To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to increase the income that junior counsel at the criminal Bar receive from legal aid.

My Lords, the Government have no plans to increase the legal aid rates payable to junior counsel at the criminal Bar.

My Lords, that was a rather disappointing but not unexpected Answer. Is the noble Lord aware that after four or five years’ intensive training, aspiring criminal law barristers earn about the same as unskilled workers until they get a tenancy, which may take several more years?

My Lords, I am not aware of what the noble Viscount says and, if he will forgive me, I do not really accept it. The Bar got a very good deal from the 2006 review of legal aid procurement conducted by my noble friend Lord Carter. He increased the amount in the graduated fee scheme, particularly in the shorter cases, to benefit exactly the people about whom the noble Viscount is asking—the junior Bar. The Bar itself supported the aim of taking money out of the highest-paying cases and putting it into the lowest-paying cases. We put an additional £29 million into graduated fees in 2007, which the then chairman of the Bar said amounted to an increase of approximately 16 per cent over graduated fees across the board.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree—I suppose that he does not—that criminal legal aid is very deficient, despite what he has said? Many junior counsel and solicitors specialising in this field are finding it very difficult to make a living. Accordingly, the public are suffering as well. What are the Government prepared to do about that, if anything?

My Lords, I do not think that that public are suffering. The criminal Bar is still doing well. I give my noble friend and the House a few examples. For a guilty plea—that is, defending someone who has pleaded guilty—to wounding with intent, a class B offence, with 75 pages of prosecution evidence, the total that the barrister would receive is in the area of £872.50. For a four-day trial of a Section 18 wounding, with 75 pages of prosecution evidence and 14 witnesses, the same barrister would get £2,643.89. I submit that those are large amounts, particularly compared with the earnings of unskilled workers.

My Lords, while declaring a possible interest as a member of the Bar, perhaps I may ask about the Legal Services Commission’s proposals on awarding legal defence contracts for police station workers at the bottom end. Is it not misleading to call these proposals “best value tendering”, given that contracts would be awarded on the basis not of sound and objective valuation but of the price of bids alone?

My Lords, the BVT proposals, which spring from those of my noble friend Lord Carter, focus on securing what we want, which is a sustainable, effective and efficient supply base. They will enable the Government and the Legal Services Commission to manage the legal aid budget effectively and plan for the future. I need to tell the noble and learned Lord that we are in consultation on the scheme for solicitors at police stations. This is a real consultation; we want to hear what is said. The department will then consider the proposals and whether this is the best way forward to ensure best value for taxpayers’ money while ensuring the quality of criminal defence services for those that need them, which is crucial.

My Lords, I am interested to hear the noble Lord describe this as “a real consultation”; I imagine that the other consultations that his department has conducted were fakes. Who in the entire profession—whether it is the Bar Council, the Law Society or the Criminal Bar Association—supports the best value tendering scheme?

My Lords, not long ago the Conservative Party supported it; perhaps it will be good enough to tell us if it has changed its mind. As I said, we are consulting on the BVT scheme and we will find out whether it is workable and whether it is what we should be doing. I have to tell the House that the legal aid budget is limited and, at a time of recession, we need to spend more not less on social welfare law—that is, law that looks after those with debt needs, housing needs and employment needs. I hope that the House will accept that, while there is a lot of pressure on the fund, those are the areas in which you should not cut back.

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Bar Standards Board. Is the Minister aware that best value tendering, which appears to be about the lowest price, and various other undoubted cuts in legal aid have the most impact on women and black and ethnic minorities, both as clients of the Bar and as those who are attempting to earn a living, and that the Government’s programme on social mobility and access to the professions is undermined by pulling the rug from under their feet?

My Lords, I do not accept that the savings that we will make will necessarily be in relation to the class of person to which the noble Baroness refers. However, I have to say that it is not the Government who decide which barrister will do which case. That is a matter for the clerks in chambers and it is sometimes the case that clerks will give the lower-paid work to those from the categories that she mentions.

My Lords, I declare my interest as a barrister. Will the Minister recognise that the Legal Services Commission has paid no attention whatever to those very junior barristers who are required day after day to appear in magistrates’ courts and are often losing money as a result of travelling to them? Will he bear in mind the fact that such barristers are actually dealing with people with social need, housing deprivation and other forms of poverty and disadvantage who find their way, unhappily, into a summary court?

Yes, my Lords, I accept what the noble Lord says. This is not always an easy time for the very junior end of the Bar—not that it ever has been particularly easy for people who have just gone to the Bar. However, I stressed social welfare law because, if you can give some legal help at an early stage, you can perhaps prevent people from ending up in the criminal courts.

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that this is not an easy time for solicitors? Does he know how many criminal legal aid solicitors have had to leave their jobs because of the Government’s policies?

My Lords, a large number of solicitors are still doing legal aid and they do a wonderful job, as do barristers who do legal aid. However, these are professions where people come and go—the numbers will never stay the same. The Government have to concentrate on the fact that they have a fixed budget for legal aid and we need to spend it where it is most needed.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their forecast of the revenue lost to HM Treasury through the use of the Channel Islands for avoiding the payment of United Kingdom tax.

My Lords, the UK plays a leading role in international efforts to combat tax avoidance and evasion. Avoidance can be defined in a variety of ways. For example, some groups argue that the use of perfectly legitimate relief from tax, such as pension payments, represents avoiding tax; others adopt a more limited definition. I cannot provide any estimates of UK tax avoided using the Channel Islands because of the subjective nature of the definition of avoidance. For the same reason, the Government cannot prepare avoidance forecasts or statistics on a geographical basis.

My Lords, what action are the Government taking to stop the use of tax havens such as the Channel Islands and Monaco for tax-dodging, which results in the rest of us having to pay higher taxes? Would he care to speculate on why a loyal newspaper such as the Daily Telegraph fails to publicise unpatriotic tax-dodgers such as the Barclay brothers?

My Lords, I do not think that noble Lords need me to speculate on why the Daily Telegraph does not speculate on the tax strategies of the Barclay brothers—that must be self-evident. Through the G20, the Government have led the initiative to pursue tax evasion. This was given significant priority in the ECOFIN Finance Ministers’ meeting, the G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting and later in the meeting of the G20 leaders in early April. We are promoting the introduction of more taxation and information exchange agreements and are vigorous in our pursuit of tax evasion. Furthermore, we are alert to new opportunities for tax avoidance and are taking rapid action to close them down where we feel it is warranted.

My Lords, sticking to the main Question, is the Minister aware that when I looked on the appropriate website this morning, I found that there are 56 tax havens around the world, most of them outside Europe and the European Union? Although tax evasion is utterly deplorable and indeed illegal, does he accept that when it comes to investment to avoid and limit certain tax liabilities, if we chase all investors out of the Channel Islands and Europe, they will merely go elsewhere? How much revenue will we then lose and how much higher will our taxes have to be as a result?

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very good point. That is why the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have been leading an international co-ordinated effort through the OECD and the G20 to ensure unified action, otherwise closing down some areas will simply see that business divert elsewhere. However, we are vigilant and determined to close down tax evasion and are alert to areas where new tax avoidance strategies are emerging. HMRC estimates that the initiatives it has taken since the requirement for pre-disclosure of tax strategies in 2004 have led to a net accrual of more than £11 billion of additional tax.

My Lords, I declare an interest as bishop of the bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, a position held by the Bishop of Winchester since the 16th century. Will the Minister confirm that both Channel Island dependencies are listed by the OECD as having substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standard and that they appear in the same top tier of jurisdictions as the UK itself?

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate is correct. The OECD classifies offshore centres in three categories, and Jersey and Guernsey are in the top one. Indeed, most of our offshore territories rate well but not all of them as well as the Crown dependencies. We continue to work with those overseas territories, including through the Foot review, to help to raise the standard of tax and information exchange and general financial regulation in those centres.

My Lords, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor, worked enormously hard to deal with tax avoidance problems. On Budget day, however, he discovered that any tax changes he made would immediately appear on the websites of many leading finance firms and tax firms in the City of London, with the advice, “Don’t pay this tax; we will advise you how to avoid it immediately”. Is not the answer to this to make tax avoidance prima facie unacceptable, unless he who is doing the avoiding can prove legally that it is a viable scheme?

My Lords, my noble friend’s question cuts to the heart of the issues of the spirit and the letter of the law. HMRC will be publishing a consultation paper in the not-too-distant future which will encourage banks to explain how they comply with both the letter and the spirit of the legislation. Of course, my noble friend’s observation about historical practice is correct. That is one reason why my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced the pre-notification requirement, which now requires those who market and promote tax avoidance schemes to pre-advise HMRC, so that HMRC can consider whether it regards these schemes as consistent with the spirit of good business practice, or structured solely or primarily for tax avoidance reasons. If the latter is the case, HMRC can take the necessary action to close down such schemes. More than £1 billion was saved in the last 12 months as a result of that initiative.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, mentioned 56 tax havens. Does the Minister agree that many of the ones to which money from the Channel Islands might be diverted are actually British Overseas Territories? Therefore, although we need international co-operative action, Britain has a very particular responsibility. Does he also recognise that the confusion between aggressive tax avoidance, tax planning and tax evasion is such that it might be useful to have a sessional committee of this House to look at how we distinguish the narrow lines between one and the other?

My Lords, the ultimate question of distinction must be for the courts, and that is why we always have difficulties in answering questions on identifying the quantum of tax lost due to tax avoidance. In the end, these must be matters on which Parliament passes the laws and the courts interpret those laws. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is correct about the number of offshore territories, and this is one reason why the review being carried out by Mr Michael Foot is looking both at the Crown dependencies and the offshore territories.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of using pre-packaged administrations (pre-packs) in undisclosed insolvency proceedings on small- and medium-sized enterprises which are suppliers to businesses restructured in this way; and whether they have any proposals for greater transparency or minimum disclosure.

My Lords, in the right circumstances pre-packaged administration can deliver benefits by saving troubled businesses, thus preserving value that would otherwise be lost. It can potentially be more effective at saving jobs than other types of administration. However, it is important that the system is monitored and not subject to abuse. On 1 January 2009, we introduced mandatory requirements for administrators to report to creditors on all aspects of a pre-pack as soon as possible. These arrangements are being actively policed by the Insolvency Service, which is examining every pre-pack report it receives, and will publish a report before the Summer Recess.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Is she aware of the phoenix issue being the big problem for businesses? For example, when a restaurant in London closed on a Friday and re-opened on a Monday with exactly the same staff and management, in that process of administration by pre-pack, all small creditors lost all claim. Is she aware that that is aggravated by the lack of credit insurance? Small businesses are having great trouble getting credit insurance now.

My Lords, about six out of 10 pre-packs, as the noble Baroness says, are phoenix, meaning going back to the original owners. However, one has to remember that the plight of small creditors, which I feel acutely as Small Business Minister, is actually the result of the insolvency, not of the pre-pack, and there is no evidence to suggest that small creditors fare worse in a pre-pack than in any other type of administration. Of course, there is evidence to suggest that more jobs are saved: 90 per cent of jobs are saved under pre-pack and about 60 per cent under other administrations.

My Lords, my noble friend, as ever, makes a good point, but is she aware that there is also a perception of serious abuse on occasions by directors of companies using the pre-pack arrangement to buy the company back at an undervaluation? The Government have powers under SIP 16, as she will be aware. How do they intend to use those powers to enforce against the kind of abuse that does indeed happen?

My Lords, SIP 16 does indeed provide us with powers that require and enforce transparency, which is the key to this issue. If the Insolvency Service finds abuse, both the insolvency practitioner and the directors are investigated. There were 105 cases last year of action taken against insolvency practitioners and directors themselves. Noble Lords will be aware that every working day five company directors are struck off and one is criminally convicted. We police this very actively. The purpose of SIP 16 was transparency.

My Lords, does the Minister not accept that there is significant concern about this issue? The Government cannot say simply that this is a matter for the Insolvency Service. There is significant evidence that creditors are being damaged, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, has indicated. There is also significant evidence, as the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, has indicated, that often the directors who caused the problem in the first place are simply buying back the business. Should not the Government be doing something about this rather than passing it on to the Insolvency Service?

My Lords, the Insolvency Service is part of the Government, so there is no question of passing this on. However, while this is an emotive issue, it is very important to consider the facts. The insolvency practitioners are required to ensure value for creditors, to protect employees and, since the Enterprise Act, to see whether companies can remain as going concerns. They have to look at the best way of doing this, and if the only available buyer is the existing owner, it would simply be cutting off your nose to spite your face to say, “We are not prepared to do this. Instead, we will put it into some other form of administration”. The requirement is for people to ensure that the best value is created for creditors and that the company is protected as best it can be. That is what we investigate. It is not just a matter for the Insolvency Service; it is a matter of policy.

My Lords, did the Minister see the article, which I thought was very interesting, headed, “Pre-packs: Smug v Mugs”? It claimed that pre-packs were driven by the banks, which were determined to recover their secured loans and which had,

“a hit squad to push for administration. The outcome is always identical—bank gets back its cash and unsecured creditors can go hang”.

That is my concern.

My Lords, it is a fundamental fact of capitalism and doing business that the ranking in a company is: secured creditors, preferential creditors such as employees, creditors secured against a floating charge, and unsecured trade creditors. It is not practical or sensible to change that. It is a fact of the insolvency rather than the administration. Insolvency means by definition that there are not enough assets or there is not enough cash flow to cover the liabilities. That is what results, unfortunately, for small unsecured creditors. It is not because of the nature of the administration.

I did indeed read the article to which the noble Baroness refers and, while I understand that it is an emotive issue, we have, at least in this House, the ability to understand the underlying fundamental facts of what is happening.

My Lords, when the legislation went through Parliament about seven years ago, I do not recall the Government addressing the issue of a party who went into liquidation buying back the assets at a lower price. That is the core problem to which my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes has addressed her mind. Will the Government undertake to look at that legislation again in the light of the increasing amount of evidence that there is a real chance that there is inappropriate behaviour?

My Lords, we will look, and indeed are looking, at the evidence from the administration’s pre-packs, in particular, and the returns that we are going to receive. We will see if there is evidence of any abuse or misuse both by company directors and insolvency practitioners. That is the place at which to root out any abuse that occurs. However, we must not forget the benefit of pre-packs: more jobs and companies are saved and there is a better economic outcome than by other sorts of administration in certain circumstances. It would be extremely unfortunate to lose that benefit because we are not able to understand the underlying facts.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the suspension of the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia, and to Russia’s proposals on the future of the OSCE Mission to Georgia.

My Lords, we deeply regret Russia’s decision to veto the extension of the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia. We worked hard on a draft resolution that was acceptable to all, but Russia rejected the draft in an attempt to change the Security Council’s agreed position on Georgia’s territorial integrity.

We also regret that Russia blocked consensus on Greece’s proposals to continue the OSCE mission to Georgia. Russia’s counterproposals were unacceptable to the other participating states in the OSCE.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer and mark that the future of the OSCE must now be in doubt if Russia is going to use its veto to prevent that organisation doing anything useful. How closely are the Government now working with other members of the EU and other allies within NATO to make a common policy towards Russia that states that Russia’s policy towards Abkhazia and South Ossetia is not acceptable and that we do not accept the imposition of new boundaries in international law on a truncated Georgia?

My Lords, the UN mission has no mandate to continue and must cease its patrols. That means that other elements of international monitoring, particularly the EU monitoring mission and the Geneva talks coming up on 1 July, are very important. It is important in that context, in the light of the demise of the UN and OSCE missions, that we support continuing work with partners to ensure that they can adapt their activities if necessary to ensure that we continue to have a presence in Georgia. We will continue to press Russia to live up to its international obligations in Georgia and we remain committed to our support for the territorial integrity of Georgia. There are number of meeting coming up in the next few days that provide the opportunity for a dialogue with both Russia and Georgia.

My Lords, having spoken with Russian officials only this morning, my understanding is that, although they are obviously being very difficult about Abkhazia and South Ossetia and are determined to regard them as separate countries, they have not in fact closed the door on a possible dialogue about a renewed UN or UNOMIG presence. Therefore, in the discussions that the noble Lord has mentioned are coming up in the next few days, will he bear in mind that, despite the apparent difficulties in principle, there are possibilities for getting some kind of mission going again to reinforce the EU mission, which is important, and maybe even for keeping the door open for a continued OSCE mission as well?

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his question and, indeed, for his information in respect of speaking with Russian diplomats as recently as today. As I said earlier, the opportunities exist for dialogue. Today the Minister for Europe, Glenys Kinnock, departs for Georgia for a three-day visit. We have the G8 meeting in Trieste on 24 and 25 June, an OSCE informal ministerial meeting in Corfu on 27 and 28 June, a NATO-Russia Council meeting, which will take place on the margins of the Corfu meeting, also on 27 and 28 of June and the very important UN-EU OSCE meeting in Geneva. Those opportunities shall be used and will be a part of dialogue. I hope that the comments of the noble Lord are indeed borne out by those events.

My Lords, will the Government consider, during these dialogue meetings that the Minister has told us are upcoming, the plight of the Abkhazian and Ossetian farmers who have been internally displaced inside Georgia through the Russian movement? Will the Government also consider some bilateral aid from the United Kingdom to Georgia, given that we, of all the EU member states, have perhaps the lowest gas imports from Russia, while countries such as Germany—our fellow member states—have as much as between 47 and 52 per cent of their imports coming from Russia and are therefore in a somewhat more difficult position?

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Baroness has raised an important point and I am equally sure that that is part of the dialogue we wish to see. Humanitarian aid and, of course, the assistance of those who are suffering in Georgia and the disputed territories—that is, disputed by Russia—will be the subject of keen discussion. I will ensure that the points made by the noble Baroness will be passed on to the Foreign Office.

My Lords, my experience is that the Russians prefer blunt rather than delicate speaking. Could we not point out to them very clearly the entire contradiction between their current behaviour in the south Caucasus and in the north Caucasus where their suppression of minorities in Ingushetia and in Chechnya is causing increasing disorder every week, with assassinations and local conflict? Could we not ask for a dialogue with the Russians about the future of the Caucasian region as a whole as a means of moving forward?

My Lords, the noble Lord has raised the issue of contradiction. Of course, there is a total contradiction in the position taken in respect of the Georgian territorial entity. As recently as February, Russia supported resolutions, which it now denies have effect. Therefore, I can do no more than say that the UK attitude should be, and is, best summed up in the words of your Lordships’ EU Committee report, which said that our policy should be:

“Hard-headed and pragmatic engagement and not isolation”.

I am sure that that is the guiding message of the Ministers attending the various meetings and that all the points raised by the noble Lord are equally in the minds of Foreign Office officials when briefing those Ministers.

My Lords, with the leave of the House my noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon will repeat the Statement on the European Council at a convenient point after 3.30 pm.

That, if the Grand Committee reports that it has considered the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) Order 2009 on Wednesday 24 June, Standing Order 41 (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be dispensed with on Thursday 25 June to allow the motion to approve the Order to be taken before the debate in the name of Baroness Murphy.

That the orders and regulations be referred to a Grand Committee.

