New Clause 5 - Coroner's courts
Courts Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Shipley, Labour)
I thank the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome for tabling the new clause. I shall explain why it should not be accepted, but it gives me the opportunity to put on the record our appreciation and thanks for the necessary work undertaken by the coroners' service in certifying and investigating deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Many of the comments made by hon. Members reflect the importance of their work.
The new clause, as the hon. Gentleman suggested, would place a duty on the Lord Chancellor to investigate the practices and procedures of the coroners' service and make recommendations on the desirability of extending the general duty to include coroner's courts. That must take place within one year of the general duty coming into force.
The Luce report, chaired by Tom Luce, is a weighty tome with 122 recommendations. It has been published, but we are still working on our response. On 4 June, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East, published a wide-
ranging review of coroners and how they work. That report calls for fundamental changes to improve efficiency and one of the key recommendations is that, when the new national jurisdiction is introduced, the general responsibility for supporting and financing the coroners' service within central Government should be transferred to the Department for Constitutional Affairs. As my hon. Friend said, when we have considered its recommendations, we will publish a response to the report and the separate report by Dame Janet Smith, who chaired the Shipman inquiry, which is due later in the summer. As we discovered earlier in the Bill, the hon. Gentleman likes to pre-empt Government decisions, but it would not be appropriate to pre-empt the Government's wider response to the Luce report.
Furthermore, the new clause raises the possibility of going further than the report suggests. It is one thing to say that the coroners' service should be the responsibility of the Department for Constitutional Affairs, but it is another to say that the running of a coroner's court should fall under the general duty in clause 1, which is concerned with the ordinary courts—magistrates, county and Crown courts, the High Court and the Court of Appeal—and ordinary criminal and civil proceedings. That general duty does not cover those tribunals for which the Lord Chancellor is responsible. Like tribunals, coroner's courts do not always fall naturally within the ordinary courts system, so they may not fall naturally in the Bill.
Although I cannot give a definitive answer on the Government's proposals for the coroner's courts at this stage, I do not believe that those should automatically fall under the unified administration without further consideration. I take the hon. Gentleman's point about the ease of administration and the potential efficiency gains. Under unified administration, accommodation matters such as sharing courtrooms becomes easier. There may be scope for that to be considered further in respect of the coroners' service.
I am glad that the Government have been able to take up many of the suggestions made by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath. I am not familiar with some of the particular problems of data collection, although I am conscious that if any policy is ever to improve, a strong database is a vital first foundation. I will consider whether it is appropriate for us to include what he said in our wider approach.
With those comments, I hope that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome will withdraw the motion.