Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I rise to support to support the two amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and to speak to Amendment 34, which is tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has with great elegance and eloquence, as usual, conveyed some of the problems that have arisen out of legislation and regulations that came into being after a considerable emotional response by the community to certain events with which we are familiar. The difficulty is that sometimes when one reacts to things in legislation of a relatively straightforward nature, only later do the complexities become apparent. In order to address the needs of families who are emotionally concerned, particularly at times of death, regulations were put into place, and it has become apparent that they go against those families’ best interests and what they want. In the past, a pathologist, as part of his professional understanding and commitment to the work, the patient and his relatives, would normally have gone a little further in completing the post-mortem and finding out what happened and its implications. Now, that is forbidden; it is not possible to go ahead. Knowledge is set back, and it is knowledge that is of great interest for the families, particularly when it comes to genetic disorders. The case put forward by the noble Baroness merits a strong, positive response from the Government. I have no doubt that the Minister appreciates some of these subtleties and that it is not easy to put them in place. However, we do not visit the Coroners Act on a regular basis. It is done once in a lifetime. The problem is that during those 25 or 30 years, many other things change. That takes me to my Amendment 34. It is clear that not only for the convenience and satisfaction of the family, but also, I suspect, for economic reasons in order to make sure that post-mortem examinations can be done quickly and relatively cheaply, it is being suggested that rather than full post-mortems, partial post-mortems or particular kinds of examinations might be undertaken. They would be briefer and less expensive. Of course, with new technology, they may be extremely helpful, and the technology will continue to develop over the next 20 years or so. The problem is that if a partial post- mortem is requested, it will be conducted by a medical practitioner—in many, if not all, cases a forensic pathologist—who will understand that each finding must be related to the findings in the body as a whole. However, the Bill implies—indeed, it rather clearly states—that a particular kind of examination that is not a partial or full post-mortem but perhaps a radiological or other less intrusive examination can be ordered by someone who may not be medically qualified. Indeed, a lot of these specialist examinations are increasingly being undertaken by people who are not medical practitioners, whether those examinations are haematological, biochemical, neurophysiological or histopathological. The problem is that that person, with their expertise, can come up with a perfectly accurate answer for the particular thing that they are asked to look at, but a coroner is not medically qualified and does not have the training, background or understanding of the body as a whole. Moreover, he requests a test to be conducted by someone who does not have that understanding, which is why this amendment asks that the coroner should consult a medical examiner. Perhaps other medically qualified people could be consulted—I do not have my mind closed to that—but the idea that it should not be someone with a medical understanding is a serious error and is likely to lead to misjudgments and serious mistakes in the conduct of these examinations and therefore to the wrong result from the inquest. I was not clear from the Minister’s last response why there will be such a problem of delay. The main force of that response was that to insist that the coroner consults the medical examiner would occasion such delay as to be of great disadvantage to the family. It is unlikely that a medical examiner would be so unavailable that he could not be consulted. However, if there are other ways in which this problem can be satisfied, I look forward to what the Minister has to say in response.