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St Pancras Coroner’s Court |
We must preserve the right to hold inquests in public
While welcoming most of the Coroners and Death Certification Bill, MP Frank Dobson argues that secret inquests are not in the public interest
AS I have been pressing successive governments to update the law on inquests, coroners and registration of deaths, I welcome the Coroners Bill.
But I oppose the proposal to allow ministers to order secret inquests. The whole idea of inquests is that no suspicious or violent death should occur without being investigated to the satisfaction of the public and to protect the public from such deaths being repeated.
So a secret inquest would amount to no inquest at all.
The government say they need secret inquests in the interests of national or international security. But with the example of Guantanamo Bay and “extraordinary renditions” fresh in our minds, we know that could mean the state conducting a secret investigation of a death caused, or colluded in, by an agent of the state or of another friendly state – exactly what we don’t want. That is why I voted against.
But that doesn’t mean I am against the Coroners Bill in general. The existing law on the registration of deaths was exposed as grossly inadequate by Harold Shipman’s serial murders of his elderly patients.
Many Muslim and Jewish families have had difficulties complying with their religious requirements for a swift burial of loved ones by the delayed release of their bodies. The grieving relatives of murder victims have not had their bodies released, sometimes for months on end, because a second or even a third post-mortem may be called for.
Most commonly, many relatives of the dead have found the whole system profoundly unsatisfactory – not geared to meet their practical needs or reflect their emotional upset.
After the King’s Cross underground fire, relatives complained to me about how they were treated. But their upset was nothing compared with that experienced by families of the people drowned on the Marchioness who discovered that the bodies of their loved ones had been mutilated by having their hands amputated. MPs from other parts of the country have told me about the upset caused to their constituents by the insensitive and sometimes bizarre behaviour of coroners, against whom there was no general right of appeal or means of redress. The system has been fragmented, with little or no uniformity of approach or procedure and coroners being almost a law unto themselves.
Most recently, the local coroner refused to provide the Health Care Commission with information on inquests involving deaths at Mid Staffordshire Hospital.
The Coroners Bill proposes that the certification and registration of deaths should be subject to greater scrutiny so that a murderous doctor would be spotted. It is also intended to ensure the early release of bodies where this is required for religious reasons, and an end to the protracted holding of the bodies of murder victims.
It will introduce a charter for bereaved people to make the whole service more responsive to their needs, keeping them better informed and spelling out their rights and responsibilities. Public bodies would be required to respond to coroners’ reports.
A chief coroner would appoint and regulate the training of coroners.
For the first time, people will be able to appeal against coroners’ decisions on 10 points, such as whether to hold an inquest or a
post-mortem, or a further post-mortem.
So I hope that most of the proposals about death certification, coroners and inquests will become law. The proposal for secret inquests got through the House of Commons, but I hope it will be defeated in the House of Lords.
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