Clause 32
Coroners and Justice Bill
8:45 pm

Roger Gale (North Thanet, Conservative)

With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 17—Report to Lord Chancellor

‘(1) The Chief Coroner must give to the Lord Chancellor an annual report which—

(a) contains matters that the Chief Coroner wishes to bring to the attention of the Lord Chancellor,

(b) includes matters which the Lord Chancellor has asked the Chief Coroner to include in the report,

(c) contains an assessment for that year of the consistency of standards between the coroner areas,

(d) contains a summary for that year of the number, nature and outcome of appeals under section 30, and

(e) contains a summary of the recommendations made by senior coroners under paragraph 6(1) of Schedule 4.

(2) A report covering one year must be given to the Lord Chancellor by 1 July the following year.

(3) The Lord Chancellor must publish all reports provided under this section and must lay a copy before each House of Parliament within 60 days of receiving a copy of the report.’.

Jennifer Willott (Cardiff Central, Liberal Democrat)

The new clause is closely related to the point raised a few minutes ago by the hon. Member for Stafford as it concerns the transparency, openness and accountability of the system on which the Committee took a lot of evidence as it was raised by a number of witnesses. We looked particularly at how to ensure that the system identifies patterns, not just in situations such as Hillsborough, where there are many people in a similar area, but in cases across the UK in which similar verdicts are recorded by different coroners. That will help us to tackle broader medical or health and safety issues as they arise. The new clause would place a duty on the chief coroner to produce an annual report that would be provided to the Lord Chancellor, who would be obliged to publish it and lay it before the House of Commons, so that it would be openly available and there would be opportunities for much broader oversight of any issues arising.

As the hon. Member for Stafford said, there are many examples around the world of coroners’ systems that operate effectively and openly, in which lessons are learned in a much more transparent fashion than has been the case up to now in the UK. He gave as examples the systems in New South Wales and Ontario, Canada, where verdicts and recommendations are made publicly available and are widely disseminated so that lessons can be learned and patterns identified. The new clause attempts to do something similar here.

I am prepared to accept that the Minister might not like the wording of the new clause, but I would be grateful if she gave her views on what could be done to ensure that we identify broader patterns as they occur across the UK, pick up on recommendations that coroners have made in different coronial areas, and ensure that greater transparency and accountability is built into the system.

Bridget Prentice (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Lewisham East, Labour)

I hope that I can give the hon. Lady some assurances. I think that there are sufficient powers elsewhere in the Bill dealing with making annual reports. For example, clause 33(3)(d) and (e) allows for regulations to be made on the provision and disclosure of information, and for the Lord Chancellor or the chief coroner to require information from senior coroners. That measure will enable that information to be collated and published. I can also confirm that the regulations are likely to include the matters that the hon. Lady proposes in new clause 17. For example, each year the chief coroner will have to provide a report to the Lord Chancellor with an assessment of different coroners’ performance and on a range of other issues, which will then be published. That covers some of the hon. Lady’s examples. Having said that, there is no great principle at stake here, and although I will not undertake now to table a Government amendment at a later stage, I will reflect before Report on what the hon. Lady has said.

I will touch on clause 32 stand part. While we have argued and discussed all other elements of the Bill, this clause is important in that it gives the Lord Chancellor  the ability, for the first time, to issue statutory guidance on how the coroner system is expected to operate in relation to interested parties. For the purpose of clause 32 interested parties include a spouse, a civil partner, a partner, a parent, a child, a brother, a sister, a grandparent, a grandchild, the child of a brother or sister, a stepfather, a stepmother, a half-brother and a half-sister. A full list is in clause 36.

We anticipate that the first guidance that the Lord Chancellor issues will be the charter for the bereaved, and that is why I wish to speak a little on this now. We published a revised draft charter along with the Bill, and I am grateful for the many positive comments that hon. Members have made about it. That charter will set out the services that bereaved families can expect to receive under a reformed system and the means of redress if those services are not met, and it highlights other opportunities that families will have for involvement. Equally, it sets out families’ responsibilities, including information to be provided to the coroner. Given that our immediate aim for reform is to improve the service that bereaved people receive, the charter is specifically for the bereaved. However, it is likely that guidance will be issued on other aspects of, and participants in, coroners’ investigations, such as non-professional witnesses who have been involved blamelessly, in transport crashes for example. This clause is central to our aim to standardise and improve the service that bereaved people receive from the reformed coroner system and on that basis I commend the clause to the Committee.