that this would present coroners with huge extra work. These are not particularly common matters. Indeed, as I say, we do not mean by these amendments to suggest that it is common practice that coroners do not co-operate. However, the Mid Staffordshire inquiry was a case where having access to the coroner’s records would have helped to identify cases where people died of preventable or negligence-related causes, connected to the processes and understaffing that were identified in the report. For that reason, I beg to move.