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| QUOTE | DCA
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Constitutional Affairs Secretary and Lord Chancellor
Coroner's society annual conference
The Moat House, York
London
30 September 2005
Introduction
Good morning. Thank you very much for inviting me to open your conference this morning. I'm genuinely delighted to join you today.
Welcome to DCA
It's nearly four months since my Department took over responsibility for the Coroners service. I am glad to have the opportunity to welcome you in person to the Department and to say how pleased I am that we will be working together.
You should have been in a relationship with the Department a long time ago.
The work you do is so important.
You do the vital work of determining who the deceased is and where, when and how they died.
In so many cases you and your staff bring consolation to the families of bereaved - and often very distressed - people.
In very many cases you improve the way public services do their work - identifying what's gone wrong and where we can make progress.
7th July attacks - visit to mortuary
The work you do is uppermost in the public mind when we think of the most tragic events.
Soon after the appalling attacks of July the 7th in London, I visited the temporary mortuary in the City of London. The four incidents occurred in three coronial districts. The three coroners involved co-operated magnificently and did their initial work on those cases together on the one site in the City of London, which was put up in a miraculously short number of hours after the incident.
In the most difficult of circumstances, responding to the most dreadful outrages, the work of the coroners there, and all who worked with and for them was utterly extraordinary.
Extreme, I know. Not typical - thank God - of the work you do. But in its extremity, what I saw on that visit seemed to me to encapsulate the very best of what you do.
Sitting in on the committee, chaired by the three coroners involved, reaching determinations on the identities of the deceased, what I saw as each case, each issue, was considered was a range of responses. Carefulness. Caution. Consideration. Compassion.
And everything and everyone across the whole site, at every level, was exactly in line with that.
The arrangements for the receipt of the families. In the face of incomprehensible pain, real compassion - to provide privacy, to provide support, to provide practical assistance, to provide dignity, in death.
The careful computer matching of bodies and identities, by people so tired from working 18-hour days, every day since the bombings, that their heads were slumped against their screens as they worked. But working on, working ceaselessly, to give comfort to the bereaved.
Never seeing what they had as a number: because pasted on the wall where they worked, so that they saw them every time they looked up, were the pictures and names of all those killed. Real people. Real lives - cut cruelly short by the terrorists.
Extreme carefulness, caution, consideration, compassion.
Extraordinary responses in an extraordinary situation.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank and to pay tribute to the three coroners involved - Paul Knapman, Andrew Reid, Paul Matthews - who did an exemplary job. They are ambassadors for the coronial service. Horrible though it was, it was my introduction to the coronial service, so I start hugely impressed by the work you do.
I would also like to pay tribute to all those, military, police, medical and civilian, who worked with them.
As I came away that evening, I know I was appalled by the impact of the bombs, and utterly disgusted by the destructiveness of the terrorist attacks.
And at exactly the same time, enormously uplifted by what I had seen too.
I was deeply impressed by the care, sensitivity, and sheer professionalism of the work of the coroners: work carried out in the most testing of circumstances. I saw for myself a highly complex and highly skilled response to a truly horrific situation.
Public service at its best.
This was not normal. Many of you will rarely, if ever, have to face such a situation.
But I have no doubt - absolutely no doubt at all - that, God forbid, if you were, you would respond in exactly the same way, and do respond now in the work you do, with the same care, the same caution, the same consideration, the same compassion.
Proper care and support for bereaved people, ensuring their welfare, is central to our response.
This applies as much to large-scale tragic events such as those in July, as it does to the deaths that don't make the national headlines.
Both are of significance and importance. Both result in personal sadness for someone. Both require the best possible response we can provide.
The way the state responds to those who have been bereaved is critical. We need to make reforms and improvements in these areas - building on what we do well and what works.
Better response for bereaved people
You join a Department already looking at similar issues. We are undergoing a significant programme to improve the way victims are treated in court: developing better facilities in court buildings; improving standards of care; and taking steps to ensure the voices of victims are formally heard in murder cases.