This group of amendments concerns the way that post-mortems are conducted, who conducts them and who authorises what can be done during a post-mortem, and attempts to rectify an anomaly relating to retained tissues that has arisen from the Human Tissue Act. First, I thank the Minister for pointing out an error in my drafting of Amendment 42. The amendment refers to page 10, line 3. After the words, “at the end insert” only the second proposed new paragraph should be inserted because the phrase,

“is an appropriately trained pathologist”,

is already in the Bill and should not appear twice. I apologise to the Committee for not having had that corrected before the Marshalled List went into print.

I shall address how a coroner may decide who will undertake a post-mortem. Clause 16(2) states:

“A request under subsection (1) may specify the kind of examination to be made”.

I have a concern, which I have discussed with pathologists from the Royal College of Pathologists, because the coroner is not medically trained. Hence, the requirement to insert the words “after consultation”. The reason is that there has been a change in the way that post-mortems are conducted. The post-mortem in which the body is, essentially, cut up, the organs looked at microscopically and then tissues taken and examined under the microscope is now being supplemented by other investigations using scanning such as CT and MRI. However, I emphasise that these are supplementary examinations, not substitute examinations. The information that you get from them is different and complementary to that from a conventional post-mortem. There have been problems, too, for families, who have the expectation that a scan will somehow be quicker and less invasive than an ordinary, what you might term, old-fashioned post-mortem. These scanning examinations are conducted by a radiologist.

However, there are complexities over the governance of the system because if these examinations are part of an investigation of death, the clinical governance for them should fall under a pathologist, although, of course, because of radioactivity, the examination and the control of the machinery falls to a radiologist, as does the interpretation of the images. That is why it is important that there should be a discussion over the investigation of each case. In an ideal world, the pathologist would supervise everything, but we do not have an infinite number of staff. What matters is that it is not left to a legally qualified coroner and a radiologist on their own but that it involves a pathologist who, ultimately, has the experience and expertise in the governance of the investigation of deaths. In forensic work you can get important additional information from, particularly, CT scanning.

However, there are two aspects to a coroner’s work: first, to ascertain whether the death was unnatural and whether there was foul play of any kind and a case to be pursued; and, secondly, to establish the cause of death where it is a natural death. There needs to be a balanced assessment, on a case-by-case basis, of how each case is best investigated, not only for the most cost-effective way but the most appropriate way to obtain the information needed. The problem is that imaging and microscopic investigation can delay the process.

On Amendment 43, there is currently a grey area in training and post-mortems are essential for the training of the next generation of pathologists. However, it is not currently clear how a coroner can authorise a coroner’s post-mortem to be used for training purposes—certainly not when it goes beyond the training of pathologists and into the training of nurses, mortuary technicians and other people who may be involved, or when it involves the presence of medical students to observe what is happening. Very few post-mortems now occur apart from coroners’ post-mortems and therefore the emphasis on training in these post-mortems has become greater, not less, since the passage of the Human Tissue Act.

Of course, using a coroner’s post-mortem for training goes beyond its current statutory remit. Ideally, you should have full consent from the relatives for everyone who is present at the post-mortem, but the consent process takes time and personnel. It can be very burdensome and there is no real benefit when people are in training and coming along to observe the post-mortem. The process of obtaining consent can be a burden on the relatives and certainly the coroners’ officers are not happy to do this.

There is a need for consistency across the country. At the moment, under different coroners’ jurisdictions, different practices occur and training is happening much more in some than in others. It would seem very sensible that the Chief Coroner should be able to authorise what happens but my amendment makes an assumption that the post-mortem examination is authorised for training purposes unless it is specifically prohibited by the coroner. It would make it much easier and practical to have an assumption that, just as in any teaching hospital, teaching goes on and there are students around, similarly at a post-mortem there would be the ability to train unless of course there was a problem over national security, public health or if somehow the conduct of an inquiry would be jeopardised. It would then seem that the Chief Coroner could produce guidance as to how those who would be in attendance at a post-mortem should be vetted. They might even be required to sign a form to verify that they had no connection whatever with the deceased or with the case involved, but there may be times of course when a clinician who has been involved in looking after a patient should, quite rightly, be present at the post-mortem, because the post-mortem can be the most revealing and important time for them to learn.

Amendment 45 has been tabled because of a number of concerns about the present regulation of the retention of tissue samples from those who have died. The existing legislative framework for the retention of tissue samples fails to serve the interests of families with inherited conditions, especially those who suffer the trauma of a sudden adult death. That is because two legislative systems apply to the retention of post-mortem samples—the Human Tissue Act and the Coroners Act—and they do not currently operate in a joined-up way. This Bill gives us the opportunity to rectify that.

There have been tragic consequences for families where tissue from one family member who died unexpectedly could have been used to identify other family members who are themselves at risk of sudden death. I should declare here that I am grateful to the Foundation for Genomics and Population Health for its help in providing background to the amendment and indeed to the Royal College of Pathologists as well. Noble Lords will be aware that I raised this concern during the passage of the Human Tissue Act and nothing that has happened since that time has allayed the concerns I expressed then. I am most grateful to the Minister for meeting me recently to discuss this matter.

The Human Tissue Act of course was prompted by concerns that health services were failing to respect the interests of families when they retained tissue from dead family members. The Act attempts to right the wrongs that had occurred towards families when tissues had been retained, and regulates retention storage and use of tissue held for DNA analysis for a number of prescribed purposes by introducing a statutory obligation for those wishing to use or store tissue to seek consent from qualifying family members. These purposes include determining the cause of death and obtaining scientific or medical information about a living or deceased person which may be relevant to other persons in the future.

The difficulty is that once the coroner is satisfied with the cause of death that is attributed to the deceased, the coroner’s authority lapses, and the continued retention of any samples after that time will be lawful only if consent has been obtained from qualifying family members as prescribed by the Human Tissue Act. The codes of practice published with that by the Human Tissue Authority prescribe that, in the absence of the necessary consents, tissue should be destroyed up to 10 weeks after any deadline imposed by the coroner has expired. That is the nub of the problem. The coroners and their officers have a statutory responsibility for obtaining consent for continued retention of tissue for which they may be and often are inadequately trained and resourced. Although it is best practice for local protocols to be set up between genetics departments and coroners’ offices, these are rare in practice.

So what happens? The coroner undertakes a post-mortem of an unknown cause of death. On taking the heart out and examining other tissues, he realises that this is a sudden cardiac death. Having taken the heart out, he then has to put it back again, because he cannot retain it. He then asks the relatives about permission to retain the heart and other tissues and then he has to take it out again. It is manifestly important and in the interests of the family that if a young person has had a sudden cardiac death, it is understood as there may be others in the family who are genetically related and are at risk, and whose death can be prevented by appropriate interventions.

Another situation arose recently where, again, the retention of tissues was making progress in the common good difficult. The Department of Health had been supportive of a project trying to understand the incidence of new variant CJD, and it was thought that very small samples from the spleen taken at the coroner’s post-mortems would allow a broad epidemiological study to occur. The problem was that, even though tiny tissue samples were to be taken, consent had to be obtained, and consent was not viewed as a coroner’s task. The coroners’ officers did not want to be part of that process and there was no funding for a whole additional layer to go in to obtain consent, so the project has fallen through. It would have been for the benefit of society, not for the benefit of the individual families, which is why the amendment is worded as it is.

I had also felt it important that the whole supervision of autopsies was done under a trained pathologist and not put out to technicians or others. The reason is that diagnosing the cause of death is incredibly complicated. It is easier to do so when there has been a crime such as a knife crime or a shooting, but unexpected deaths and deaths in hospital can be very complex to diagnose. Someone who has training in pathology but also has full diagnostic skills training is needed in order to integrate all the information that comes together.

Recently there was an NCEPOD report about the variability in the standard of post-mortems. That has arisen because although the Royal College of Pathologists guidance is clear—that guidance sets a high standard for post-mortems—it has not been clear to those undertaking the post-mortem what the role of the coroner’s post-mortem is. Is it simply to establish non-natural causes and rule out foul play, or is it to establish as accurately as possible what the cause of death was, getting good data that are important for the health of the nation and that are certainly important if you are looking at governance systems in somewhere like a hospital, which is a large, complex organisation?

I hope that I have been able to explain some of the background to these amendments and why this gives us an opportunity to rectify an anomaly that has arisen in relation to the Human Tissue Act.

In Scotland the law is different. Blocks and slides of tissue—small blocks, about the size of small dice, and wafer-thin slices of tissue on microscope slides—are deemed to be part of the clinical record. They can therefore be retained without having to get explicit consent from the family for them to be retained if it is deemed to be either in the interests of the family or for the public good. I also think that while, in a theoretical world, it is ideal to obtain consent before you start the post-mortem, these families are often so pole-axed by the death and so overwhelmed by the shock of what has happened that they really cannot cope with being burdened with a lot of complexities, when you do not even know what tissue it might be wise to retain.

I therefore hope that the Bill can be amended to allow a degree of discretion by those undertaking the post-mortem at the time to retain tissues if it is in the interests of the family or of society. I beg to move.

A number of crucial principles arise here. In the investigation of an unforeseen or totally unexpected death, the performance of a post-mortem examination is crucial. Admittedly, the use of imaging techniques by radiologists and the use of magnetic resonance imaging and X-rays play an important part, but they can never themselves substitute for a full and complete post-mortem examination. I suppose that I must declare an interest: although I am not a pathologist, I did some training in neuropathology in the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston back in the 1950s.

The Human Tissue Act, which was very fully debated in this House, arose as a result of what was called the Alder Hey scandal. A large number of human organs had been retained in the Alder Hey hospital and the great majority, if not all, of the families of the patients concerned said that they had not given consent for those organs to be retained.

What many people in the profession, and particularly in the public at large, did not recognise is that, when a post-mortem is performed, organs are examined. You can identify without difficulty someone who has been killed by a bullet, someone who has been killed by a knife wound and sometimes someone who has been killed by direct trauma to the head. There are situations, however, which are extremely complex. We all know about the so-called paper-thin skull syndrome, where an individual suffering a minor head injury as a result of trauma subsequently dies and it turns out that the X-rays demonstrate that the individual had a skull that was so thin that even a minor injury could have produced serious underlying brain damage. There have been cases in which trauma to the chest has led to a person being accused of murder, but when a post-mortem was carried out it was discovered that the individual had had a heart attack due to natural causes or had had an inflammatory condition of the heart—a cardiac inflammation—which might well have been the primary cause of death.

What people did not recognise after the Alder Hey situation was that, when the organs are taken out and examined by the pathologist during a post-mortem, however skilled the forensic pathologist, it is hardly ever possible—except in the most extreme circumstances—for the diagnosis of the cause of death to be made simply by inspection of the organs. The organs have to be retained. They have to be fixed in formalin over a period of two or three weeks. They then have to be subject to careful anatomical dissection, followed by examination of tissue sections under the microscope, before a diagnosis can ever be reached. This is particularly true in the field of neuropathology.

It is just not the case that you can make a diagnosis simply by inspecting organs removed from a body at post-mortem. The organs must be retained. After coroners’ post-mortems, as indicated by the argument put forward so lucidly by my noble friend Baroness Finlay, there is a strong case to be made for retention.

Before the Human Tissue Act, it is true that many pathologists—not necessarily in the coroner situation—would carry out a post-mortem examination and would not specifically, at that time, ask for permission for the organs to be retained. Perhaps they assumed knowledge on the part of relatives that those relatives did not possess; the relatives did not always recognise that the organs had to be retained, fixed and examined before the diagnosis could be made. Since the Human Tissue Act came into force, the organs retained in post-mortems not carried out for forensic purposes can be retained only with specific permission of the relatives.

In the case of coroners’ post-mortems, however, I believe that my noble friend’s case is very powerful, and I hope very much that the Committee will accept Amendment 45. I also confirm her view that such coroners’ post-mortems must be carried out by a pathologist with appropriate forensic training. That is crucial. Otherwise there are likely to be miscarriages of justice. I strongly support her amendment.

I strongly support the sentiments that underlie the interventions of my noble friends Lady Finlay of Llandaff and Lord Walton of Detchant. However, I should like to enter a cautionary note, partly from the very experiences that my noble friend has just referred to at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. For 18 years I served as a Member of Parliament for a Liverpool division and I was involved with the parents of some of the children whose organs and tissues had been retained. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, was right to put his finger on a central question there—that the parents themselves did not know about the retention of those organs. Their permission had never been sought and it came as a terrible shock to them to learn subsequently that the remains of their children had been retained. To go through the funeral services and cremations that subsequently occurred often years after the event and the reopening of the grief involved was a terrible ordeal for those parents. So we must tread sensitively.

However, I think that the case advanced by my noble friends is overwhelmingly correct. If we can derive knowledge by the retention of organs for a reasonable period of time that we could not derive from an autopsy immediately after death—for instance, in the kinds of circumstances that my noble friend Lady Finlay described—then surely any reasonable person would accept the force of that argument.

Often parents are traumatised when their children have died, and that includes the parents of the children who died in Alder Hey hospital itself. I declare a non-financial interest in that two of my own children were treated in that hospital, which is a very fine hospital. Perhaps the worst thing to come out of all that experience was the damage done to its reputation because of decisions that had been taken over the heads of the parents in the belief that the scientists and the medics involved in a sense knew best.

The arguments that have been advanced are rational, reasonable and intelligent. I think that if they are put properly to parents in these circumstances, permission will be given. However, the important thing is not to presume or to press ahead on the presumptive basis that we know better than others. With that brief cautionary note, I conclude my intervention.

I speak in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, in respect not only of Amendment 41 but of Amendment 43 and of Amendment 44, which is in my name and the name of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford and is in this group. I also declare an interest, as I have before, in that my wife is a consultant pathologist in the National Health Service, though not one who does work for the coroners.

Over the last number of years there have been a number of substantial changes in pathology services and the way in which they are conducted which might not come immediately to your Lordships’ minds. The human organs inquiry was referred to earlier. I can remember before that time when I was a young doctor and the Government’s ambition was to ensure that post-mortems were conducted in 10 per cent of all deaths in hospital as a form of audit. Essentially the post-mortem is the final determinant of what has happened, at least in terms of the physical death. Since the human organs inquiry, not only has a figure like that not been remotely achieved but things have gone completely in the other direction, so that now it is extremely difficult to persuade people to have post-mortems conducted. Of course persuasion is not required in coroners’ cases because the decision is a matter for the coroner. Generally, however, the percentage of deaths in hospitals upon which post-mortems are conducted has absolutely plummeted to the point where it is now difficult for trainee pathologists to do enough post-mortems to get proper experience before they qualify as pathologists.

That is why Amendment 43 is relevant. It will ensure that where post-mortems are conducted, and required to be conducted by the coroner, they can be used for training purposes. We are getting to a point where the Royal College of Pathologists has to look at whether it should require so much experience of post-mortems in pathologists’ training. If it were to change, we would not be able to train people as pathologists at all in some cases.

Noble Lords may also not be aware that not all members of the Royal College of Pathologists are medically trained. Nowadays it is possible to be a member of the college with scientific training. One reason for this is that, as we become more specialised in various kinds of investigation, scientific training may enable someone to be acutely aware of particular approaches to an investigation. What they will not be aware of—in contrast to a doctor, who is trained in all aspects of the body and mind—is that various disorders may make their appearance in one part of the body, with symptoms of various kinds, when the origin of the problem is somewhere else. I suspect that a number of noble Lords will sometimes get pains in their legs, only to be told by their general practitioner that the problem is in their back, and what they have is referred pain. Sometimes there are also psychological reasons for sore backs, but that is another matter that I will not go into.

It is frequently the case, in all aspects of medicine, not least pathology, that a proper, full assessment is a time-consuming business, and a medical or other professional colleague may say something like, “Would you cast your eye over this? Do not spend too much time on it, I just want your best guess”. That is not good enough, which is why professional bodies have gone to considerable trouble to set out the fullness required for a proper assessment, whether a post-mortem or another kind of assessment. There is great pressure on people both to do a full assessment because it is the right thing to do, and to do things quickly and briefly because that is where financial and time-resource pressure comes.

I can imagine a situation where coroners would think that they have seen a particular investigation done on a number of occasions, would decide that it is the suitable one to do and would proceed to do it. There may be a concentration on radiological investigations. However, that is not what the Bill says; it refers to a partial post-mortem or a “particular kind of examination”. That could be anything—it could be a fine-needle aspiration or any other kind of investigation. The question is, how does one judge whether a partial post-mortem or another kind of investigation will give an accurate understanding or a partial and misleading understanding of what has gone on?

Some noble Lords have commented that if someone, for example, has a bullet through their head, it is pretty clear how they died. Well, it may or may not be. They may have died before they got the bullet through their head—looking at the brain is not necessarily going to tell you what has happened. There are many cases of people being fished out of water, but drowning did not kill them—they were dead before they hit the water. We have to be very careful in these cases not to take a simplistic view. We ask pathologists to look at these things properly so that we get the proper answer, not just a glance at the problem.

We must be careful. That is why I tabled an amendment very similar to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, saying that if a coroner feels that it might be appropriate to engage in a particular, lesser form of investigation—whether a partial post-mortem or another type of investigation—he or she can do so, but they should ask somebody who is medically trained and qualified. The requirement is that the investigation be conducted not by somebody who is medically qualified—that is clear in the Bill—but by somebody who is appropriately qualified. The appropriate qualification for certain kinds of investigation might be scientific rather than medical.

If we are going to continue to depend on coroners to get to the root of the problem, I am encouraged by the fact that the Government have now included the idea of developing the service of medical examiners, but we must make sure that they are fully used to ensure that the particular and partial forms of investigation that are done are adequate ones that will give us the results that we need.

I rise with considerable trepidation to speak to my two amendments in this group, in view of the characteristically remarkable expertise exhibited by all noble Lords in this debate. Moreover, I claim absolutely no originality whatever for them. I owe them entirely to the work of Dr Brian Iddon in another place, who spoke to them in Committee.

Both amendments are connected to the circumstances in which it is appropriate to substitute a non-invasive method of determining the cause of death and, in particular, the MRI scan. There are circumstances in which families would prefer an MRI scan to an invasive form of post-mortem. Of course, it is important to determine that such a scan would be appropriate and conclusive before permission for it is given by the authorities.

Dr Iddon has noticed that, if you add what is in the Bill to what is in the Explanatory Notes, the Government appear—quite properly, I think—to have given some very powerful support to this method of post-mortem examination. I refer particularly to paragraphs 148 and 150 in the Explanatory Notes. For that reason we have tabled an amendment to Clause 16(3)(a), which reads:

“For the purposes of subsection (1)”,

which concerns the power of a senior coroner to select a suitable practitioner to conduct a post-mortem examination,

“a person is a suitable medical practitioner if he or she—

(a) is a registered medical practitioner”.

Our amendment would add, “including a radiologist”. The effect of this would be to make it clear that radiologists would be recognised as appropriate persons to carry out post-mortem examinations. As I have said, this is stated in paragraph 150 of the Explanatory Notes, which reads:

“Subsection (3) defines a suitable practitioner as either a registered medical practitioner or where a particular form of examination is required, such as an MRI Scan, a practitioner who the Chief Coroner has designated is suitable to carry out such examinations”.

