Schedule 3
Coroners and Justice Bill
6:30 pm
Bridget Prentice (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Lewisham East, Labour)
I cannot accept amendments 44 and 46—I will manage to find the others in a moment. They run entirely contrary to what we are aiming to achieve in the Bill, which is to create an open, transparent and consistent system for appointing coroners. The system at the moment is largely opaque. It is not uncommon—the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk obliquely referred to this—for a coroner to appoint as a deputy or an assistant deputy someone from their own legal practice or someone who is otherwise known to them. That, in turn, clearly causes disadvantage to anyone else who might be interested in applying for the post when the senior coroner position becomes vacant if they have not been in that law firm. It also means that vacancies might never be made known to potential candidates who might be better people to fill those vacancies. As well as creating a lack of transparency, it has led in the past to a lack of diversity among those in coroner posts.
It is important that we do all that we can to enable diversity of coroners to reflect the diversity of our society. Having the local authority advertise vacancies, with an agreed and published set of criteria that candidates must meet, is one of the fundamental measures that we take in this part of the Bill. It will allow all potential qualified candidates with an interest to apply and will allow the local authority to select the best person for the job.