This is a part of an important shift in the way public services are delivered - putting the law-abiding member of the public in the centre-ground.
Sometimes bureaucratic processes can appear daunting and unresponsive. Services need to be shaped not around what is best for us, but around what is best for the bereaved person. This means explaining what can appear a complex process clearly and simply, listening to what people want, and acting on what they say.
This is what the best coroners do already. I want to make sure what works best, works everywhere. And I want to know from you how one can make this happen.
Family Charter
One way is through a national Family Charter - so bereaved people know what your role is; know what standards of service they should receive; and know what opportunities they have to participate in the process.
Many of you already have a charter in your area - but I will be writing to you shortly to ask you about your experience of how that has worked.
This is not about we in Government telling you how to do the job. Quite the reverse. You know what makes a difference. I want to make sure that what works well locally, translates into national excellence.
In the longer term, I want to go further and to move towards national expectations and standards through an overhauled Charter. This will be an important part of the reform programme.
Where else can we make progress?
The fact that bereaved people are treated as interested parties in coroner investigations - and have the opportunity to ask questions and to contribute both to investigations and to inquest proceedings - is vital. The involvement of the bereaved is likely to lead to a better overall investigation and a more accurate conclusion.
That must continue and be enhanced in a reformed service.
It will not eradicate grief or pain, but it can go some way towards mitigating it. It will give the bereaved the opportunity to get the answers to questions, some of which may be simple and straightforward. Left unchecked these could fester and lead to a sense of injustice - dealt with promptly and courteously they can help make a difficult situation bearable.
We must also improve the appeals and complaints system.
Mistakes do happen. It's important we have an open, transparent and fair process for dealing with them.
And, where people wish to appeal against a finding you have made, this needs to be done in a more accessible and easy to use way than at present.
The support bereaved people receive prior to attending inquests is important too. I commend the improvement in written information that is available and, in particular, the court support services that have been established in some parts of the country.
In all these areas, bereaved people need to be at the centre of a reformed service, not at the margins or beyond.
Dealing with coroners concerns
But I am sure you are thinking too about what the new relationship with DCA means for your future, and the future of your coroners' officers, your administrative staff and others who support you in your duties. You, and they, have already had too many years of uncertainty.
The fundamental review and the Shipman Inquiry were, by necessity, thorough and painstaking, and were both impressive pieces of work.
The Government's Position Paper last year articulated our vision. Moving from that to a White Paper has meant engaging in complex areas - this is a significant programme of reform, looking at practice, procedure, policy, culture and organisation.
Legislation and demands for new funding, which are central to any effective reform, are subject to overall Government decisions on priorities for the availability of Parliamentary time and resources.
The transfer to my department has inevitably added time, because I needed, with Harriet Harman, to review the position in detail.
But I will not delay longer than necessary. I will set out our proposals early next year and will publish a draft bill, which we have already announced as part of this session's Parliamentary business.
Let me reassure you. These plans will retain what you do well. I don't want change for the sake of change. But I do want to deal with the weaknesses and look honestly at where need to improve.
Undoubtedly, we have a service with talented, skilled, hard-working and committed people - at all levels of the service. It's a service that provides an important function - a function that nobody doubts must continue.
You already have a locally based service and, in many cases, a high reputation and standing in your area.
You have strong links with other professionals - in health, law enforcement and registration services.
And, as I highlighted earlier, bereaved people already have a voice at inquests.
These are your strengths. But as Dame Janet Smith, Tom Luce and others have identified - there are a number of areas where we need to take action:
* effective investigations and good services to the bereaved provided by you and your staff, it is usually in spite of the infrastructure which is in place and not because of it;
* management of the service, even at a local level, is cumbersome or insufficiently attended to - with both local authorities and police authorities having a role in the management and employment of support staff. And sometimes it is not at the top of their priorities;
* you are fettered by statutory restrictions based on excessively territorial principles - which mean you can only investigate deaths within your geographical jurisdiction;
* there is a lack of common standards of working practice across the country, and inconsistency in performance;
* for many, coroner work is a part-time occupation and may not be the prime focus of their working life;
* the coroner service, despite the excellent work of the Coroners' Society of England and Wales, has no national leadership. It is fragmented, and has no obvious accountability for how it operates or how it uses public funds.