In other words, what is sought here is the incorporation into the Bill only of what is in the Explanatory Notes.

A similar situation applies to the amendment that we have tabled to the interpretation section, Clause 39. Here, we seek to insert between the definition of “person” and the definition of “prosecution authority” the expression,

“‘post mortem examination’ includes both invasive and non-invasive examination”.

This would make it absolutely clear that non-invasive examination is accepted as an appropriate examination in appropriate circumstances.

I, too, stand amazed at the expertise that we have heard from so far in this debate. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and other speakers for leading this important discussion on post-mortems. It may help if I start by giving a few broad, crude figures.

In England and Wales in 2008, there was a total of 108, 360 post-mortems out of a total of 234,784 deaths reported to coroners; that is, 46.2 per cent. In those cases where an inquest was held, 92 per cent involved a post-mortem being conducted. In those cases where an inquest was not held, 39.2 per cent involved a post-mortem being conducted.

I shall do my best to explain how the system for post-mortems is expected to work under the Bill and to respond to the points raised by these serious amendments. The decision whether to request a post-mortem examination will continue to remain a matter for the coroner’s judicial discretion. A coroner will also have discretion over whether a particular kind of examination is needed, including non-invasive examinations. I recognise straightaway how important the possibility of non-invasive examinations is to some faith groups, and I shall say a little more about those examinations later.

Clause 35(1)(b ) sets out that the Lord Chancellor may make regulations,

“for regulating the practice and procedure at or in connection with examinations under section 16”,

which deals with post-mortems. These regulations will be drafted with input from all those with an interest and will cover procedural matters connected to requests for post-mortems, including with whom the coroner should consult before requesting a post-mortem—for example, the pathologist or particular specialist, the medical examiner, and not least the bereaved family.

While respecting the judicial independence of the coroner, the Chief Coroner may also issue guidance to address the considerable variations in the number of post-mortems commissioned by individual coroners regarding the deaths that are reported to them, which range from 26 per cent in some areas to 69 per cent in others. There are considerable variations in the types of deaths reported to coroners, which we shall address in Clause 18. Therefore, these figures should be treated with caution. We anticipate that guidance about post-mortems would address the circumstances in which a non-invasive post-mortem might be appropriate and those cases which might warrant a kind of “post-mortem plus”. This might be appropriate when family members have concerns about a possible congenital defect if one or more family members die at an unexpectedly young age, which a routine post-mortem may not reveal.

It is expected that the new medical examiners, whose primary responsibility is to confirm the cause of death entered by doctors on medical certificates of cause of death, will contribute to the decision-making process in the following ways. First, a coroner may be unsure whether a post-mortem or a related scientific examination is required in a particular case. In this circumstance, the coroner will be able to consult the local medical examiner for advice in the same way that he or she may consult the medical examiner about other issues relating to the deceased person’s medical cause of death. Alternatively, a medical examiner may refer one of their own cases to a coroner because, after consulting the treating doctor, he or she is unable to confirm the cause of death given on the death certificate. In making the referral, the medical examiner may suggest a particular kind of scientific examination which may assist, or may be consulted by the coroner about the sort of examination that the medical examiner would recommend.

We agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, that there needs to be a close working partnership between coroners and medical examiners. The difficulty we have with his Amendment 44 is that it would require the coroner to consult with the medical examiner in certain circumstances. We believe that on balance such an approach would be unnecessarily rigid and could lead to delays in arranging post-mortem examinations, which could in turn lead to delays for families in making funeral arrangements. Everyone agrees that such delays would be undesirable and that accordingly it might be better to leave such matters to the discretion of the coroner. I shall set out in more detail the relationship between the coroner and the medical examiner systems during the debate on the next group of amendments on medical examiners.

To attempt further to reassure the noble Lord about the improvements we expect in post-mortems, I shall say a brief word about training, on which the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, concentrated in her remarks. At present, coroners receive training on the medical aspects of their role, particularly when they first take up post. This will continue in a reformed system. Once the new regulations in respect of post-mortems have been devised, training for coroners will be arranged to ensure that these regulations are understood and are properly applied under the reformed system.

Given these intentions, and notwithstanding that coroners will retain their discretionary powers, we would expect over time to see greater consistency in the commissioning of scientific examinations. Bereaved families and those who represent their views and interests have told us that this reduction in the postcode lottery is particularly important for them.

I turn to some of the specific points raised in the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. We are concerned that her Amendment 42 would place restrictions on which members of the medical profession could carry out post-mortem examinations. Frankly, this could be wasteful of pathologists’ time by requiring them to supervise procedures that they have no need to supervise. The noble Baroness will be more aware than I that there is already a shortage of pathologists in some parts of the country, particularly in some specialisms. This proposal would spread their resources even more thinly. I listened of course to her comments on the phrase “registered medical practitioner”, which she believes is a loose description, and I hope that can offer some reassurance.

It is absolutely not intended that the standard of post-mortems will decline, or that those who are not properly qualified will conduct examinations, whatever form they take. I must emphasise that in most circumstances it is expected that a pathologist would conduct a post-mortem, particularly if it were a traditional invasive post-mortem; but we have heard that there are other types of post-mortem examination which it would be appropriate for a registered medical practitioner who is not a pathologist to carry out—for example, radiologists who carry out MRI scans. In our view, it would be an inefficient use of valuable pathologist resources to require, for example, the presence of a pathologist to supervise a qualified radiologist carrying out a post-mortem by way of MRI scan.

Post-mortems are certainly not tasks that we would envisage being carried out by someone fresh out of medical school, although it is of course possible that some routine functions of assistance to the pathologist could be carried out by someone recently qualified, particularly as part of further training. Noble Lords may point to subsection (3)(b) of Clause 16 as a way of enabling persons other than pathologists to carry out post-mortem examinations. However, this provision is not designed to enable the Chief Coroner to designate registered medical practitioners to carry out particular kinds of examination; it is certainly not intended to use the provision to enable a range of persons with no suitable qualifications or relevant skills to carry out examinations or tests on the body of a deceased person. The provision is there to enable the Chief Coroner to designate practitioners from outside the medical profession who may be called upon to provide expert advice, such as toxicological scientists or forensic archaeologists. I want to reassure the House that post-mortem examinations will be carried out only by someone who has the necessary medical qualifications or has been approved by the Chief Coroner.

I turn to Amendment 43. We can see value in making provision in the underpinning regulations or the guidance mentioned earlier about training provisions for trainee pathologists, perhaps based around their attendance at and participation in post-mortem examinations. I agree that this should be considered further in the context of that work.

On Amendment 45, about which the noble Lord, Lord Walton, also addressed the Committee, I am of course aware of the noble Baroness’s very long interest and expertise in the subject of tissue retention, and I acknowledge her reference to the different approach that is taken in Scotland. However, we do not believe that this is the time or the legislative vehicle in which to bring about the changes that she may wish to see, all of which were debated in this House some five years ago when the Human Tissue Bill was before us. As noble Lords may be aware, the Human Tissue Authority is currently preparing new codes of practice dealing with the handling and retention of human tissue, including the handling and retention of samples taken during coronial post-mortems conducted by pathologists. Officials from the Ministry of Justice have contributed to the review of the codes and we would prefer to see how the revised codes of practice bed down before we take any action.

I refer noble Lords to paragraph 37 of our published draft charter for bereaved people:

“Sometimes, organs or tissues are retained for additional examination. In this instance, the coroner should reach advance agreement with the appropriate next of kin as to what should happen when they are no longer required for coroners’ purposes. The coroner should convey the wishes of the next of kin to the relevant pathologist”.

We believe that such a statement is Human Tissue Act compliant and that it provides scope for families to agree to organs or tissues being retained indefinitely. We will also be making regulations under Clause 35(3)(g) in respect of the preservation, retention, release or disposal of bodies, including body parts. There will therefore be ample opportunity to consider these issues further with everyone who has an interest, and this debate will be taken into full account as part of that process.

I move on to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, and I hope I can put his mind at rest that they are already catered for in the Bill. His Amendment 41A seeks to add radiologists to the list of persons who are automatically allowed to conduct post-mortem examinations under Clause 16(3)(a). My understanding is that all practising radiologists should be registered medical practitioners and therefore I reassure him that they are already covered by that clause.

Moving on to the noble Lord’s second amendment, we do not believe it necessary to state in the legislation that a post-mortem examination includes both invasive and non-invasive procedures. This is permissible under the Bill as drafted. However, for the record, the provisions that refer to post-mortems do indeed apply to both invasive and non-invasive procedures.

More generally, as noble Lords will be aware, the Government are committed to pursuing the increased use of non-invasive MRI scans as a method of carrying out post-mortem examinations. This measure has been particularly welcomed by members of the Jewish and Muslim faiths, both of which require the body not to be tampered with after death and for burial to take place, wherever possible, within 24 hours of death. At present, scanning facilities for those who have died are available in only small pockets of the country, and under the current system coroners are prevented from moving the body outside their jurisdiction or an adjoining jurisdiction. Clause 17 allows bodies to be moved anywhere to enable the appropriate examination to take place. I am pleased to say that in the current system coroners in the Manchester area have led the way, in conjunction with local health providers, in making non-invasive post-mortems available to the communities they serve. We await the outcome of Department of Health research into the full effectiveness of such procedures, especially in the detection of particular causes of death, but we are already encouraging coroners in other parts of the country to engage with their local health services to establish whether there is a possibility of making use of local scanning facilities.

I hope that I have been able to give some reassurance to noble Lords whose amendments we have debated this afternoon and I look forward to hearing from them now.

I am grateful to the Minister for his full reply. I must begin by saying that I am not totally reassured, and I believe that this is something that we need to continue to discuss and came back to on Report. I am also grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. There are a few points I would like to make, just to underline my reservations. I assure the House that I will be as brief as I can on these.

It is true that there are groups in society that do not want delays and who are worried about the body being tampered with after death. However, I think we should not be under any illusion that the non-invasive MRI is a substitute for a full post-mortem. It is not: the trials that have been done demonstrate that one gets different bits of information. I am concerned that the public may be feeling misled. It is also quite expensive to undertake these investigations, so there is therefore a problem of cost. Moreover, the machines in use for post-mortems either must be dedicated machines, or—if they are also patient machines—they may be taking up patient investigation time.

My main concerns relate to the post-mortem process being supervised by an appropriately trained pathologist. As the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, already said, there are many people who are members of the Royal College of Pathologists. Some of them are chemists, some are haematologists, but very few of them would be able to undertake a post-mortem. I am a registered medical practitioner of many years standing, but I would not be able to do a post-mortem with any degree of competence. It would be completely fallacious to pretend that I could.

To do a post-mortem properly, one needs to be highly skilled with a great deal of training. My amendment does not state that the post-mortem itself has to be done start to finish by somebody with that level of training, but it says that it must be supervised by somebody with that level of training. Indeed, part of the initial preparation of the body and the closing-up afterwards does not have to be done by somebody with a very high degree of training at all. Certainly, however, somebody has to be available to come in and out to make sure that the standard of post-mortem is high. If the standard is not high, it is dangerously misleading and can create a false sense of reassurance. I have a concern that, when we may be faced with, for example, convictions of corporate manslaughter that could relate to deaths, it would be very important that a high quality of post-mortem is undertaken to provide the evidence to underpin, uphold or refute such a conviction.

Will the Minister say whether there is a need for primary legislation to amend the Human Tissue Act, and to allow the Human Tissue Authority to change the codes of practice to extend the length of time and the amount of tissue that can be retained while consent is being sought? My understanding—but I may be wrong here—is that it would require primary legislation for a step in that process.

I would also like to return later on to training—but I will not push the Minister on this now. If we do not train pathologists adequately, and we do not have a training environment created around post-mortems that are happening, we will indeed have an extending shortage of pathologists, and those we have will be inadequately trained. An inadequately trained pathologist would probably be more dangerous than not having enough pathologists around altogether, because there may be undue weight put on an opinion which is not appropriately or fully informed. That is another point to which I would like to refer after this debate.

My last point relates to the retention of tissues and justice for families. It may be that there is a conviction over the death of a child that is inappropriate, because it was not the parents who were the cause of death, and the child had died naturally. We have already seen that happen.

In the future, the opposite may occur, too; that there is a child’s death and the family is acquitted. The family is asked whether it consents to tissues being retained, but of course it says no and wants the tissues to be cremated. If there is a subsequent death in that family and the tissues have gone completely, there will be no way of linking across. We have an increasing range of chemicals that can be used in poisoning, and increasing access to all kinds of substances that are toxic and can be used. Not only gross external blows may be the cause of death, and I worry that, by not retaining even the blocks and slides, we may not do justice to the dead child or may commit a gross injustice through the wrongful conviction of parents who, acutely bereaved, are not in a position to argue their case. I would like to discuss with the Minister outside the confines of this debate some of the issues arising from the Human Tissue Act and whether primary legislation is required. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in another place, entitled “European Council”.

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on the European Council held in Brussels last Thursday and Friday, which I attended with my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary and which focused on the intensive economic co-operation needed within Europe and across the world as we follow through the agreements made at the London G20 summit and ensure the co-operation needed in economic and environmental policies.

The Council expressed its determination to continue playing a leading role at the global level, and called on its international partners to implement fully the commitments made at the London G20 summit: in particular, by providing additional resources to international financial institutions and accelerating the reform of the financial and regulatory framework. Member states have already stated their readiness to provide fast temporary support up to a total of €75 billion. The Council also concluded that member states stand ready to take their share of further financing needs agreed by the London summit.

For many months, the UK Government have rightly been at the forefront of proposals to strengthen international regulation. That is why we have taken forward Lord Turner’s report. Radical proposals for the reform of regulation were a key outcome of our G20 summit in London in April. With so much of Britain’s financial sector’s activities linked to Europe and the rest of the world, and with cross-border investments between the UK and the rest of Europe alone amounting to more than €250 billion every year, Britain needs greater European as well as wider international cross-border supervision.

So in line with the recommendations of the reports from Lord Turner and de Larosière, the Council agreed the principles on which a new international framework for the regulation and supervision of financial services in Europe would be delivered: first, the better early warning of financial sector risks through the creation of a new European Systemic Risk Board to complement the work of the IMF and the Financial Stability Board and to help to identify problems early and thus prevent future crises from developing; secondly, and as proposed by the review from Lord Turner—which was itself welcomed by most people in this House—agreement to develop a strengthened and more detailed set of European rules for the single market in financial services, measures to raise the quality and consistency of supervision across Europe, to ensure that common rules are enforced, and to improve co-ordination between national supervisors, and measures for mediation between the supervisors of institutions with operations in more than one member state; and, thirdly, a clear commitment from the Council, which,

“stresses that decisions taken by the European Supervisory Authorities should not impinge in any way on the fiscal responsibilities of Member States”.

The principles agreed at the Council provide the foundation for a new financial supervisory architecture, with the aim of protecting our financial systems from future risks and helping to ensure that the international regulatory failures of the past will not be repeated.

The G20 decided that countries should take similar action on economic policies in what is recognised by the leader of the Opposition as a Europe-wide recession. While the Council acknowledged that the co-ordinated measures taken so far in support of the banking sector and the wider real economy,

“have been successful in preventing financial meltdown and in beginning to restore the prospects for real growth”,

the Council also emphasised the,

“imperative for the EU to continue to develop and implement the measures required to respond to the crisis”.

While it is absolutely right that we maintain our commitment to medium-term fiscal sustainability, it is equally vital, as the Council reiterated, that we remain determined,

“to do what is necessary to restore jobs and growth”.

Recognising the worldwide nature of the financial crisis and that around 1 billion people face poverty, malnutrition and hunger, the European Council also decided that countries should continue to pursue together the millennium development goals and co-operate on the environment.

On climate change, the Council agreed:

“The time has now come for the international community to make the commitments needed to limit global warming to under 2°C”,

and that a coherent response to the challenges posed by both climate change and the economic and financial crisis would, by enabling the move to a low-carbon economy, offer new opportunities for jobs and growth. The Council repeated its call for all parties to co-operate in reaching an ambitious and comprehensive agreement in Copenhagen later this year and to accelerate the pace of negotiations at forthcoming high level international meetings, including the G8 and the Major Economies Forum next month.

The Council agreed that both developed and developing countries should contribute finance in the fight against climate change and that such global burden sharing should be strictly on the basis of two principles: the ability to pay and the scale of emissions.

When the Council met in December, we agreed that we would seek to provide the legal assurances that Ireland needed to move forward on the Lisbon treaty—on taxation, defence, the right to life, education and the family. However, we were equally clear that, in doing so, there could be no change or amendment to the treaty, only clarification of what it will and will not do. That is exactly the purpose of the guarantees that the Council has agreed for Ireland. To be absolutely clear, the Heads of State or Government have declared:

“the Protocol will in no way alter the relationship between the EU and its Member States. The sole purpose of the Protocol will be to give full Treaty status to the clarifications set out in the Decision to meet the concerns of the Irish people. The Protocol will clarify but not change either the content or the application of the Treaty of Lisbon”.

Its content is fully compatible with the treaty of Lisbon and will not necessitate any re-ratification of that treaty. Those guarantees will be set out in a protocol only at the time of the next accession treaty. This will be specific to Irish concerns. Its status will be no different from our own protocols and will be subject to ratification in this House.

On Burma, the Council marked the 64th birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi by expressing its deep concern at her continued imprisonment, as the Burmese regime still pursues its absurd and contemptible sham trial. The Council called for her “immediate and unconditional release” and agreed that if this does not happen, Europe,

“will respond with additional targeted measures”,

against the Burmese regime. It is absolutely right that we stand ready to step up sanctions. We will also work with Asia to further increase international pressure and I hope that the Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will be able to visit Burma soon.

On Iran, the Council,

“stressed that the outcome of the Iranian elections should reflect the aspirations and choices of the people of Iran”.

The onus is on Iran to show the Iranian people that recent elections have been credible and that the repression and curtailment of democratic rights that we have seen in the last few days will cease. We, too, have an expectation of Iran; that it meets its obligations as a member of the international community. I hope that Iran will respond to our efforts to achieve a genuine dialogue.

It is therefore with regret that I should inform the House that Iran yesterday took the unjustified step of expelling two British diplomats over allegations which are absolutely without foundation. In response to this action, we informed the Iranian ambassador earlier today that we would expel two Iranian diplomats from their embassy in London. I am disappointed that Iran placed us in this position, but we will continue to seek good relations with Iran and to call for the regime to respect the human rights and democratic freedoms of the Iranian people.

The Council unanimously agreed that it intends to nominate José Manuel Barroso to lead the next European Commission and, as we look forward to the next five years, this Council has put in place the building blocks for the Europe of the future. It is by co-operating on the basis of our interdependence that we achieve more. By engaging and working in partnership with Europe, and globally, we take forwards our commitments from the G20 in April. By putting Britain at the heart of Europe—not on the sidelines, with Europe's single market worth over £10 trillion—we in Britain can responsibly deliver security, new jobs, prosperity and a strong future for all our people. I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement. I shall begin by exploring some of the foreign policy issues discussed. Were there discussions in Brussels about the strategic aims of action in Afghanistan? The summit conclusions call for Afghan election candidates this August to produce manifestos. Worthy though it is, door-to-door leafleting is rather more perilous in parts of Afghanistan than some parties in Brussels may realise. Will the noble Baroness tell the House of any additional troop commitments made by member states?

