Bone of contention

The government has prescribed a streamlined coroners' system.

Yet solicitors lament the demise of their part-time role and fear for the future of local services, says Mark Smulian

Any proposal to make several hundred people reapply for their jobs would normally cause something of an outcry.

But coroners are discreet by nature, and even though the Home Office has proposed the most radical changes to their profession for decades, few are willing to speak out.

Possibly, they are concerned about their futures in a system which will slim down the present complement of 23 full-time and 100 part-time coroners in 136 districts in England and Wales to a nationally run system of only full-time coroners (see [2003] Gazette, 12 June, 4).

The report for the Home Office listed 11 'critical defects' in the present system.

These included, in the wake of the Shipman affair, the separation of the coronial and death certificate processes, which it said meant there was 'little to stop an unscrupulous doctor from "certifying his way out of trouble"'.

One major change is that, in future, all coroners will have to be experienced solicitors or barristers, and they will be employed by a national service, not local authorities.

Although those doctors who are already coroners - about a quarter of all coroners - may apply for the new posts, the medical profession will otherwise take the support role of statutory medical assessor.

The inquiry into the system proposes a single service, with coroners working in around 60 areas roughly aligned to police authorities, backed up as needed by part-timers.

Responsibility for their work would transfer from the Home Office to what is now the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA).

There would be a coronial council to monitor performance and coroner service inspectorate to monitor how coroners dealt with bereaved families.

The government has said it will consider the report's 122 recommendations alongside the second report from the Shipman Inquiry, which is expected later in the summer.

Michael Burgess, a solicitor who is honorary secretary of the Coroners Society and full-time coroner of Surrey, says it is difficult to categorise the 316-page report as either 'brilliant or not brilliant; it is complex with no single answer'.

He acknowledges that the disappearance of part-time coroners, other than in a support role, will be controversial, but he says 'there is a logic that speaks for itself' behind it.

'Part-time coroners comprise the majority, but what is proposed is a totally different system to what we have.

It dispenses with coroners in territories in favour of a single system where we have the number of office holders necessary inside that system.

I am not sure that has been appreciated.'

Mr Burgess contends that this will have 'consequences which are good, but may not be necessarily so good for all the public or coroners'.

He explains: 'Personal experience of individual districts may be watered down, and that would be retrograde.'

The Coroners Society is wary of getting involved in arguments about individual job losses, but wants to see an 'effective, local and efficient investigatory service'.

Will the recommendations to create a national and regional service do that? Mr Burgess answers tactfully: 'Look at other changes over the last 20 to 40 years in legal administration functions and one can form a view.'

However, the society is outspoken on the need for adequate resources.

He says members are 'very concerned' that local authorities may be reluctant properly to resource a service which they are scheduled to lose in 2006/2007.

The cost of the service to date has been unclear, amounting to a few hundred thousand pounds for most county and unitary councils, but combined as a national budget its size - whatever that turned out to be - might be a tempting victim for ministers looking for cuts.

David Halpern, who sits part-time as Hereford's coroner and is senior partner of Hereford law firm Lambe Corner & Co, says many of the proposed changes are 'useful and helpful', but regrets that the report did not put bereaved families at the centre of the coroner service's work.

He says: 'They could have gone further by making it a service for bereaved families so that they could feel it is at least partly there for them.'

Mr Halpern also regrets the loss of local links, which he fears will follow the switch to a national system.

'It is strange that David Blunkett is saying that judges are up in the stratosphere and should be more accountable to local people, while another part of the Home Office is recommending a massive centralisation of coronial activity,' he says.

'It will no doubt make it more expensive, as the full-time coroners will all want plush offices.'

Mr Halpern, a lifelong resident of Hereford, feels that full-timers covering two or more counties can never have the sort of local links that he does: 'I know many people and they know me.

I am part of the local community.'

One solicitor who is a part-time coroner and who does not wish to be named, also has mixed views about the changes.

He says: 'I think we should fight to retain the part-time role; I enjoy it and I have a lot of experience.

'Part-timers have more experience of wider legal matters, though the full-time coroner will usually get the high-profile cases.'

However, he supports the move away from the Home Office to the DCA, which will end coroners' anomalous separation from the rest of judicial administration.

Nor does he think there will be any shortage of solicitors seeking full-time coroner posts, as 'solicitors in private practice are happy to give that up once they are 55 or so and do this job instead'.

A less favourable view of the changes comes from Louise Christian, chairwoman of the pressure group Inquest, which maintains a list of lawyers willing to act for mourning families in cases of controversial deaths.

She says: 'Some of the things in it are welcome, but in general it is quite disappointing.

There is no recognition of legal aid and they don't seem to have investigated the value of legal aid.'

Ms Christian, a partner at London firm Christian Khan, says the report appeared to consider that the only controversial deaths requiring a jury hearing were those that occurred in custody.

While these need to be probed, she argues that cases of clinical negligence and deaths at work often also deserve a jury hearing.

'We need jury inquests because often an inquest is the only chance a bereaved family has to find out what happened.

The idea that only deaths in custody are controversial does not bear scrutiny.'

Ms Christian is alarmed by what she sees as the report's implication that better training for coroners, which she supports, should be paid for by reducing the number of jury inquests.

However, she attaches no great importance to the 'local' argument, and supports the move to a consistent service under the DCA so long as it is properly financed.

She says: 'Coroners often do not call expert witnesses when they should and that is often a matter of cost.

There is still not enough importance placed in the report on inquests as a judicial process.

It needs proper regulation, legal aid and juries.

Overall, it's a deeply disappointing outcome.'

The report's assumption that the present legal aid criteria are satisfactory particularly offends Ms Christian, as does its suggestion that bereaved families can represent themselves by relying on a charter issued by the DCA.

She says: 'We do inquest work and we do it for almost nothing.

When legal aid was relatively well paid, it was possible to do this work but [now] it is more difficult.

'The idea that bereaved families can represent themselves with just a charter is not right.

This government is addicted to charters but we need better legal aid.'

Solicitors will, it seems, continue to form the bedrock of the coronial system, but the days of the local coroner - with knowledge of the community - may be about to disappear.

Mark Smulian is a freelance journalist