Future vision
So, what sort of service would we like to have in place?
These are the kinds of things we have in mind.
Following new legislation, I want to see a service that operates on a unified and national basis across England and Wales.
This will not challenge independence for your investigation of individual cases and your judicial decision-making.
But it will mean you will have strong links with this department, national leadership, uniform standards and guidelines applying across the country.
The service would consist primarily of a national network of coroners, their deputies and local teams. I want a service with full-time coroners.
Your coroner's officers and support staff would have better direct management. You and they would have the opportunity to receive more and better training and development which responds to gaps in knowledge and experience. New appointees to the service would receive a comprehensive induction programme.
I envisage that coroners would continue to be responsible for a geographical area, but there would be far greater flexibility to act cross-boundary as a national service. We want scope for those of you who have built up expertise in particular kinds of cases, or particular types of incidents, to be deployed to deal with similar ones, with a guarantee that your existing workload would be dealt with.
There would be an end to archaic provisions, such as bodies being removed for post mortems only within your own area or to a neighbouring area. These kinds of changes would help generally in providing a flexible service, and they would be particularly valuable in responding to the kind of major incidents I referred to earlier.
You would be given improved powers of discretion on whether to proceed to inquest where a separate investigation into the death is taking place.
And we are looking at the position of those cases where it is arguable that no public interest would be served in holding an inquest, as in some suicide or infant death cases.
In complex cases, you would have discretionary powers to hold pre-inquest hearings in open court. And in a small number of particularly challenging cases, the Lord Chief Justice might have a power to appoint a judge to act as temporary coroner.
Children would be able to give their evidence by video link, or in a cleared courtroom, just as they can in some circumstances in certain criminal cases, and you would have powers to prevent publication of the details of any child affected by the proceedings.
The Government's reform proposals must also address the defects identified in the death certification process, which relate closely to medical regulation. The position paper last year proposed a system of medical teams and advisers linked to local coroners.
In some ways this is one of the most complex aspects of the reform programme, and one where there are particularly close links with other plans the Government is taking forward at present. I am considering with colleagues the best way of achieving our objectives here, so that we can make a public announcement as soon as possible.
White Paper/Draft Bill
As well as a future vision of the service, this gives you a preview of one or two of the proposals that will be described in more detail in our White Paper.
As I have said, we expect to publish it very soon, probably early in 2006. I am also committed to producing a draft bill for pre-legislative scrutiny during this parliamentary session, and that is expected to follow in the spring.
Your views on both of these documents will be very much welcomed. I am sure the scrutiny committee in Parliament will be interested in evidence from you as individuals or through your national representatives.
But, for all of us, these are further stages on the journey to the final destination. Subject to Parliamentary time, we will be introducing an actual Bill in the second session starting in November 2006. If we can secure Royal Assent some time in 2007, then implementation work can begin in earnest.
It may seem some time ahead, but there is a timetable in place.
That is when we will need your co-operation above all. To maintain the momentum with current cases. And to be active supporters of and participants in the reform programme within your areas.
There will be challenges, of course, but by working closely together and respecting each other's duties and responsibilities, I believe they can be overcome.
Conclusions
To conclude, my impression of the Coroners service is an immensely positive one and I am delighted to have you as part of the Department of Constitutional Affairs family. You provide an important, much-needed and valued service. A service which, delivered well, can help public policy, and bereaved families, immensely.
But I recognise that there has been a period of uncertainty and that change can be unsettling. I would like to give my guarantee, also on behalf of Harriet Harman, that we will work closely with you as we take forward these reforms.
And we will make changes because they matter, because they make a difference. To you and your hard-working staff, but above all to the bereaved families who, in their most desperate moments, look to us - who look to you - for answers and for support.
Thank you very much. I wish you well for a successful conference. |
This post has been edited by numeral on Jan 9 2007, 04:04 PM
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