On Pakistan, we welcome financial assistance for displaced people. We also note the warm words about possible reconstruction aid. Is the noble Baroness able to give any details on that? Has any progress been made towards a free trade accord between the EU and Pakistan?

Finally, the decision on how Iran is governed is a matter for the Iranian people. But does the noble Baroness agree that when we say “the Iranian people” we mean the people, not those who carry guns? The summit was trenchant in its condemnation of violence against protesters and journalists. In view of the singling out of Britain, quite absurdly, as a promoter of violence in Iran, was any solidarity expressed with the UK? If so, what practical form will that take? We support the measured but firm response of the Government to these provocations. The summit declaration is vague on Iran's nuclear programme, which is surely an extremely dangerous issue of foreign and security policy. Did the Prime Minister argue that, if Iran does not negotiate, Europe must consider sanctions? If so, what was the response to that, given the major trade links with Iran of some member states?

On the economy, the Council reiterated,

“its strong commitment to sound public finances”.

Did the Prime Minister have his fingers crossed behind his back when he signed up to that? Will the noble Baroness confirm that, after 12 years of a Labour Government, Britain now has the highest youth unemployment in Europe? Will she also confirm that Britain is heading for the biggest deficit in the G20? Were Mrs Merkel and other leaders queuing up for a teach-in on the so-called British miracle?

Despite the errors of recent years, no sector is more important to the British economy than finance. I declare an interest as a director of companies regulated by the FSA. Does the noble Baroness agree that no other EU member state has comparable skills in or reliance on this sector? We on this side welcomed the assurances given by the Prime Minister on the nature of proposed EU financial regulation. On 9 June in the Financial Times the noble Lord, Lord Myners, said,

“national supervision must be pre-eminent”.

The Prime Minister told Parliament that he did not want any new body to have powers over national supervisors. So why does the communiqué say that the decision-making powers of the European System of Financial Supervisors will be “binding”? Why did President Sarkozy say that Mr Brown had performed a sea-change? Take my word for it, that is French for a U-turn.

Is it not the case that, as President Sarkozy also boasted, new EU institutions end up doing much more than foreseen? What assurances can the noble Baroness give Parliament on the record that the City of London was wrong to warn that we now have,

“a situation where binding arbitration dictated by Brussels could overrule the UK’s FSA”?

The City has precious few friends in other EU states and many envious rivals. It would be a disaster to find national control ceded in a core area of national competitiveness.

Finally, we go from a worrying sea-change to the shabby stitch-up on the Lisbon treaty. The presidency boasted that the deal reached,

“will not lead to a re-opening of ratification”.

It declared:

“This is a major success and good news for the whole of Europe”.

We hear daily lectures about the need for engagement with the people, for constitutional renewal and for modernisation. What could be more divorced from the people, more old fashioned in its top-down view of what the people can be allowed to do, and more redolent of the old, broken way of doing things in Europe than this collective boast that denying most of Europe a vote and forcing those who do not vote as they are told is a “major success” for Europe?

The presidency declares that the decision on Ireland is a legally binding decision of the Heads of State. But how is it legally binding and, if it is, why is it not being brought to this Parliament? Indeed, why is it not being put to the British people? Why are the Irish people being forced to give their view twice when the British people have not been asked for their view once? The Prime Minister seems to be assuming that when the next accession treaty comes before Parliament—in this case for Croatia—those promised guarantees for the Irish, at present without any legal validity whatever, will at that point be metamorphosed into full legal changes in the Lisbon treaty and that it will all go through on the nod, along with the accession provisions. It is as if the Irish pumpkin is going to be turned into a golden Lisbon coach.

However, that is a very bold assumption. Many people will see it as another attempted sleight of hand to avoid parliamentary or public approval for a thoroughly unpopular policy. The Irish people are being given alterations to the negotiated package while the British people are told they have to swallow it whole and have no say in any of it.

I wonder where constitutional renewal is in this. Four years ago, at the last general election, the party opposite and the Liberal Democrats gave the British people a solemn pledge in their manifestos that they would allow the British people a say on the Lisbon treaty in a referendum. They did so, of course, for the cynical reason that they wanted to stifle public debate on the future course of Europe at that general election. They gave their word, and then they broke their word. That was an act of dishonour by the leaders of those parties that nothing can erase. We will never renew politics unless we redeem that honour, so I say to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and those on the Liberal Democrat Benches that they may howl to the moon about what they call establishment parties; but in Europe they are the establishment—a closed establishment—which is deaf to the desire of people to be heard and blind to the immense challenges of the 21st century that call for a new, less introverted Europe which is ready to renew and reform itself. You cannot pose as democrats and renewers at home and be gainsayers abroad.

My Lords, for the first five minutes of the response of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, I was thinking, “My goodness, Tom is becoming a real statesman”, and then in the last two minutes he slipped into some old bad habits. If one is talking about honour, I say that it is dishonourable to fight a European election campaign with the body language and every statement putting forward an anti-Europe position—indeed, a “withdraw from Europe” position—but with fingers crossed behind the back and actually meaning, “We would stay in Europe anyway”. I do not need lectures from the Tory Front Bench about honour.

In terms of being part of the European establishment, the Liberal Democrats certainly are in this respect: we are now part of a group in Europe far larger than the rag, tag and bob-tail group that the Conservatives have associated themselves with in the European Parliament. Therefore, to any outside interest groups that want Britain’s interests defended within Europe and their views put forward in the European Parliament with some idea of their being listened to, I say that I would have thought the Liberal Democrats were a better channel now than the Conservatives with their other fringe friends.

As far as the Statement is concerned, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was quite right to congratulate the Government on their measured but correct response to Iran; I associate myself with that. The accusations of the Iranian Government are quite absurd and it is pleasing to see yet another dictatorship in trouble blaming the BBC for its troubles. It sounds to me like the BBC World Service is carrying on its historic mission of telling the truth to oppressed peoples, and we congratulate it on this.

On the financial issues, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has drawn attention to something that has been worrying me. I was at a briefing this morning on what the Americans are doing about financial regulation. It is important, and the Prime Minister is to be congratulated on the co-ordination that he has achieved internationally, but it seems that we are now getting three different levels of approach to regulation from the United States, the European Commission and the UK. That does not augur well for the future of a global response to financial regulation. A worry has been expressed by the City of London that it will be overregulated by a commission that does not have either the same experience or the same priorities as we do in keeping London as a major world financial centre.

On climate change, we all welcome the new sense of urgency but, again, I saw a programme the other day about the Obama Administration’s investment in the new technologies that will be needed to reach climate change objectives, and I wonder where in Britain—indeed in Europe, but certainly in Britain—are the new industries being brought forward to meet that demand. Will we find that, to meet those objectives, we have to import technologies from the United States and other parts of Europe, or indeed from China?

On Ireland, I think the truth is that the Irish people will be looking again in a colder, harsher world than when they made their first decision and this time they will not have the help of an expatriate millionaire to influence their decision. I hope that we can move on quickly to the ratification of the Lisbon treaty so that Europe can get on with its real business of economic recovery, the challenge of climate change and the war against organised crime and terrorism. That is the real agenda, and I hope that the Government ignore the Conservative Party playing party games and keep to that agenda.

My Lords, both noble Lords have mentioned the European mainstream. As a member of this Government, I am proud to be part of the mainstream of the European Union, and in that mainstream I would include the Party of European Socialists, the European People’s Party and the European Democratic Party. I would not include the “rag, tag and bobtail” parties, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, called the loose grouping that the Conservative Party now forms part of. As part of that mainstream we can influence debate and, more importantly, decisions, and it is vital that our country remains part of it.

The noble Lord, Lord McNally, spoke quite properly of Afghanistan. The Council delivered political backing at the highest level for a substantial EU contribution in support of the elections, among other priorities. It has committed €35 million to the elections and it is planning to send an elections observation mission to help to ensure their credibility. That is nothing to do with putting things through doors in Afghanistan; it is about real help to ensure that the elections are properly managed. As I understand it, though, the summit did not speak of troops in any form.

On Pakistan, the summit established a long-term strategic partnership to tackle issues of violent extremism, security and democratic governance, and the key outcomes included a comprehensive trade package and €129 million in additional funding, including €72 million for humanitarian assistance. I am not sure what the comprehensive trade package actually included, but I will come back to the noble Lord in writing.

I am grateful to both noble Lords for their support for the action that the Government have taken in relation to Iran. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, asked whether the situation there changed our approach to engagement over the nuclear issue. The implications are not yet clear but there are serious matters, particularly the nuclear issue, that will have to be addressed very soon. An invitation has been made to Iran and there is a genuine opportunity for it to engage constructively with the E3+3.

Both noble Lords are rightly concerned about financial issues. The Government have not performed a U-turn on financial regulations. From the beginning we accepted the broad thrust of La Rosiere’s proposals, but we were concerned about the detail. We believe that the framework is now in place and that important changes were brought about at the summit as a result of the Government’s negotiations. The UK supports improved co-ordination between national supervisors. Mediation clearly has a role to play where there are disagreements to be resolved between home and host supervisors, as in the case of Icesave. Both the JEC conclusions and ECOFIN of 9 June made clear that any mediation will not impinge on national fiscal accountability. We regarded that as a key issue, and it has been agreed by the summit.

The noble Lord, Lord McNally, suggested that there would be too many approaches to regulation and that the City would be overregulated. I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, about the pre-eminence of the City and its importance not just to the people of this country but to the world. The EU proposals on financial regulations follow and take full account of the London and Washington summit conclusions. The Commission will publish legislative proposals this autumn, and the Government will continue to represent fully the special position held by the City as a global financial centre.

I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Lord, Lord McNally; now that the issue of the Irish referendum has been considered by the summit, I hope that, whatever the result, the European Union can move on to the real agenda that it should be addressing, including climate change. There is a referendum in Ireland because that is what the Government of Ireland wish, not because it has been imposed by the EU. It is entirely up to the people of Ireland. The protocol will be legally binding when ratified. Ratification will take place following a debate in this House and the other House at the same time as the next accession to the European Parliament is considered in both Houses. That will be the accession of either Croatia, or possibly Iceland. The Government are not trying to stifle discussion on the protocol in this House. It will take place as a matter of course.

Finally, in response to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, my noble friend Lord Drayson is actively engaged in ensuring that the new industries are there, the training is taking place, the investment is being made, so that the people of this country can benefit from the new industries, when and as necessary.

My Lords, at the time of the Irish no vote in the referendum, a senior official in Brussels told me that if referenda had been held across Europe, at least seven nations, including France and Germany, would have voted no. When is Europe going to address its democratic deficit?

My Lords, that was the view of one official. I respect that official’s views, but I am sure there are many different views across the European Union. The democratic deficit is constantly addressed; we have a European Parliament that is democratically elected. I am sad, like other Members of this House, that so few people bother, as it were, to vote in European elections, but we do have a democratically elected European Parliament. That is what ensures that there is no democratic deficit.

My Lords, is not the opposition Front Bench’s discomfiture about the Irish protocol due to the fact that it is likely to have shot the Conservative Party’s fox and it is now going to be up the creek without a paddle?

On the economic side, is it not now as plain as a pikestaff that there is no such thing as a totally independent economic state? Does my noble friend agree that the Government’s pragmatic approach is well illustrated by page 7 of the Council’s statement dealing with the new European systemic risk board, of which the UK will be fully a part? The members of the General Council of the European Central Bank will elect the chair of the board and the ECB will have the lead role in implementation. This is surely an historic event.

My Lords, the issue of the ECB, to which my noble friend alludes, is a testament to the way in which the Government are part of the mainstream. Before this summit and before ECOFIN, it was not going to be the General Council of the ECB that elected the president of this new supervisory body; it was just going to be the European Central Bank. We wanted to widen this election to ensure that we had a voice and to ensure that the City of London, through the British Government, had a voice. It is a testament to the fact that we, the British Government, are in the mainstream of the European Union.

My Lords, we welcome the Statement’s discussion of the establishment of the election observer group for Afghanistan. That is very good news indeed. Will it be a comprehensive and numerically strong group whose security is properly guaranteed while it deploys in Afghanistan? The confidence-building that the group will bring about will be enormously important in elections that are going to be, I hope, more peaceful in outcome than what we have seen in Iran.

My other question is about Pakistan. It is not entirely clear to me what the position is following the noble Baroness’s response to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, about the additional €120 million funding. Traditionally, the EU’s aid to Afghanistan has been appallingly meagre. In 2002 to 2006, it provided only €125 million in aid. Will the amounts that she has mentioned take the form of aid or some other kind of assistance?

Finally, in our deliberations in the European Council, will we put forward the idea that the EU should appoint a very senior regional envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan who can work alongside Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to the region, so that we can bring a bit more gravitas and clout to that region?

My Lords, I regret that I will have to write to the noble Baroness on all three of the points she mentioned. I agree that EU aid to Pakistan has been meagre in the past, but I think that the new allocation of money at this summit will redress the situation somewhat. However, I shall certainly come back to her on Afghanistan and on a regional envoy to the region.

My Lords, I trust the noble Baroness will not mind if I suggest that she was perhaps a little disingenuous when she suggested that the European Parliament carries any form of democratic legitimacy. After all, the majority of law which is now imposed on this country is proposed in secret by the European Commission and passed in secret by the Council, and this Parliament can do nothing about it.

As to the Statement itself, perhaps I may put two questions to the noble Baroness. First, on the new European supervisory powers over our financial services, will the Financial Services Authority be supreme in those areas or will the new EU bodies be supreme? It really does not help to be told in the Statement that there will be no fiscal change, because if these new European regulations drive our leading City practitioners overseas, surely that will have a devastating effect on our financial and therefore fiscal position. Therefore, can she confirm who will be the boss in future—the British Government and the City of London or this new financial supervisory set-up?

Finally, perhaps I may remind the noble Baroness of the words of Mr Jens-Peter Bonde, the leading Danish politician, who has said that all the guarantees given to Denmark when Denmark was forced to vote again on the Maastricht treaty have been broken. All those guarantees have been broken. So, really, it comes down to the question of what is the status of this protocol. Let us suppose that there is not a treaty of accession for Croatia. Where will Ireland be left then? Surely the most monstrous deception is being practised on the Irish people and I very much regret that the British Government have gone along with it.

My Lords, on democratic deficits, I respectfully point out that 80 per cent of European legislation, I think, is now made by co-decision. As the noble Lord well knows, co-decision means that it is agreed not only by the European Parliament, in which we have democratically elected representatives, but by the European Council, which is made up of members of this Government. So there is a very strong democratic element in the way in which European laws are made. The European Commission only proposes.

As for the views of Jens-Peter Bonde, I have long known Mr Bonde and his anti-European views. However, he has always sent his children to a European school in Brussels. I think that that is an interesting point, since there seems to be something to do with the European Union that he likes. I note his views on Denmark but I have more trust in Europe and the institutions of the European Union than he does.

I do not think that there has been any kind of monstrous—I cannot recall the word that the noble Lord used.

Conspiracy.

I do not think that there has been any conspiracy against the people of Ireland. It is the Government of Ireland who wanted this to happen. If it is the Government of Ireland, then it is for us as partners in the European Union to assist them. That is exactly what we were doing.

I will read out the notes that I have on supervision. I will also get back to the noble Lord in writing and put a copy in the Library. It is clear that the heads of the Council agreed to limit the scope of the binding mediation powers of the new European authorities to two areas. First, they will ensure that the rules are followed and that Community law is implemented and enforced. This strengthens the working of the single market, which is a key priority for industry. Secondly, they will deal with disagreements between home and host state supervisors. This will improve single-market protections for cross-border banking, in particular where the UK is a host to branches of banks supervised elsewhere.

The Government are confident that this will not harm the City of London. The Government, in common with all Members of this House, want to safeguard the future of the City of London for the benefit of the people of this country.

My Lords, as a former Member of the European Parliament, I find it disheartening that at each election there is a further drop in participation. We must face the truth that the European Parliament has the support of just over 40 per cent of the electorate in Europe—less in the United Kingdom. It has no democratic mandate, and the public in Europe do not identify with the European Parliament or with MEPs. Is it not time that we gave consideration to maintaining a European Union run by the European Commission alongside a Council of Ministers who would be responsible to their national parliaments?

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord’s concern about the decline in the number of people voting in European elections. This is a very serious matter. I also agree that the public do not identify either with the European Parliament or with other European institutions. I do not, however, agree with the remedy that he suggests. I am sure that many noble Lords will share the concerns expressed and it is up to all of us to try to remedy the situation. We have another five years to do that. Let us hope that at the next European Parliament elections, more than 50 per cent of the electorate will vote.

My Lords, many of us agree strongly that a coherent, transparent single market in financial services in Europe will do a great deal to benefit London, provided that the rules are developed strongly in a global context and recognise the position of London. Does my noble friend recognise that the proposals by the Commission in the draft directive on alternative investment fund managers do not greatly strengthen one’s confidence that that perspective is always at the forefront of the Commission’s mind?

On the question of fiscal responsibility, I welcome the statement in the presidency conclusions that fiscal responsibility remains firmly with member states. However, looking carefully at the conclusions, it is also clear that squaring the circle of a firm supervisory power in Europe with the fiscal responsibility of member states is not easy. Does the noble Baroness also recognise that paragraph 22 of the presidency conclusions asks the Commission to come up with proposals on how to square that circle? In other words, they may say the words, but they do not know how to do it.

Finally, given that the Commission makes it clear that it will bring forward legislative proposals by early autumn, when do the Government intend to set out their thinking on how to square the circle and achieve the objective of a clear, coherent single market in financial services consonant with maintaining fiscal responsibility? This House and the House of Commons could well not be sitting for a lot of that time. When are the Government going to make clear their thinking on this?

My Lords, in response to my noble friend’s concern about the alternative investment fund managers directive, I should say that government Ministers have been in close negotiations over this directive at every stage and will remain so. We are in constant dialogue with stakeholders in the UK, our colleagues in the Commission and other EU member states to ensure a good outcome. Of course, I recognise my noble friend’s concern.

As for squaring the circle, yes, the Commission will bring forward proposals in the autumn and its clear remit is to square the circle, though it is never easy. I also recognise the need for the Government to bring forward their own views in the proposals that they will make to the Commission, and the fact that we will be in recess in September. I will certainly come back to my noble friend and all noble Lords on that, because the Government may be able to make their views known in July before the Recess.

My Lords, would the noble Baroness not agree that, from the debate that we seem to have had this afternoon about democratic deficiencies, one aspect of democracy is that there is no absolute form of it; and that what seems appropriate in one member state may be deemed inappropriate in another? Would she also not agree that in this country we would deeply resent other member states trying to tell us how to run our democratic institutions?

