Coroners and Justice Bill

The amendment introduces short death certificates, which omit the cause of death, to be used alongside the current system of medical certificates with cause of death. They would simply record the fact of death. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, outlined the Government’s objections to include short death certificates in Committee, on IT changes and the cost implications. However, since that time I have had a Written Question answered by the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead—in green ink; I shall consult my noble friend about that. He told me that the high-level forecast of the cost of introducing short death certificates indicated costs in the order of £130,000, which would cover changes to the software used by registrars in England and Wales and provision of an additional supply of serial-numbered secured stationary. So the expense is not great—I inform my friends to my left, noble Lords on the Conservative Benches—and it is not a new concept to have short death certificates. The Government stated their intention to introduce them in their 2002 report, Civil Registration: Vital Change: Birth, Marriage and Death Registration in the 21st Century. In that report, they said that the revised arrangements for access to registration information meant that there would be a certificate that omitted the cause of death. The document mentioned that the short death certificates were a particularly popular idea among respondents to the public consultation and had been advocated by the British Medical Association since 1995. It is important that there is an accurate record of the cause of death and that that be kept, for all sorts of purposes. But it is important to remember the position of bereaved people. There may be reasons why people would not want to share their relative’s medical cause of death. Perhaps the person died of a hereditary disease, or the death may be sensitive, such as suicide, the consequence of drug addiction or alcoholism. For understandable reasons, the family may not wish to disclose these matters to others. A vast number of companies require a death certificate when they are notified of a termination, for example of a bank account. In some circumstances, when informing an insurance company, it is obviously important to give the cause of death, but telling banks, utility companies and other financial services that a person has died does not require telling them why. Ethically the obligation of confidentiality extends beyond the patient’s death. There is a balance to be struck between society’s need for accurate data, which can be used for statistics and so on, and the duty of confidentiality owed to deceased people and the bereaved. Those are the circumstances that lie behind this amendment. I beg to move.