Recommendation 27

HM Government Acknowledged

The Government accepts this recommendation. The Government would also wish to add its own thanks to all coroners, their officers and staff, as well as the Chief Coroner and his staff, for their dedication and diligence in ensuring that death investigations were able to continue, and that many inquests were held, despite the unprecedented challenges presented by the pandemic. The Chief Coroner has recently issued refreshed guidance to coroners on how their services can best recover from the pandemic and coroners minister Lord David Wolfson QC recently met the Chief Coroner to discuss what additional central government support might be provided to help coroner services recover from the pandemic. Ministry of Justice officials engage with the Chief Coroner’s office on a very regular basis on a range of issues, and they will continue to engage with his office to understand how central Government can further support the coroner service, given that coroner services are funded by individual local authorities. It is important to note that the Government has provided £6bn in unringfenced grant funding to local authorities to support the costs of Covid-19 pressures, which could be used, amongst other things, to cover any extra costs incurred in the administration of coroner services, including inquest backlogs. As part of the emergency legislation brought in last year, Section 30 of the Coronavirus Act 2020 removed the requirement to hold an inquest with a jury where the coroner had reason to suspect the cause of death was Covid-19. The requirement for a jury in inquests where Covid-19 was suspected would have disproportionately added to the demand on coroner services, adversely impacting their ability to operate and exacerbating backlogs of jury inquests. Section 30 has supported efforts to keep coroner services functioning. In light of continuing pressures, this provision has been replicated in the Judicial Review and Courts Bill to put a similar provision into the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 once the 2020 Act is sunsetted. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill includes a measure to extend the use of video and audio hearings to coroner’s courts, enabling more participants to attend inquest hearings remotely. The Government will include four other coroner measures in the Judicial Review and Courts Bill. These are: • To allow pre-inquest hearings and inquests to take place where all participants including the coroner, participate remotely, bringing coroner’s courts in line with other courts. • To allow inquests to be held without an in-person hearing in non-contentious cases. • To allow a coroner investigation to be discontinued where the cause of death is natural without a post-mortem examination. • To allow the merger of coroner areas within a local authority where the new coroner area would not be the entire local authority area. The Government hopes that these will support coroner services with their recovery from Covid-19.