My Lords, yes, it is very difficult to have common views expressed across 27 member states. It is, in many ways, extraordinary that the European Union exists. I also agree with the noble Lord that we would not wish other member states to tell us what to do. That is precisely why we are not telling Ireland what to do, if that is what the noble Lord is referring to in any way. It is up to the Government of Ireland to decide whether they wish to hold a referendum, and that is what they have decided to do.

My Lords, first, the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, in her reply to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, pointed out that 80 per cent of decisions were made by co-decision with the European Parliament. I would point out that even if the British Members voted as a group, they could always be outvoted by over seven to one. Decisions that might be inimical to this country’s best interests could be passed, irrespective of the views of the British Government or the British people.

Secondly, I noted the reply of the noble Baroness to the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer. Has she seen that in this morning’s Daily Telegraph, Stuart Fraser, the chairman of the City of London Corporation’s policy and resources committee, said:

“We have lost the broader argument about ceding control of UK rules to the EU, though we are happy that some concessions have been made”.

He went on:

“We now still have a situation where binding arbitration dictated by Brussels could overrule the UK’s Financial Services Authority”.

That is in direct opposition to what the noble Baroness and the Government believe. I would like to know whether the corporation has been consulting and whether the Government will listen to any representations that it might make.

I have one more question. The Commission believes that these changes can be brought in under Article 95 of the EC treaty on the approximation of laws to operate the single market. Is that so, or will Parliament have to ratify—and first discuss—the proposals, and then ratify any treaty that may be needed to bring these proposals into effect?

My Lords, I understand the noble Lord’s point about co-decision and the fact that the will of the British Government and, perhaps, British Members of the European Parliament will not necessarily be in the majority in any co-decision procedure, but that is what the European Union is all about. I do not deny that.

As for the views of the chair of the City of London quoted from the Daily Telegraph, I have not read the article. I am confident that the Government will have consulted many stakeholders in the City of London, that they will continue to do so and they will listen and act in the City of London’s best interests.

On the last point, I believe the noble Lord referred to the protocol that results from the agreement this weekend at the Council.

My Lords, I was referring to the new proposals for regulation of financial institutions. I may be wrong, but I understand that the Commission believes that the measures can be brought in without any treaty organisation or any new treaties being brought forward, in which case they would come into operation without the agreement of the British Parliament.

My Lords, as I understand it, these were “normal” proposals from the European Commission. They will be discussed and legislated on in the normal way and they will not require any treaty amendment in any shape or form. If I am wrong on that point, I will certainly come back to the noble Lord.

We have here a series of amendments tabled to address the proposals by Her Majesty’s Government for a medical adviser service, effectively—that there would be medical advisers to the various coroners. That is a welcome development building on our earlier debate on the various changes, the possibility of partial post-mortems, particular investigations and so on. The idea that we would have medical examiners seems a positive development that we welcome. It is something that in many ways has been lacking for some time. That the Government have taken a step along this road is a step very much in the right direction. However, there are a number of questions about the system being put in place. The Government have rightly found it necessary to identify the position of Chief Coroner to bring the whole service together. It would be important in the development of any service but, particularly in one that is somewhat devolved down to local authorities to address, the position of Chief Coroner seems important. There are also particular responsibilities placed on the Chief Coroner to draw together patterns of illness, disorder, disease, death and anything that will be helpful at a national level.

It does not seem unreasonable that there be a national or chief medical adviser who would assist the Chief Coroner and perform similar functions with regard to the medical examiners or advisers throughout the country. However, the Bill does not say that there shall be a national medical adviser or chief medical examiner, so I and my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford have tabled the amendment—not as a new idea, because it was debated substantially in the other place. Indeed, I note that the Minister in another place, responding to the proposal that there should be such a national medical adviser but that it was not in the Bill, indicated that she would be prepared to consider it and return to it, and that she had not set her face against including a national medical adviser in the Bill. Fortified by that, we return to the question to see whether the Government have thought further about this and can advise us of any good reasons for not including it in the Bill.

I note some of the arguments that were adduced by the Minister in the other place; namely, that lots of people were involved, including various staff and people from different backgrounds. That is a fairly thin argument because no one else has a national service such as the medical examiner service or the medical adviser service. As regards there being lots of other people involved such as porters, and the fact that they cannot all be represented at the national level, that is absolutely true but it is hardly the point in this connection.

One of the responsibilities, among many others, that we think would be appropriate to establish is to ensure certain standards and training among medical examiners throughout the country. I recall that when I raised this at Second Reading the Minister helpfully commented that there had been discussions about standards, training and courses with the relevant royal colleges. I had mentioned the Royal College of Pathologists in that regard but the Minister advised us that the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges had been involved in this and that things were well advanced in terms of producing training and courses. We would like to push this a little further to see whether the Minister can help us further. We have tabled amendments concerning regulations about the training of medical examiners and the standards that should be set for them. We are a little concerned about the consequences of not doing this although I have no doubt that the Minister will say it will be in the regulations. However, when one is trying to set up a large service such as this all round the country, certain areas will attract very high-quality people because there are people in place who could move fairly seamlessly into the new positions, which will offer more authority and more opportunity to use their skills. However, in other places such people will not exist or will not be available, or the people who have been doing the job will be past their sell-by date and will take this opportunity to step down. There may not be somebody there to take over.

Therefore, we harbour concerns that people who might not be as well qualified as one would hope and who are without the necessary experience might take up these positions unless clear standards are set and clearly stated qualifications are required. Therefore, we have tabled an amendment which proposes that those appointed will have to have undertaken a course and have qualified from it. Attending a course is one thing but showing that you have learnt something from it is another matter. Some of these matters may be able to be dealt with in other ways than being included in the Bill, but we want to press that matter a little further.

The standards, training and qualifications of the national medical adviser must be a substantial concern. If we are concerned about that at the local level we are even more concerned about it at the top level. Therefore, Amendment 49 proposes:

“The Chief Coroner shall appoint an experienced forensic pathologist to be the National Medical Adviser”.

This goes to the heart of the matter. We need someone who has the necessary experience to give advice at a national level to the Chief Coroner on issues concerning untoward death, to see whether patterns are emerging, standards are being adhered to, people are being appropriately trained, or whether serious difficulties are emerging while the new service is being put into place which need to be raised at a national level. One way to monitor that could be to table an amendment stating that the Chief Coroner should produce a report to your Lordships’ House and the other place after a few years to see how the service is operating. However, in educational terms we are much happier with continuous assessment than with periodic examinations. Therefore the idea of having a national medical adviser is that their constant and consistent responsibility would be to observe how this new service is developing and to bring advice to the Chief Coroner, Ministers or Parliament to say, “This was a good idea but here are some flaws, hitches or problems”.

We welcome the Government’s move towards having medical advisers or examiners all around the country. However, we want them to be properly trained and qualified; they should be monitored and provide the required information; and there should be someone at the heart of things—a national medical adviser—to give advice to the Chief Coroner and to provide appropriate monitoring and supervision of medical advisers around the country. I beg to move.

I have amendments in this group and I welcome all the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice; I do not dispute any of them. I completely concur with the need to stress training and agree that the exam should be the equivalent to licensing and incorporate revalidation.

There is a general welcome from medical examiners but there is a concern which we need to express. If they are part-time you may find that one is working in the morning and another in the afternoon; when there is a complex case perhaps only the coroners themselves—who are, as now, on call 24/7—would effectively provide the continuity required. Partly to get around that and partly because if you have a national service you need to set national standards, my amendments use the term “Chief Medical Adviser”. It is only the name that alters; however, one difference is that I have said that the chief medical adviser should be there to,

“monitor the performance of the medical examiners”,

because if there is to be consistency across the UK it will be important that their performance is managed from many aspects. I did not add that this person should be there also to advise the Chief Coroner, because that is tied up in the title. If you are an adviser, your role is to advise. It would be duplicative to call a person an adviser and then state that they provide advice.

I have also suggested that whoever is the chief medical adviser needs to have more experience than that required of the medical examiners, which is why I have stipulated that the chief medical adviser should have been qualified for 10 years and have had seven years in practice.

I know from my very helpful discussions with the Minister before Committee that the Government are thinking of appointing two senior people—one as a medical adviser to the Chief Coroner and another to oversee the medical examiners. If I am right, I understood that the medical examiners would be overseen by someone in the Department of Health, but that the person working directly with the Chief Coroner could be employed within the Ministry of Justice. I have a slight concern about having two people at the top of the system rather than having a more vertical structure. My preference would be to have one chief medical adviser with a deputy chief medical adviser who may be the person responsible for overseeing the standards of the medical examiners around the country; so there would be some career progression. The reason for my concern is that I am slightly worried that they could inadvertently give different messages. It would be no good for anyone if they did not get on and, therefore, gave different messages. A lot of the message-giving will relate to the way in which research is interpreted and the way in which new advances in examination techniques come along and the emphasis that is put on them.

We all know that someone who develops a new examination method in pathology can be very keen and slightly overegg the claim about how useful it will be. They do this in pursuit of the method’s development—not dishonestly but just because they are very keen. Therefore, it might be helpful to have someone right at the top who is able to temper whatever information comes in, and I concur with the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, that that person should have training and experience in forensic pathology.

Another reason for referring to this person in the Bill rather than simply in regulations is that he will need to have powers in order to deal with difficult situations. The medical examiners will be employees within the primary care trust. They will be dependent on having clear blue water between those employing them and the job that they have to do. That may include investigating and exposing poor clinical practice in their employers and therefore they will need some protection. If the chief medical adviser is referred to in the Bill and has statutory powers, that will build in a degree of protection which I fear may not be there if the appointment is made without being referred to in the Bill. That is why I have been pushing for this. It becomes particularly important in relation to possible prosecutions for corporate manslaughter and so on, which may be difficult to prove. Such cases may become very difficult and contentious, and those who give advice may require a lot of support in providing evidence to the inquest and to any subsequent proceedings. They may need to be represented by a very senior person—the chief medical adviser. My concern is that, if we leave this matter to regulations and do not put something into the Bill, we may not provide sufficient support to medical examiners on the ground to enable them to be operationally independent of those who pay their salaries.

My noble friend Lady Finlay and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, have argued persuasively in favour of their Amendments 47 and 48 concerning the role of the chief medical adviser, and I am very happy to support the arguments that they have just adduced. We will come to Amendments 52 and 53 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, to which I have added my name, and, again, I strongly support the sentiments expressed in them.

My own amendment in this group, Amendment 51, relates to the role of the Chief Coroner. It would leave out line 2 on page 11 of the Bill to the word “must” and insert “The Chief Coroner”, so that instead of:

“Primary Care Trusts (in England) and Local Health Boards (in Wales)”,

it would simply read, “The Chief Coroner”,

“must appoint persons as medical examiners to discharge the functions conferred on medical examiners by or under this Chapter”.

I think that it is a very straightforward amendment, which I hope will be immediately understood by the Committee.

During an earlier part of our proceedings, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said that he had written to me about the recommendations of Dame Janet Smith, who chaired the Shipman inquiry. I am grateful for his letter, dated 9 June, in which he says that,

“whilst accepting the findings of the Inquiry, the Government has decided to adopt a different approach to reforming the coroner service than that recommended by Dame Janet Smith. For this reason, [it] is not possible to provide a figure regarding the exact number of recommendations responded to by legislation incorporated in the Bill”.

Following that letter, yesterday the Minister answered a Question for Written Answer—HL4220—which I tabled last week on the same point concerning how many of the recommendations of the Shipman inquiry had been incorporated into the Bill. The Minister said:

“Other recommendations about coroners and death certification have been addressed by alternative means, including the framework within which services are delivered … the Government are not convinced that the inquiry’s recommendation for a centralised death investigation service is the most effective model. Our preference is for coroners and medical examiners to be based at a local level, and while there will be close links between the two on specific aspects of their work, we believe that they should not be part of an integrated organisational structure”.—[Official Report, 22/6/09: cols. WA 247-48.]

I am grateful to the Minister for being so straightforward in his reply but this highlights a fundamental disagreement between the approach the Government are adopting and that which Dame Janet Smith suggested in the Shipman inquiry. There is a fine line to be drawn between accepting the findings of an inquiry and not implementing all its recommendations. Although I accept that, or course, no Government are bound by an inquiry in advance to accept everything that it says, I think the Minister and I would agree that this extraordinary series of reports, the amazing, voluminous evidence that has been published, and these very thorough recommendations, are not something that any of us would dismiss lightly.

I think that what has been accepted and what has been rejected should be a matter of public record as we scrutinise a Bill that, as the Minister says,

“is the last piece of primary legislation required to implement the Government’s wide-ranging programme of action in response to the recommendations of the Shipman inquiry”.

It would be remiss of us not to detail where the differences lie.

When the Government say that they have been taking a different approach from Dame Janet and members of the Shipman inquiry, we do need to be clear what we are accepting and what we are rejecting. From the Minister’s Written Answer, these can now be seen to be categorised into two parts. He said that in accepting parts of the inquiry a statutory duty was being laid,

“on doctors to report certain deaths to coroners, the appointment of a Chief Coroner, an appeals system, independent inspection, and independent medical examiners to scrutinise the certificates of cause of death of all deaths not reported to the coroner”.

He went on to say in talking about the things that were being rejected:

“Recommendations made by the Shipman inquiry into matters that are beyond the scope of coroners and death certification—such as the control of drugs, complaints arrangements in health and social care, and medical regulation and revalidation—are being taken forward by the Department of Health”.— [Official Report, 22/6/09: cols. WA 247-48.]

I should be particularly interested to hear from the Minister how precisely that is going to happen, whether it is going to be dealt with through legislation or through regulations, and how the House will be told about the progress of those issues that fall outside the scope of the Bill.

Amendment 51 highlights one of the main differences between the two approaches—the Shipman inquiry approach and that of the Government in the Bill. It is Dame Janet’s strongly held view that the English primary care trusts and the Welsh local health boards should not be the bodies to, as provided in Clause 19 of the Bill,

“appoint persons as medical examiners to discharge the functions conferred on medical examiners by or under this Chapter”.

She believes, and I share her view, that the Chief Coroner would be best placed to do this. That is why I tabled Amendment 51. It straightforwardly transfers the tasks to the Chief Coroner from the PCTs and the local health boards.

I was particularly struck by Dame Janet’s contention, based on her experience of the Shipman evidence, that local relationships can become “too cosy”. She says that there is a fundamental issue at stake here: the protection of independence. We must always guard against conflicts of interest and potentially incestuous relationships—the “Harold is one of us” arguments: “He plays at the same golf club. He is a member of the same circles, attends the same professional meetings, drinks in the same pub. He is a decent sort of fellow and we must all look after one another”. That is a recipe for disaster.

I should like to dwell for a moment on the Third Report on the Shipman inquiry, which ran to more than 600 pages. Dame Janet spelt it out very clearly on page 3, paragraph 12. She said:

“The procedure for certifying the medical cause of death has remained virtually unchanged for over 75 years ... it has a number of disadvantages. The most serious of these is that it is dependent on the integrity and judgement of a single medical practitioner … The fact that the system of certification of the cause of death depends on a single doctor does not give rise only to the risk of concealment of crime or other wrongdoing by that doctor. There may be occasions when a doctor knows that a death may have been caused or contributed to by some misconduct, lack of care or medical error on the part of a professional colleague. In those circumstances, it takes considerable courage and independence for a doctor (particularly a junior doctor) to refuse to certify a death, when s/he knows that, if s/he does refuse, the death will be subject to a coroner's investigation”.

The point that is being made in the inquiry’s report is that when relationships become too cosy, or when someone is at quite a junior level and part of a local circle, there may not be the kind of independence that is required to determine the sorts of events that were investigated by the Shipman team.

I was also very struck by the fact that the BMA, which is the only professional body fully to represent future medical examiners, has also raised concerns about Clause 19 in its briefing note. It says:

“The BMA has concerns about the independence of the medical examiner, given that the roles will be recruited for and managed by the Primary Care Trust or Local Health Board within which the post would be based ... we are still concerned that medical examiners could be subject to pressure or a conflict of interest under this arrangement”.

It also highlights the failure to discuss this issue on Report in another place. In a sitting of the Public Bill Committee on 24 February, the Minister, Bridget Prentice, made a promise when she said that further details would be given of accountability and leadership arrangements. Perhaps the omission can be remedied today.

The BMA has pleaded for further discussions with the Government on issues such as terms and conditions, remuneration, recruitment, retention, training and accountability, and I hope that between now and Report the concerns which my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, have identified today may also be properly addressed.

Dame Janet had the invidious job of sifting through evidence and listening to the witnesses detailed in hundreds of pages of evidence, but the fact that we were willing to set aside £20 million of public money to enable this comprehensive review to be undertaken demonstrates Her Majesty’s Government’s proper concern about this matter. It is therefore all the more frustrating and disappointing that we have not acted on some of the committee’s recommendations in crucial respects. The need to place a cordon sanitaire around the appointments system and to place it in the hands of the Chief Coroner is a glaring example, and I hope that the Government will be willing to give this further thought.

This is an extremely important matter, and it is crucial that we get it right. As my noble friends Lady Finlay and Lord Alton have made clear, many of the clauses in the Bill derive if not directly then indirectly from the report on the Shipman case, which was the result of an inquiry that was chaired by Dame Janet Smith. It is crucial that Clause 19 creates the new role of medical examiner, who will ensure the independent scrutiny and confirmation of medical certificates of the cause of death and will provide general medical advice to the coroner. However, my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, have made the case for having a chief medical adviser to the Chief Coroner for exactly that purpose: to give general medical advice to the Chief Coroner, just as the medical examiners will give advice to the coroners at a local level.

The Medical Protection Society has considerable anxieties about the details of these appointments. It says that,

“current discrepancies in resources between different PCTs and LHBs, may lead to inconsistencies in resourcing medical examiners. Subsection (1) gives Primary Care Trusts … in England and Local Health Boards … in Wales the power to appoint medical examiners”.

It is questionable whether this is the best arrangement, particularly for ensuring,

“the true independence of the system”.

As the Minister will be aware, the Justice Committee in another place pointed out that the role of the medical examiner requires,

“accountability between examiners and the new national medical advisor”,

whom it hopes to see appointed to the new Chief Coroner. The need for more direct access to medical expertise, via coroners, is accepted and, because of this, the Justice Committee suggested that it would be more appropriate for the medical examiners to be employed by the Ministry of Justice, or by the coroners’ service, than by the NHS. Will the Minister comment on that recommendation?

The role of these medical examiners must be monitored. A potential conflict could arise if PCTs or local health boards were to employ them because those bodies would be responsible not only for paying the medical examiner but also for monitoring performance, a role that I think is much better in the hands of the chief medical adviser to the Chief Coroner. For that reason too, an independent funding arrangement may be more suitable.

Clause 19(3) proposes that:

“A person may be appointed as a medical examiner only if, at the time of the appointment, he or she—(a) is a registered medical practitioner and has been throughout the previous 5 years”.

