Coroners and Justice Bill
12:00 pm
André Rebello: With regard to freehold coroners, clearly the title “freehold” will give added independence, make it clear that coroners are not employed and, I am sure, give the public more confidence with the coronial office. Local authorities perhaps have too much control of the budget they provide to coroners and things of that nature, which will affect the coronial service. Having the office as a freehold office—whatever that means—might give the public greater confidence.
It is right for coroners to be appointed by the local authority, or the local authority in conjunction with someone from the chief coroner’s office, or even—for the senior coroner—the Judicial Appointments Commission. Thereafter, it is very difficult for someone to be parachuted in to work with the senior coroner. They have to work as a team: when the senior coroner is not there, the assistant coroners must be available. In any event, area coroners would be full-time judicial office holders—very similar to the senior coroner.
Given that there are no national terms and conditions for coroners, the danger is that someone who happens to be on the books of the local authority legal department might be told, “You are the new assistant coroner, go along and help the coroner.” That would be outrageous. It is essential for the coroner to be involved in the appointment of assistant coroners.
I would be very uncomfortable about someone being appointed to work with me, to the standards that I set within my jurisdiction, if I had no control regarding whether that person had the specifications and particular abilities to carry out coronial office to the standards I want. We cannot have an assistant coroner coming in and working to different standards. It may be that the chief coroner sets the tone for the whole country, but I do not know whether that will happen overnight. I would definitely expect certain standards in my jurisdiction of Liverpool, and I would be very uncomfortable with any assistant coroner coming in. I would want to have some control.
Medically qualified coroners have provided an excellent service over the years, and many—if not all—are also legally qualified. The difficulty is that, as a lawyer, one is trained to have a sense of natural justice. A lawyer can always call a doctor to give technical evidence on medical matters. It is exactly the same as a High Court judge who does not have to be a doctor when dealing with a matter of medical negligence. The difficulty arises if someone is medically qualified but not au fait with natural justice. They cannot call someone to give evidence with regard to fairness and things of that nature while they are hearing a case.
It makes some sense to have only lawyers as coroners. Nevertheless, doctor coroners have provided an excellent service and fortunately, because of the transitional arrangements, all doctor coroners will be able to continue in office. We could have a provision whereby doctors took some kind of qualification or went on a course relating to judgecraft and things of that nature. In the future, doctors may well be capable of carrying out coronial office—that is a possibility. However, in the main, the society’s view is that it should probably be predominantly a lawyer post.
The society believes that the chief coroner should be a High Court judge, not a circuit judge. If a circuit judge is capable of carrying out that office, they should be promoted to High Court judge. It will require quite a bit of clout to get things moving as chief coroner, and only a High Court judge will have that.
Regarding the deputy chief coroner, I am concerned about schedule 7 because most High Court judges—leaving aside those who are involved as designated care judges in the family division—come from an adversarial background. They are not au fait with an inquisitorial jurisdiction and would not necessarily have a feeling for the coronial process. Furthermore, it is outrageous in this day and age to have an apparent discrimination against senior coroners and a glass ceiling that means that they can never become more than a coroner. A tribunal chairman can eventually end up as Lord Chief Justice. Why should coroners stay as coroners for their whole career?
The chief coroner will have a responsibility to keep coroners informed about changes in law and things of that nature. Those are matters that the Coroners’ Society currently deals with. The chief coroner will also have a responsibility for the training and development of coroners, which the Coroners’ Society is also involved with. In fact, the Coroners’ Society delivers training to coroners. If the chief coroner is going to be responsible for that, senior coroners will still be involved in those things. We may need one deputy chief coroner responsible for training, one for keeping coroners up to date and so on.
If you look at clause 30, on appeals, the first six items are about whether there has been a post mortem, whether a determination is correct, whether evidence has not been heard that should have been heard and things of that nature. Any senior coroner of 10 years’ standing or more is capable of turning those round very quickly.
My concern is that the chief coroners office will be staffed by civil servants and that some of those appellate judicial functions will be delegated to non-lawyers working to a script and rejecting or allowing appeals based upon pro formas. Part-time assistant deputy chief coroners working to clear backlogs would be far better, would give the chief coroner the capacity to deal with lots of things in lots ways and would keep flexibility.
It does not seem right that a glass ceiling will imposed by legislation in 2009. This country does not approve of glass ceilings in any other area and coroners are quite distressed by it—not because it affects our career development, but because the service would be better if coronial experience were used to help and develop the service.