It is important to clarify the position with regard to registration because, from this year, doctors who are practising in any aspect of clinical medicine will require a licence to practise. Doctors who are retired may remain on the register and be registered medical practitioners but do not have a licence to practise. It is crucial that medical examiners must be individuals holding a licence to practise because they will have to undergo revalidation to demonstrate to the GMC on a regular basis that they remain up to date and fit to practise. It is therefore necessary that we should see details of the skill sets that medical examiners will have to demonstrate at an early stage.

A number of clarifications are required from the Minister on these provisions.

My Lords, up to now, those who have spoken have all been experts in the field. It may be a relief to have a non-expert such as myself simply commenting on these proposals. I limit myself to Amendments 47 and 48.

With great respect to those who are proposing the amendments, I do not think that in their present form they are of the necessary quality if we are seriously saying that there should be a national medical adviser to the Chief Coroner. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, uses the word “may” in his amendment:

“The Secretary of State may appoint a person as the National Medical Adviser”.

That conveys a lack of clarity and lack of necessity about the appointment. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, on the other hand, boldly, and I think quite rightly, says:

“The Secretary of State shall … appoint”.

With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, there is nothing in his amendment about the nature of the responsibilities. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, however, says in subsection (1)(b) of her proposed new clause that, after consultation with the Lord Chancellor, regulations should be produced,

“concerning the responsibilities of the Chief Medical Advisor”.

I would hope that before the Bill leaves this House an attempt will be made by those who are behind this proposal to draw up the basic responsibilities that one would expect the chief medical adviser to carry out.

The only specific that the noble Baroness mentions is in subsection (2)(c) of her proposed new clause, which states:

“The Chief Medical Advisor must … monitor the performance”.

That would no doubt lead to a report from time to time. However, that is not a chief advisory role. I hope that we will have a further and better definition of that.

The noble Baroness also referred to this officer’s powers being important. If you are giving the officer powers, the place to find those should be in the primary legislation. She referred to prosecutions. Will this officer have some role in connection with that? Will the finger point to him at some stage of the prosecution? I am not at all clear about that.

I am anticipating that the amendments will not be pressed to a Division today. I may be wrong; I do not know what the Minister is going to say. I respectfully suggest to the proposers of the amendments that we should have a quite different and clearer text to look at and report on. We will then have a grip of who this new officer that we want to have in place is so that when the Bill goes back to the other place they will know what we are backing. At the moment, that is lacking.

I support these amendments, with the very helpful caveat of the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen. The ideal would be for the Government to be prepared to take over the idea of a national or a chief medical adviser and to use their facilities for drafting to insert the points put forward by the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. Among coroners, there are concerns about medical examiners being appointed by the local primary care trust. First, they may be perceived not to be independent. The second concern is the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, as to the difficulty sometimes in rather small areas with small primary care trusts where everyone is rather hugger-mugger. The perception is as important as the actuality in having medical examiners outside the primary care trust. Maybe they can be employed for other reasons by primary care trusts, but for the purpose of being a medical examiner, that should come under a different system.

Noble Lords have stressed the importance of the medical examiners, who will ensure independent scrutiny and confirmation of medical certificates of the cause of death and provide general medical advice to the coroner. My simple amendment, Amendment 63A, requires medical examiners to liaise with the clinical governance teams in primary care trusts and local health boards to ensure that patterns or clusters of deaths are identified and shared with the relevant teams at local level. I should point out that my amendment does not say “may” or “shall”; it says “must”. I recognise that the Department of Health has indicated in other places that medical examiners will in practice forge close links with clinical governance teams. However, it is important for that to be explicitly reflected in the Bill, not least because it would send a strong message to the public that lessons from, for example, the Harold Shipman inquiry, to which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred extensively, have been learnt.

It would also show an absolute commitment by everyone involved in this area that problems will be identified and lessons learnt from deaths where that is possible. Further, this amendment will clarify the scope of the responsibility medical examiners will have in relation to clinical governance.

Our amendments, like those of the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, seek to place responsibility with the Chief Coroner to make the appointment, although we retain the link via consultation with the primary care trusts. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has already indicated, this is so important because there is concern that the impartiality of an examiner appointed by the primary care trust may be seen as compromised in a situation where the death was caused by failings within the trust itself, through medical negligence or for other reasons.

One might have thought that the Government would be sympathetic to this position in the light of the charter for the bereaved. It is a relatively simple change to make, which nevertheless will command more confidence in the system. The creation of the post of Chief Coroner would seem an ideal opportunity to transfer the power of appointment to a demonstrably independent figure.

Having neither legal nor medical practices, I hesitate to stand here at all and contribute to this debate, but some things worry me. I am concerned that this amendment would not prevent the families involved having the distress of police involvement, which is currently cited as an argument in its favour. But that would necessitate further legislation to prevent the police interviewing persons who had assisted in procuring someone else’s death. I cannot understand the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who would have us consider what he describes as a,

“more civilised approach to suicide”.

There is no such thing as a civilised approach to suicide, which is an act of deliberate killing, irrespective of the circumstances. I do not think that we should ever pass legislation that gilds the termination of life, nor removes protection from the vulnerable. There are too many shortcomings in this for it to be an improvement on current law.

This comes much later.

I am sorry. But I want to support the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on these amendments.

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, for welcoming the principle of having medical examiners in this field. I think that other noble Lords have agreed with him on that. I say straightaway that the amendments would be acceptable had the Government chosen a model or system of coroner and death certification reform which had led to the introduction of a unified death investigation service. But, in fact, such amendments would not have been required as they would have been important parts of the policy and therefore already reflected in the Bill.

However, those of you who studied the 2006 draft Coroners Bill will know that, although the Government very carefully considered this recommendation made in broad terms by two parallel independent inquiries, our preferred approach is to have two independent services with close and clear links between the two. It is in that context that my reply will continue on the basis of considering each of the amendments.

I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, want to increase the accountability for medical examiners. The amendments provide for the appointment of a statutory national medical adviser to the Chief Coroner as a way to achieve this. In doing so, the amendments seek to confer on the national medical adviser the power to make regulations on the training of medical examiners and to set down minimum standards as to the service which should be provided by medical examiners. In effect, they provide the national medical adviser with a leadership role in relation to medical examiners.

We do not believe that the medical adviser to the Chief Coroner is the appropriate person to undertake that role. That is because the Chief Coroner will have jurisdiction only for deaths which are violent, unnatural, in custody or other state detention, or from unknown causes. Like senior coroners, the Chief Coroner will have no responsibility over natural deaths unless they have occurred in custody or other state detention. It follows that the remit of the medical adviser to the Chief Coroner should not stray into the generality of deaths except to the extent that I will describe shortly.

The national medical adviser, who we believe should be appointed on a non-statutory basis along with the other staff to support the work of the Chief Coroner—it is not suggested that they should be in the Bill—will advise the Chief Coroner on policy and practice in relation to post-mortems, on issues relating to the prompt release of bodies for funerals and related issues about the retention of organs and tissues, including liaison with faith groups and others with an interest. We also envisage that another role for the national medical adviser will be to develop training for coroners and coroners’ officers on medical issues, and to advise the Chief Coroner on medical aspects of appeals by interested persons.

In relation to medical examiners, it is intended that the national medical adviser will be involved in agreeing job descriptions, agreeing protocols setting out the scrutiny that medical examiners must complete, how they interact with coroners and agreeing the curriculum for the training they require. He or she will also be involved in resolving any disputes which arise between coroners and medical examiners about a conflict of views in particular cases. The Department of Health intends to bring forward secondary legislation on these matters, as set out in Clauses 19 and 20, and the role of the national medical adviser in relation to medical examiners will be better, more fully defined there.

Amendment 63A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, requires that medical examiners must work with clinical governance teams in primary care trusts and local health wards to establish whether patterns of deaths give cause for concern. We agree that this aspect of the work of medical examiners is vital. The Department of Health has made clear in its consultation on improving the process of death certification, and in response to the consultation itself, that this will be one of the main responsibilities of medical examiners. As such, this responsibility will be set out by the Department of Health in secondary legislation brought forward under Clause 19. I hope that goes some way towards satisfying the noble Lord.

Amendments 51 and 53, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, would give the Chief Coroner responsibility for the appointment, resourcing and monitoring of medical examiners. Given the model that we have adopted—we know it is not the model preferred by a number of noble Lords—and the role that we envisage for the Chief Coroner, we are not persuaded that he or she is the appropriate person to appoint and oversee the work of medical examiners. As I have said, the Chief Coroner will be responsible only for deaths referred to coroners, not for the totality of deaths, whether from natural causes or otherwise. I hope the Committee will accept our reform model and agree that it is much more appropriate for Health Ministers to identify and appoint a leader for the medical examiner system.

Amendment 50, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, has similarities to the ones to which I have just referred. It suggests that the Chief Coroner should appoint the medical examiners but that this should be in consultation with primary care trusts and local health boards. Once again I emphasise that the Chief Coroner will be appointed for his or her qualities and skills for leading the coroner system in England and Wales for deaths which are not considered natural, not for the scrutiny of certificates of causes of death where the death is entirely uncontentious; that will be the role of the medical examiner.

I come back to Amendment 49, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, which would require the Chief Coroner also to appoint the national medical adviser, with the requirement that he or she should be an experienced forensic pathologist. We consider that it would be unduly restrictive to require the national medical adviser to be a forensic pathologist. Of course a forensic pathologist might be suitable for the position, but coroners deal with a broad range of types and causes of death. A registered medical practitioner with experience of treating or diagnosing industrial diseases might also have useful skills to bring to the role of the national medical adviser. We believe that the skills and experience required for the role of national medical adviser to the Chief Coroner is best left to the Chief Coroner to decide and should not be unduly constrained by the Bill.

Amendment 55 seeks to remove the requirement for primary care trusts and local health boards to monitor the performance of medical examiners, to ensure that they meet appropriate standards or required levels of performance. We understand that what the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, intends is to distance medical examiners from the trusts and boards which appoint them. Of course, as other noble Lords have stressed, it is vital that the public can be confident that medical examiners will carry out independent scrutiny, which includes the requirement in the Bill that trusts and boards have no role in the way that medical examiners exercise their professional judgment. Medical examiners will also need to be sensitive to the needs of the bereaved and provide an effective and responsive service to the communities in which they work. Requiring medical examiners to be accountable to trusts and boards for the standard of service they provide is not incompatible with the need for medical examiners to be independent in the way they use their professional judgment to scrutinise cause of death.

The licence to practise is being introduced this year. All doctors will now be required, if they wish to indulge in clinical practice, to apply for a licence to practise. Despite my antiquity, I have applied for a licence to practise just in case my services may be required by any noble Lords in an emergency. Having said that, revalidation and the question of examining licensed doctors for their continuing suitability to practise will be gradually introduced over the next two or three years. It is important to recognise that the licence will be introduced this year.

I am grateful to the Minister and indeed to other noble Lords for the responses and the arguments that have been adduced in the debate. I was, and continue to be, somewhat puzzled by the argument from the Government, which was used in the other place as well. They said there are lots of people who are helpful to the coroners and therefore there is no reason to single out medical examiners or to have a chief medical examiner or chief medical adviser. There is a whole section in the Bill on medical examiners, there is not a whole section in the Bill in respect of all sorts of other people that may be helpful to the coroner, and for a very good reason, because we are talking about medical certification of death. It seems to me that if there is going to be a national medical adviser or chief medical adviser—and from what the Minister has said it does appear that there will be one—I am puzzled as to what the argument is for not putting this in the Bill, because it is certainly one way of marking up the responsibility for leadership, accountability and a degree of authority.

Therefore I am very grateful indeed to the Minister for indicating that his mind is not entirely closed to the possibility that it might be in the Bill. I have no doubt that if it is possible for us to have some discussions outside the Committee we will attend to many of the inadequacies of framing which were rightly raised by the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. The importance of these amendments is to make the point about what needs to be done and it seems to me that has been made. I welcome the opportunity for further discussions, for without that there can be no question that something will come forward at a later stage and be pressed. This is a centrally important question for a whole series of reasons.

There is clearly a matter of substantial contention, and I and my colleagues share the view which has been put forward by a number of noble Lords, that a centralised service separate from PCTs provides a degree of independence—independence as perceived by the community, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has said, but also independence in fact, because there is in that case much less likelihood of a conflict of interest. That is a serious matter should medical practitioners find themselves in that position, or in terms of how the community perceives it. There is a clearly a diversity of views in regard to this. The Government hold to their particular view and others, including us, hold to a different view as to what the service should be, so I have no doubt we will return to that matter as well.

With regard to the position of chief medical adviser or national medical adviser being filled by a forensic pathologist, I would not hold absolutely to that. However, I did find the Minister’s response less than reassuring that actually someone who had an interest in industrial diseases might be able to advise suitably on the whole range of things that a national medical examiner would be able to advise the Chief Coroner on. It does not seem to me that that is a very reassuring response, and whether or not the qualifications should be in the Bill, we will think further about that and return to it.

However on the question of appropriate standards, qualifications and courses, I hear what the Minister says about those being properly cited in the secondary legislation and we will study what the Minister said and return to that. With those remarks and that undertaking of further discussion on these important amendments and clauses, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I am most grateful to the Minister for his comments in his summing up on the previous group of amendments. This amendment is pertinent to the creation of what I believe we might be now calling a national medical adviser, if we do get to that point. The need to have work indemnity has become more important within our society. I will let my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss speak a little bit about indemnity of the coroners as she is leading on that amendment, but certainly for the medical examiners and for the chief medical adviser, indemnity will be particularly important, and it is something which needs to be clarified—it needs to be crystal clear.

In the Minister’s summing up on the previous group of amendments, he reminded the Committee that the coroner has no responsibility over natural death. In a way, that is exactly the problem, which is defining where the responsibility begins and ends. While a death may be unnatural, it is only after investigation that it is demonstrated to be natural, and similarly a death which is assumed to be unnatural may then during investigation be found to actually have had a natural cause.

It strikes me that within this system, and with the charter for the bereaved—which I do not dispute at all, and I think everyone welcomes and commends the Government on it—there will be increasing room for certainly complaint, if not more. At the moment, as I understand it, those working as medical examiners should be indemnified by their PCT if their PCT is their employing body, but that has not been explicitly clarified. We know that indemnity by the PCT for routine medical work is in fact inadequate. Doctors are advised to have their own medical defence cover over and above the indemnity provided by the PCT or the trust, because the indemnity does not cover very much, but it is essential that it is there from whoever employs them. Of course if the medical examiners were to be transferred, as suggested in the previous group of amendments, to come under the separate employment line and answerability to the Chief Coroner, then the indemnity issue would be through the Chief Coroner, but it would not go away.

The new clause for indemnity for medical examiners and for the chief medical adviser to the Chief Coroner is there specifically to clarify first that indemnity will be provided by the PCT for the medical examiners that are in the Bill, and secondly by whoever turns out to be the employer of the probable national medical adviser. So the title of this proposed new clause is wrong and would need to be amended anyway because there is more work to be done outside Committee in clarifying who does what. Similarly another amendment in this grouping relates to expenses and it is important to know who is responsible for paying expenses for those people when they incur expenses in the course of their work. I beg to move.

I support the principles behind the noble Baroness’s amendment. I shall speak also to Amendments 77ZA and 114A. As a former assistant deputy coroner in the Princess Diana inquest, I was judicially reviewed, successfully. My expenses were covered under Section 104 of the Access to Justice Act 1999, which inserted a new section into the Coroners Act 1988.

Coroners have shown me that there is nothing in the present Bill that replicates Section 104 of that Act, so Amendment 77ZA does just that. Its purpose is to replicate the existing indemnity enjoyed by coroners, who are extremely concerned, particularly with regard to judicial review, which is not all that unusual in the increasingly litigious age in which we live, and the possibility of some appeals outside the appellate process and on to either judicial review or the Court of Appeal. It is important that this should be in primary legislation. I doubt that it would be satisfactorily dealt with in subsidiary legislation, and currently there is nothing to show that coroners will actually be protected.

I am sure that the Minister knows, having been at the Bar, that judicial review is very expensive. I would have been extremely concerned if I had found myself having to face the costs, with four leaders in my particular review, of having lost in the Administrative Court. The loss was on the basis of incorrectly applying the law, as I was told, so this is a matter of law, not a matter of a coroner necessarily going wrong in the ordinary way of dealing with his duties as a coroner.

Amendment 114A would allow to the Chief Coroner and the deputy chief coroners exactly the same indemnity as coroners have at present—I hope that the Minister will see the appropriateness of coroners having it—in which case it would be necessary, for certain acts carried out by the Chief Coroner and deputy chief coroners, that they should also be indemnified. I hope that the Government will listen to these necessary protections for those carrying out an important part of the administration of justice.

I shall speak to Amendments 102, 104, 106 and 107 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford, which are in this group. They relate to the issue of coroners’ expenses. The Bill replicates the current circumstances, where it is the coroner’s responsibility subsequently to claim for paying jurors, witnesses and so on, and for other expenses. The indication that colleagues have had is that this has put some coroners in the somewhat invidious position of being required to take on personal liability, sometimes of a substantial order, for the facilitation of inquests. An example given was stenography being required for a particular trial. As I understand it, we do not place judges in this kind of position, and I am puzzled by why we do so to coroners, if that is indeed the case.

The question of indemnity in respect of judicial review has already been extensively and appropriately spoken to. I understand the wish of the Government, although not all of us agree, that matters should be held at a local authority level. If that is the case, though, we would find it helpful that the local authority was identified as the appropriate place to bill rather than the coroners themselves. Whether or not these amendments satisfactorily address the question, we look for a response from the Government in that regard.

We believe that Schedule 6 sets out a clear yet flexible structure for paying allowances to jurors, witnesses, pathologists, coroners and others who claim. Similar amendments to these were tabled in the other place. In response, my ministerial colleague, Bridget Prentice, gave an understanding to take a fresh look at these provisions in the Bill. We have reflected carefully on the argument in support of the amendments, but our conclusion is that they would remove the current flexibility for paying allowances that coroners and local authorities, as well as the Government, wish to retain.

Amendments 102, 104, 106 and 107 would dictate that the relevant local authority must pay allowances to jurors, witnesses and others on behalf of a senior coroner and would prevent the coroner from doing so themselves from, for example, a delegated project. This restriction in the Bill would be of no benefit to the system, as it may evolve in the future.

I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, that coroners will not have to fund allowances and expenses out of their own pockets. It is already implicit in the schedule that a local authority will ultimately fund allowances, given that the relevant local authority funds its local coroner. Regulations under paragraph 9 will provide for a coroner who has incurred expenses to be reimbursed.

In the majority of areas the local authority already makes payments directly, but in a small number of others the local authority and coroner prefer the coroner to make payments that the local authority then reimburses. The schedule gives flexibility for these existing arrangements to continue, and allows payments to be made either by the senior coroner or by the authority on his or her behalf. Schedule 6 was drafted in that way following representations from some members of the Coroners’ Society.

The cumulative effect of these amendments would be to remove the ability for coroners and their staff to pay allowances. That would be unnecessarily restrictive, particularly as the coroner system moves forward on the back of these reforms, and would be unwelcome to some coroners and local authorities.

Amendment 109, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, deals with the expenses of medical examiners and the proposed chief medical adviser. We have already debated the merits of having a statutory chief medical adviser, so I do not propose to comment on that aspect of the amendment. On medical examiners’ expenses, I am happy to reassure the noble Baroness that Clause 19(4)(b) already provides for regulations to be made for paying medical examiners’ salaries, expenses, fees, compensation, pensions and other allowances.

I turn to the three amendments that deal with the issue of indemnity. Amendments 77ZA and 114A would indemnify coroners, the Chief Coroner and deputy chief coroners against any costs that they incur when carrying out their duties, against damages awarded against them or costs they are ordered to pay, and against any sums that they are ordered to pay as part of a reasonable settlement. Amendment 63B would similarly indemnify medical examiners. I will put to one side the issue of the chief medical adviser, which we have already debated.

Paragraphs (1) to (3) in Amendment 77ZA replicate the wording of Section 27A of the Coroners Act 1988, which states that coroners are indemnified by the local council. Similarly, Amendment 114A replicates the wording of a subsection of the 1988 Act, but applies the indemnity to the Chief Coroner and deputy chief coroners. Amendment 63B applies that wording to medical examiners.

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is concerned that the Bill does not provide for coroners to be indemnified, which could make them liable to pay out of their own pockets any costs arising from legal proceedings. In addition, I understand her concern that the Chief Coroner and his or her deputies may also find themselves out of pocket, with no indemnity. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has similar concerns with regard to medical examiners. I reassure the noble Baronesses that that is not the case. Under the Bill, coroners will continue to be indemnified by the local authorities that appoint them. Any costs, including damages or sums payable by way of settlement incurred by the Chief Coroner and deputy chief coroners will be expenses which will be met by my department. I will briefly explain how the Bill provides for this.

Starting with senior coroners, area coroners and assistant coroners, paragraph 9 of Schedule 6 to the Bill provides for regulations on meeting or reimbursing coroners’ expenses. We will consult on draft regulations in due course, but we intend that they will cover indemnities by replicating the effect of Section 27A of the 1988 Act.

We see the expenses cited in paragraph 9 of Schedule 6 as covering not only miscellaneous monies which senior coroners have to pay out in the normal course of carrying out their duties, but also the cost to coroners of defending any claim brought in litigation, or of paying any damages or costs ordered to be paid if they lose.

Indemnifying the Chief Coroner and deputy chief coroners, paragraphs 5 and 6 of Schedule 7 provide for the Lord Chancellor to pay the Chief Coroner and his or her deputies remuneration, expenses and allowances. For these purposes, expenses will again include costs incurred when defending any claim brought in litigation and costs or damages ordered to be paid by them.

Moving next to indemnifying medical examiners, Clause 19(4)(b) allows the Secretary of State and the Welsh Ministers to make regulations for paying medical examiners expenses and other allowances. This would include reimbursing the cost to medical examiners of defending themselves in any litigation, and the payment of costs awarded against them as a result of such litigation, if such actions are brought personally against a medical examiner in respect of his work in that capacity.

In view of these explanations and assurances, I hope that the noble Baroness will agree to withdraw her amendment.

I hope the Minister will not think that I am unduly pernickety, but in reading paragraph 9 of Schedule 6, I did not read the word “expenses” as including costs or damages. That seems to me to be something that is quite separate from costs or damages. If I had been construing this in a court and was told that expenses covered this, I would have had my doubts. That is what made me raise this matter by way of amendment. Of course I read paragraph 9 of Schedule 6, and I am delighted about expenses, but I have my doubts. It may be that it is okay. It may be that “expenses” will be all right in regulations, but there is a question about ultra vires; are you able, under regulations, to treat costs and damages as coming within expenses in the primary legislation? I could see a question as to whether it was actually ultra vires, so I remain extremely concerned about the wording.

It is with some trepidation that I respond on a judgment on a point of law from such a senior person, but we are assured by parliamentary counsel that it can be properly construed to mean that. Moreover, we are assured that it is entirely proper to cover all these points in secondary legislation, and we shall be making it as clear as I have tried to do in my speech. We will certainly look at what has been said today, and if there is further clarity that we can provide before Report, we will do so.

I am grateful for the degree of assurance that the Minister has given, but while there is some flexibility, flexibility can be used helpfully or unhelpfully. For example, if the local authority is flexible in the time that it takes to make the payments, someone could be out a good deal of money for a considerable period of time.

Also, the concern is not whether the local authority might eventually pay the money, although that is a concern, but that if it is not prepared to guarantee payment in the first place, the personal liability will have to be undertaken by the coroner. I would like to press the Minister to help us by making clear that we will not have the position, as we have had on occasion in the past, when a local authority has refused in advance to guarantee that payment would be made, and therefore the personal liability at that stage had to be undertaken by the coroner, even though subsequently payment might well have been made.

I cannot go much further at this moment. My understanding is that the position is as the noble Lord is requesting, but we will look at the words very carefully and see if we can be even clearer that the essence of what we are saying is that no coroner will be out of pocket for doing his duty. We will try and craft that in proper language, and send even more assurance.

The reason we are where we are on this is that there are local arrangements in a number of areas where local coroners of local authorities feel that they are best served by maintaining those arrangements, and we do not wish to bring into law restrictions which would stop those local arrangements, where they are proving satisfactory to the coroners concerned and the local authority.

It is with some trepidation that I rise to sum up the amendments on indemnity. I fail to understand how expenses, which is a very charged word at the moment, can include indemnity for litigation costs incurred in defending litigation. I note that my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss has already questioned this. I have had conversations with coroners separately who are extremely concerned that the Coroners Act, which currently provides indemnity on the face of the Bill, will be superseded by this Act, where there is not that degree of clarity. I understand their concern. I do not feel greatly reassured. I wonder, as a non-lawyer, whether we could get around this by a very simple insertion to say that it includes costs incurred in defending in litigation for work undertaken in the course of their duty, or something along those lines. That is not for us to do tonight, but I am convinced that we will return to this. In the mean time—

We will certainly look at that point.

I am grateful to the Minister—all the more reason for withdrawing my amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 20 looks at the issue of medical certificates detailing the cause of death. Amendments 64 and 66 in this group stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff. These two amendments need to be read together. The effect of Amendment 64 would be to make an alteration in line 4, page 12, leaving out the word “may” and instead inserting the words,

“will, having consulted the Chief Coroner”.

As it presently stands the Bill says that the Secretary of State,

“may by regulations make the following provision in relation to a death that is required to be registered under Part 2 of the 1953 Act”.

It then goes on to list a considerable number of provisions. My amendment would require the involvement of the Chief Coroner.

Amendment 66 would make an addition at page 13, line 19, by inserting the words:

“An attending practitioner's certificate prepared under subsection (1)(a)(i) will replace the existing separate certificates issued for Cremation and Burial under the Cremation Acts 1902 (c. 1) and 1952 (c. 31), and the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 (c. 20) respectively”.

Current arrangements for death certificates reach back to the 1800s and there has been little change since 1935. The Shipman inquiry stated that the existing arrangements for certification were confusing and provided inadequate safeguards for the public. That is a view with which Tom Luce—who chaired the fundamental review of death certification and the coroner service in England and Wales—concurred. I was surprised when looking at the death certificates that are currently in use to see how long ago it was since we made any fundamental change to the death certification process. The certificates authorising cremation were given statutory standing in 1902 and 1952 and the burial certificates were prescribed by the Deaths and Births Registration Act 1953, with regulations following in 1987.

There is, I think, broad consensus and support for the general thrust of the Government's intentions to reform the system of certification, and I certainly welcome that. I note that the British Medical Association has, for instance, given a guarded welcome, although it does raise two questions that perhaps deserve a response from the Minister today. It says that it would like to see the introduction of short death certificates alongside the medical certificate of cause of death as proposed by the 2002 Office for National Statistics report, Civil Registration: Vital Change: Birth, Marriage and Death Registration in the 21st Century. It also argues that the right to confidentiality extends beyond death and that the bereaved should have the option of withholding the cause of death when disclosure is not required. Although it may be necessary—for instance, as a requirement stipulated by an insurance company—to know the cause of death, or, as we debated earlier in Committee, for statistical information vital to the construction of public health policy to include cause of death, we have to accept that it can also be distressing to relatives to be required to disclose sensitive information to organisations such as utility companies for which it is not necessary to have access to that information. I think that these are reasonable concerns which the BMA has raised and which we should ponder on. I wonder whether the Minister, with his usual alacrity, sees a way through that dilemma. I should be grateful to him for his response on those important points.

I would also be grateful if the Minister will tell us about the funding of the PCTs and the local health boards which will be required to make available to medical examiners the disclosure of their functions and whether we are satisfied that there will be adequate funds to deal with the changes to the certification process.

If we were able to accept the two amendments tabled today, it would abolish the two certificates currently in use and open the way to the introduction of the sort of streamlined procedures advocated by Dame Janet Smith in the Shipman inquiry. Indeed, she has produced a prototype form, copies of which I have here in the Chamber and which can be found in Appendix G of the third report of the Shipman inquiry at page 563. She believes that these integrated forms would overcome the weaknesses in the present system of certification which were identified in her inquiry. At Appendix M, pages 611 to 615, she sets out the details of how the new death certification would work in practice. It is indeed those proposals that are incorporated in these amendments. At the very outset of her report, on page 3—I referred to this earlier—she talks about the disadvantages of the present system. At the very minimum, I hope the Minister will agree that a pilot scheme trial-running Dame Janet's proposed system of certification might well be in order. My amendments would pave the way for the introduction of such certification and replace it—if I may be mildly critical of the half-hearted wording in the Bill, which simply suggests that the Secretary of State “may” proceed, a point which was referred to by my noble friend Lord Neill of Bladen in another context earlier today—with new certification and a duty on the Chief Coroner to get on with it.

What possible justification can there be in reserving this question to the Secretary of State? Surely this is a classic example of something that should be devolved through subsidiarity, in this case to the new Chief Coroner whom we are appointing in this legislation and whose duties should clearly include the production of new certification. We should trust him to get on with that, and mandate him to get on with it. That is the substance of my amendments. I beg to move.

My noble friend Lord Alton of Liverpool has explained the background to the first amendments in this group. I should like to focus on the amendment that is solely in my name, Amendment 72A, and explain the thinking behind it. It may not be correctly worded but I hope that we can make some progress on the principle behind it and end up with a short death certificate, or possibly a series of two that are fit for purpose.

The first instance, referred to in paragraph (a) of the amendment, covers cases where such certificates are needed,

“to confirm that death has occurred prior to the full death certificate being provided”.

That is meant to deal specifically with brain-stem death. When somebody is diagnosed brain-stem dead, the diagnosis is made on the basis of brain-stem-death testing conducted by two doctors according to a clear protocol. The doctors usually, though not always, conduct the tests with a time gap in between, and they usually, though not always, witness each other's testing. However, the family is told that the time of death is the time of the second brain-stem-death test occurring. That is the time when the person is stated to have died. However, their heart may continue to beat and they may continue to be ventilated.

It is in such situations that the family is approached about becoming an organ-donor family. For the family, the whole situation is incredibly distressing. It is very difficult for them to believe that the pink, well-perfused, warm body in front of them is indeed dead, particularly when they see the chest rise and fall, there is still a pulse, and so on. However, the person is already brain-stem dead. He is irreversibly dead.

Some intensive care units issue their own certificates to such families to help them understand that the person is brain-stem dead and to help them cope with the subsequent process of organ donation. I have tabled the amendment to try to standardise the format of that certificate and to improve practice. Sadly, there are some families who have declined to donate organs because they had not understood that the person was dead. Indeed, I know of one instance, which to my shame occurred in Wales, in which a consultant whom I know gave the family inappropriate information about the child. The family believed that the child would not be certified dead until after the organs had been harvested. It was a disaster and the family understandably declined to donate organs.

The amendment would therefore clarify for the public the point at which death has occurred. It would give them a piece of paper with force in law which states that that was the time of death. After that the organs can be harvested from either a heart-beating or a non-heart-beating donor.

The second situation, dealt with in paragraph (b) of the amendment, is quite different. I fully accept that it is possible that I should not have dealt with both situations in one amendment and that it might be better if they were dealt with in regulation and secondary legislation rather than in the Bill. However, this provision deals with the situation, which has already been alluded to, where there has been a death, particularly in a small community, which the family understandably do not want all and sundry to know about, especially when they have to contact utility companies and so on. Perhaps there is a hereditary illness of which others in the family have not been informed. Indeed, the death may have come as such a shock that they are not ready to cope with the implications for themselves and their own children. It may be a death of which they are deeply ashamed; it may involve suicide, drug addiction, alcoholism and so on. It is not necessary for utility companies to know why someone has died, but it is necessary for them—and for housing authorities and so on—to know that someone is dead. That is the purpose of having a short death certificate. It would afford a degree of privacy to the person who has died when the cause of their death does not need to be known for the legal purposes following death. I hope that that clarifies the situation that I am trying to achieve with the amendment.

Our amendment in this group is, I hope, straightforward. It would allow a fresh medical certificate to be issued in place of an old one if there was a subsequent change in the perceived circumstances surrounding someone’s death.

In another place, my honourable friend Mr Henry Bellingham raised the case of a constituent whose relative died. The original certificate recorded the cause of death as “not ascertained”—it was not possible to say at that point how death had occurred. When later it emerged that the person had been unlawfully killed, the certificate could not be changed—all that could be done was to make a note in the margin. Plainly, this was very distressing for the family. I accept that our amendment is wide. However, it is intended to cover a wide set of circumstances. It has the merit of being helpful for the bereaved, and would do away with unhelpful and overbureaucratic rules.

Amendment 67 in this group is a technical government amendment designed to avoid any unnecessary requirement to make regulations under the Cremation Act 1902. The medical examiner system will replace the system of certifying cremations in the statutory forms set out in the schedule to the Cremation (England and Wales) Regulations 2008. Currently, the doctor who attended the deceased and an independent doctor complete these forms, which are checked by a medical referee at the crematorium before cremation can be authorised. The medical referee’s role will be replaced by that of a medical examiner appointed under Clause 19. Therefore, the bulk of the current regulatory framework will be replaced. It is important, however, that the regulation-making powers contained in other legislation, including the Bill, do not have the unintended consequence of retaining what would clearly be superfluous regulation. In due course, I will move a government amendment on this matter.

I turn to the other amendments so ably moved in this group. Amendment 64, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, requires the Secretary of State to consult with the Chief Coroner on the regulations set out in Clause 20 that relate to the work of medical examiners. Our thinking in relation to the noble Lord’s amendment is that it is not necessary to set out in the Bill a specific requirement for consultation. I assure the noble Lord that the Department of Health intends to consult widely on the secondary legislation required to implement the new death certification regime. I certainly expect the Chief Coroner, once appointed, to be among those who would be consulted about regulations made under this clause. Equally, there will be other important stakeholders whom it would be appropriate to consult. We do not consider it necessary or appropriate to single out the Chief Coroner as a statutory consultee.

Amendment 65, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, introduces a general and open provision enabling an attending practitioner to issue a fresh attending practitioner certificate to replace the one he or she first issued. An attending practitioner must certify the cause of death to the best of his or her knowledge and belief at the time of death. If unable to do so, or there are reasons for further investigation of the death, he or she will have a duty under regulations made in Clause 18 to report the death to a senior coroner without completing a certificate.

Under the provisions of Clause 20, a completed attending practitioner’s certificate will be scrutinised by a medical examiner before the death can be registered and documents can be issued allowing a funeral to take place. Errors, omissions or concerns about the accuracy of the information recorded on an attending practitioner’s certificate will come to light either when a medical examiner reviews the certificate and speaks to relatives of the deceased about the cause of death, or when a relative is interviewed by a registrar before the death is registered. For this reason, subsection (1)(c) of Clause 20 provides for either a medical examiner or a registrar to invite an attending practitioner to issue a fresh certificate. We think that this is preferable to a situation where the attending practitioner can change the certificate unilaterally if there is a change in circumstances.

I turn to Amendment 66, the second amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Under the provisions set out in Clause 20, a medical examiner will scrutinise and confirm the cause of death stated on an attending practitioner’s certificate. This requirement will be applicable to all deaths that are not subject to a coroner’s investigation, regardless of the form of disposal. For this reason, a number of cremation forms currently issued under the Cremation Regulations 2008 will cease to be used. However, the certificate issued by a registrar under the Birth and Deaths Registration Act 1953, following registration of a death and prior to disposal, is being retained for a purpose under the proposed arrangements. This is because registration provides an opportunity for relatives to raise with an independent official any issues that might require investigation before a funeral takes place, and which, for whatever reason, were not brought to the attention of a medical examiner. We propose to retain this important additional safeguard at the request of stakeholders, including registrars and the Coroners’ Society. That is why we cannot accept that aspect of the noble Lord’s amendment.

The noble Lord asked about funding the medical examination service. The medical checks currently required before cremation cost families an estimated £45 million per year. The effectiveness of these checks, which are not subject to robust quality assurance, has rightly been criticised by a number of public inquiries, including the Shipman inquiry. Our preferred option for funding the proposed new system of death certification is a single fee for certification of all deaths, irrespective of whether death is followed by burial or cremation. The fee would replace the existing cremation fee of £160.50. As cremation accounts for some 70 per cent of disposals, most bereaved families would pay less under the new system.

I turn finally to Amendment 72A, an important amendment that has been debated. This would introduce short death certificates, to be issued in addition to full death certificates. The first type of short certificate is intended to speed up the possibility of organ transplantation after death by confirming that life is extinct. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, gave us an example of that. The organs could be removed as soon as possible in this instance. The second type of certificate would be a basic death certificate for families to use when dealing with administrative matters such as closing bank accounts after a person’s death. The amendment is intended to prevent upsetting the family and executors further by revealing to others the cause of death, which might have a stigma attached to it as far as the relatives are concerned.

We sympathise with the aims of the amendment, and I assure the noble Baroness that it remains our intention to make provision for short death certificates in future; but we need to prioritise. Amendments to the Births and Deaths Registration Act included in the Bill have been limited to those that are consequential to the changes to the coroner system and the new death certification provisions. These are major reforms, and there are dangers in attempting to do too much at once—not least because the introduction of short death certificates would require IT changes, which, as I have indicated, would need to be prioritised against the other changes that we are making to the death certification procedures. We will, however, keep the position under review.

The noble Baroness said that perhaps she should have tabled two amendments, because she is dealing with two separate cases. She will gather in a moment that we are more sympathetic to the relatives’ side of the case than we are to the organ donation side. As I say, we will keep the position under review.

The position on organ donation is rather more complex. We are not aware of any difficulties when the death is entirely from natural causes. However, if the circumstances of the death are such that the coroner may need to investigate, it will not be possible to remove organs from the body until the coroner has determined whether he or she has jurisdiction over the death. Once the coroner has decided that he or she does have such jurisdiction, a decision will need to be made as to whether particular organs may be removed without compromising the coroner’s duty to investigate the cause of death.

It hardly needs saying that these are tricky, sensitive and delicate issues, but in view of the importance of ensuring a better supply of organs for transplantation, protocols between hospitals, transportation teams and coroners have been worked up, or are being worked up, across England and Wales. These will ensure that the appropriate balance is struck between the needs of families for a proper investigation into the death of a loved one—which may, in itself, reveal information to prevent future deaths—and the needs of those awaiting donated organs. I venture to think that the noble Baroness will not be entirely satisfied with my reply to the second part of Amendment 72A, but I hope she is more satisfied with the first part of my reply.

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am satisfied with the bulk of his reply because it states the situation as it is at the moment. It is completely right that the coroner must be asked for permission if organs are to be harvested from a donor in whom the coroner has an interest of any sort. That is the situation at the moment. The death certificate that I wanted to introduce is quite simply and solely to give the family a piece of paper at the time of the death stating that the person is dead, and giving the time of death and the names of the two people who were responsible for the brain-stem death testing. At the moment, the family does not have that. It does not have the names of both people who were responsible for the testing. They may be different from the people who ultimately sign the death certificate. It was to get that clarity for the family that I sought this. This is a discussion that we will probably pursue outside Committee. There may be merit in the Department of Health producing guidance on producing a short form of documentation that is copied into the clinical record and could be given to the family. It would not have the legal status of a death certificate but would still tell the family the time and the names of those who did the testing; and confirm that it was full brain-stem death testing, because it is so difficult for families to come to terms with brain-stem death.

This has been a very helpful and thorough debate about these provisions in the Bill. I know that my noble friend Lady Finlay and the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, will also want to reflect on some of the helpful points that the Minister has made. It certainly would not be my wish to push some of these questions much further. I was pleased when the Minister said that even though he was not prepared to put the role of the national coroner in working out new certification procedures on a statutory basis, there would nevertheless be proper consultation with him or her when they are appointed. I am also grateful to the Minister for his reply on funding. I had not heard that figure of £45 million before. I was glad to hear what he said about the need for more robust quality assurance and the introduction of a single fee, which would be less for families to pay in future. That is welcome too. The Minister made a remark about the need to guard against stigmatisation and the merits that there might be in a short certificate in guarding against that. I think there would be widespread agreement among the Committee over that.

The one matter that I would still like to press the Minister on, and which I will certainly think about further and would be willing to discuss further with him, is the introduction, at least, of some king of pilot scheme to try out the proposals that Dame Janet Smith and the Shipman inquiry team came forward with. My mind is always concentrated when I look at the examples that she gave me of certificates that were issued by Dr Harold Shipman. When I look at the cursory way in which some of these deaths, mainly of elderly people, were dealt with, I think it behoves us—in light of the enormity of the offences that were committed at that time—to consider the recommendations of Dame Janet and her inquiry team to streamline the way in which these certificates are issued after someone has died. Having looked through the Explanatory Note and proposals that she has put forward for a more unified form of certification, it would be sensible at least to trial this in some parts of the country to see how it works. I do not know whether that will be possible for regulation, but maybe I can correspond further with the Minister on that point. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendments 70 and 71 relate to the relationship between coroners, medical examiners and statutory health inspection organisations. This arises because of a difficulty mentioned by the Mid Staffordshire inquiry, which said that it had not received any co-operation from the coroner. This made it difficult to carry out a thorough investigation. The inquiry said:

“We considered that information from the coroner would be useful for the investigation. We were disappointed that he declined to provide us with any”.

I do not suggest that this is common practice. Nor do I suggest that when there are new medical examiners they will, as a matter of course, take that approach. However, it is not the sort of thing that should be happening at all, so Amendment 70 reflects the proposition that the Care Quality Commission might have the power to require coroners—and, in the case of Amendment 71, medical examiners—to co-operate with investigatory tribunals. At present, the coroner can co-operate if he or she wishes, but in the case of the Mid Staffordshire inquiry the local coroner made it clear that he had no real interest in helping out in any way. If we are to ensure that the sort of investigation undertaken in such cases is as thorough as possible—and it is in all our interests that this is the case—perhaps it is necessary to do more than simply request or encourage coroners and, subsequently, medical examiners to co-operate and require them to do so.

There is no reason to believe that this would present coroners with huge extra work. These are not particularly common matters. Indeed, as I say, we do not mean by these amendments to suggest that it is common practice that coroners do not co-operate. However, the Mid Staffordshire inquiry was a case where having access to the coroner’s records would have helped to identify cases where people died of preventable or negligence-related causes, connected to the processes and understaffing that were identified in the report. For that reason, I beg to move.

I thank the noble Lord for moving what I take to be a probing amendment concerned with the premature deaths at Stafford Hospital between 2000 and 2007. The Committee as a whole will want to express its regret to the families involved. At the time, as a report by the Care Quality Commission—then the Healthcare Commission—made clear, many of those deaths could and should have been avoided, frankly. The breakdown of which the noble Lord speaks between the commission, tasked with investigating the series of deaths, and the coroner, who had investigated some of the individual deaths at the time they occurred, was a perfect example of how those with related statutory responsibilities do not always work together effectively. That may be something of an understatement.

We will agree that we need to tackle that matter. One way is the enforcement route, down which the amendment might take us. However, existing measures in the Bill will address the issues raised by the case. The first important reform is that every death that is not automatically referred to the coroner will be scrutinised by one of the independent medical examiners checking the information given in the medical certificate as the cause of death. They will work closely with the clinical governance teams in primary care trusts and local health boards to collate key information on causes of death and use it to analyse trends and uncover unusual patterns. We believe that the high mortality rates among patients receiving care at Mid Staffordshire National Health Service trust would almost certainly have been identified by medical examiners.

Under current arrangements, with no medical examiners in post, it was for the doctors at Stafford Hospital to decide whether to report deaths to the coroner for investigation. Under Clause 18 there will be a duty for doctors, wherever they are based, to report certain specified deaths to the coroner so that no unusual, suspicious deaths pass unnoticed. Among the categories of deaths that are perhaps likely to be referred are where the death may be related to a medical procedure or treatment or where there may have been some failure of care relevant to the death.

Secondly, the national leadership role provided by the Chief Coroner, who will be able to liaise between coroners and organisations such as the Care Quality Commission, will help investigations to proceed smoothly. The Chief Coroner may also issue guidance to all coroners in relation to requests for information and may even intervene where there are disputes. With the assistance of his or her national medical adviser, the Chief Coroner will be able to identify unusual trends and pass on that information to those with an interest as well as publishing pertinent information in an annual report. We also expect that the Chief Coroner would want to review how coroners held information. That was a related difficulty in the Stafford case and we seek to make the systems used more efficient and consistent.

Finally, coroners in particular interact with a number of investigating authorities, all of which have their own statutory responsibilities. Mostly it is the coroner who is dependent on those authorities’ reports before he or she can decide how to proceed with his or her own investigation. There are difficulties sometimes. The Coroners’ Society does its best to sort out those difficulties and has skilfully negotiated protocols that govern the relationships. That is something that we intend the Chief Coroner will take forward in the future, but the Bill does not propose to place those various interactions on a statutory footing, although I know that the amendment suggests that we should do so.

I turn to the different position of medical examiners in relation to investigations by the Care Quality Commission. The Health and Social Care Act 2008 already gives the Care Quality Commission a number of powers that it is able to use for the purpose of carrying out its regulatory functions, which include carrying out investigations. As the noble Lord is aware, medical examiners will be appointed by the primary care trusts in England. Regulations under Section 65 of the 2000 Act allow the commission to require explanations from a chair, director or employee of an English NHS body, therefore enabling the commission to require explanations from primary care trusts in respect of the work of medical examiners. We are looking at whether those regulations need to be amended to allow the commission to require an explanation directly from a medical examiner.

The 2008 Act also gives the commission the power to require any information, document and records, including personal and medical records or other items that would include the provision of data, from English NHS bodies as well as the power to enter and inspect premises. The Act makes failure to comply with a requirement imposed by the commission an offence punishable on some reconviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale. The commission’s remit does not extend to Wales, but similar functions are conferred on Welsh Ministers by the Care Standards Act 2000 and by another piece of legislation.

I thank the noble Lord for this short debate. We are not persuaded of the need to make express provision in the Bill for medical examiners to co-operate with inquiries conducted by the Care Quality Commission; existing powers suffice. I hope that that response will satisfy the noble Lord.

I am grateful to the Minister for his expansion and response, and particularly for his pointing up that the existence of a Chief Coroner is in a sense a port of call for the Care Quality Commission or for an inquiry should a coroner not accede to co-operative engagement. I take it that that is the impact of what he is saying. This is one of the Bill’s important developments. If I have understood that correctly—I see that the Minister is nodding—that is an important point that we hope would not be necessary, but the fact that it is there may make it unnecessary because people know that there is that possibility.

I am grateful for the Minister’s clarification that the Government are looking at regulations, so that in respect of medical examiners the Care Quality Commission would be able to press for co-operation and for people to produce material. I want to look at what the Minister has said in some detail, but if there is already progress in regard to proposed changes of regulations I would be grateful if it were possible to have sight of it at an appropriate time. With that appreciation and response I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I can be brief with the amendment because I have already received a lot of assurance from the Minister relating to it. The idea behind the amendment was to try to do something about the appalling quality of the examination that occurred when cremation certificates were filled out. I am delighted to see the end of what used to be called ash cash. It was completely wrong; it seemed completely inappropriate that when one had been qualified for a short number of years, one was suddenly able to graduate to receive this additional source of income. It is important that the examination of bodies to detect whether something has gone wrong is undertaken in a more appropriate and systematic way. The current cremation forms are completely out of date; they are difficult to fill out even if you know the cause of death, because the terms on them do not match modern medicine. I am delighted to have heard from the Minister in response to previous amendments that we will see the back of them and go over to a unified system with a single fee. I beg to move.

The amendment relates to the certificate signed by doctors to enable a body to be created. The system will be entirely replaced by the medical examiner system of scrutiny and medical certificates of cause of death. In the current system two separate medical certificates are required for cremation, which are checked by medical referees. These certificates will continue to be kept according to the relevant storage policy after the new medical examiner system is in place. They will remain available for inspection if required.

In future, medical examiners will scrutinise the medical certificates of cause of death for all deaths which are not referred to the coroner, whether the disposal is due to be by cremation or by burial. They will have access to clinical records as part of the scrutiny process. The full record of this process will be retained by the medical examiner’s office for clinical governance purposes. The terms and period of record keeping for this system will be determined as part of the implementation process. That is yet to be determined but I reassure the noble Baroness that it is highly likely to be for at least 15 years. In the light of my explanation, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, will agree to withdraw her amendment.

I appreciate the Minister’s response. However, I suggest that the Government consider that a duplicate should be kept by the doctor who has signed the certificate to form part of his or her appraisal process and appraisal folder, as the way they have filled out these certificates and undertaken examinations can be ascertained and gone into in a little more detail during the appraisal process than simply by looking at the certificate itself. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I oppose Clause 21 standing part of the Bill.

The investigation of treasure finds is a small but historic part of a coroner’s responsibilities, dating back to the 13th century. It is carried out on behalf of our national museums, those enthusiasts who spend their weekends scouring the countryside with their metal detectors, and very occasionally those people who have been lucky enough to find objects of value when digging in their own garden. Many areas in England and Wales are particularly rich in treasure finds, from Roman coins to Saxon hoards, and from medieval jewellery to civil war weaponry. Local knowledge of the types of finds is invaluable, and relationships have been established and nurtured over the years between local museums and finds liaison officers.

The government amendments that I intend to move in due course introduce a national coroner for treasure for England and Wales, which will help to improve the efficiency of the treasure investigation system. These amendments largely replicate the provisions for a coroner for treasure that were contained in the draft Coroners Bill, published in 2006. Following the consultation on those draft clauses and further reflection we have made a number of changes to the original proposals, and I hope the House will agree that the package set out here will achieve the best results for both treasure finders and the coroner system as a whole.

To put the amendments in context, in 2008 there were 610 treasure cases reported to local coroners: 610 investigations where the local coroner could have been investigating deaths. As my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, indicated at Second Reading, there have been areas around England and Wales where treasure cases have taken a particularly long time to resolve, falling outside the target time of 12 months to complete all aspects of the process in the Treasure Act 1996 code of practice. Establishing a coroner for treasure will help to expedite treasure cases but also enable local coroners to concentrate on their core responsibility for the investigation of deaths. The coroner for treasure, with his or her assistants, will be able to investigate each treasure case more expeditiously than a local coroner can, which will reduce the time taken for each investigation as well as improve the confidence that finders and landowners have in the system.

The new clauses introduce the distinction between investigations and inquests, so that treasure investigations have a similar structure to the reformed death investigations. It will still be possible for the coroner for treasure to summon a jury for a treasure inquest, although the starting position will be that one is not required, as I understand is almost always the case at present.

The new clause to be inserted by Amendment 84 provides for an exception on the duty of the coroner for treasure to investigate an item under the Treasure Act. This would be where the Crown, or the franchisee, if appropriate, did not want the item, even if it were found to be treasure or treasure trove. At present, although an item may be disclaimed at any time, there is no power for a coroner not to proceed with an inquest. Since the coroner will return the item to the person who found it, it effectively means that an investigation has been wasted. In the reformed system, the Secretary of State would need to certify to the coroner for treasure that the item is disclaimed, and the coroner will then return the item in accordance with the treasure code of practice.

The new clause inserted by Amendment 85 allows the code of practice made under the Treasure Act to cover situations where items are disclaimed, and closes the loophole where the coroner for treasure—the local coroner under the current scheme—is potentially liable to civil claims, even if he or she has acted in accordance with the code.

We believe that government Amendments 84 and 85 cover similar ground to Amendment 73 in this group in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville. In view of this, I hope that the noble Lord will be satisfied with the outcome and will agree to withdraw his amendment.

One of the reforms in the draft Coroners Bill, published in 2006, was that there would be a duty to deliver an object to the coroner for treasure if a person was in possession of it. This was to prevent cases where a proportion of the find was kept for the finder’s own gain; failure to deliver the object would have been an offence under the Treasure Act. Our Amendments 86, 88 and 89 tackle this issue in another way.

The coroner for treasure is given the power to order a person to give evidence at an inquest, provide a written statement, produce documents, and produce other items for inspection, examination or testing. This will include not only the item being investigated but any supporting evidence. This will ensure that the investigation is as thorough as possible. Finally, Amendment 212 extends the time limit for prosecutions under the Treasure Act.

I am aware that there have been difficulties with the usual six-month time limit, given the time taken to complete treasure investigations. I believe that the reforms will speed up the investigation process, but I am persuaded that there is a need for the time limit to be extended, by way of a certificate from the prosecutor, to a maximum of three years. This will allow any determinations of whether the item is treasure to take place where necessary.

Other government amendments in this group make provision for, inter alia, the appointment of the coroner for treasure and assistant coroners for treasure, for their training and inspection and for appeals against their decisions.

I hope that noble Lords who are involved in heritage issues—I see that a number of them are present—and interested in treasure will agree that this package of reforms is comprehensive and addresses the issues which currently affect the system. The reforms will encourage better reporting of finds, but more importantly they will help treasure investigations to be concluded more expeditiously, to the benefit of the finder, the landowner, and not least the general public, who may see the item on display in a museum.

When the Question that Clause 21 stand part is put, I shall invite the Committee to vote against it.

I rise to speak to Amendment 74 standing in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. I welcome seeing so many members of the All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group present. This issue is of particular concern to the archaeological community. It would be churlish of me not to welcome the government amendments concerning the coroner for treasure. I believe this provision will make life a great deal easier throughout the country and cut costs for local authorities, which should not be underestimated. We often impose costs on local authorities. Centralising this matter will make the system simpler. It will make those who wish to deal with metal detecting in the legal fashion much more user-friendly. The great success of the Portable Antiquities Scheme in the British Museum and the large number of finds that have come into the public domain because of that scheme are to be welcomed. Therefore, the points made by the Minister are most welcome.

I am, of course, particularly grateful for Amendment 212, which increases the time during which these issues can be dealt with. When the scheme was not working as well as I hope it will, the six-month limit was far too short. There would be a slight problem with six months even in some cases where there is disputed ownership between the landowner and the metal detectorist. The longer period is welcome.

I am speaking to Amendment 74 to deal with another aspect, because an element of metal detecting is not legal. English Heritage’s report on night hawking has shown the scale of the problem. There is the problem of a secondary market whereby people are able to destroy ancient monuments, dig up items of treasure and sell them. The issue is that the internet and sites such as eBay have made it possible for people to find a marketplace for goods which, ultimately, have destroyed much of the archaeological value of many scheduled monuments and other monuments. This issue should be looked at not just in a monetary sense. Violence has been involved in night hawking and it has been a major problem for landowners.

The problem we face is that many other European countries have looked at this issue and raised it with internet sites. As those countries have more stringent provision, those internet sites take the issue far more seriously. The purpose of my amendment is to raise a specific issue. Why is it impossible for the archaeological community to discuss with officials the substance of this amendment, even though the Minister has given assurances that that would not be the case? It has not even been discussed. This matter is of vital importance and its scale should not be underestimated. A Portable Antiquities Scheme survey found that the amount of treasure traffic on eBay was considerable and growing.

Before we bring the amendment back at a later stage, I should like the Minister at this point to initiate a meeting on this issue between officials and members of the archaeological community to find out why we cannot even discuss the matter. I do not intend to press the amendment this evening, although I cannot speak for my noble colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. I hope that we can have that discussion before the next stage of the Bill, because the issue is of such importance that it may be worth testing the opinion of the House on it, as we will not get the opportunity to debate it again for a long time.

I will, first, gently disclaim the Minister conferring on me the honour of being Lord Brooke of Stoke Mandeville. My title of Sutton Mandeville, perhaps appositely, refers to a medieval village with evidence of a Saxon watchtower on the site of the present church tower, which is early English and is listed as two-starred.

I apologise profusely to the noble Lord. I have an excuse for saying Stoke Mandeville. I will not tell him what that is, but I apologise.

I hasten to say in reply that I regarded it totally as a compliment.

My proposed new clause after Clause 21 deals with two of the issues covered by the government new clauses after Clause 24, to which the Minister so admirably spoke. I should record that similarities in drafting between my amendment and his are purely incidental, and, in an important respect, different. My proposed new clause deals specifically with the City of London, rather than as a general provision.

The Minister has given an account of the new provisions, so I shall be brief outlining the City of London context. The City of London has a treasure franchise as the result of a number of royal charters granted between 1444 and 1663. The franchise entitles the City to claim treasure which does not, therefore, pass to the Crown. The Museum of London, which the City Corporation jointly funds with the Greater London Authority, is given the first opportunity to acquire treasure subject to the City's franchise for public display.

I, too, welcome the government amendments in this group that give effect to the Minister’s pledge at Second Reading to establish a national coroner for treasure. I also welcome the amendments that would give effect to the Government’s decision to extend the period permitted for prosecutions under the Treasure Act, about which he spoke just now. However, despite what my noble friend said, I do not think that the Government’s response is yet comprehensive. I am sorry that he has not agreed to one of the other proposals that I made at Second Reading, which was more fully and better expounded by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. It is the subject of Amendment 74, which the noble Lord has just moved. I greatly look forward to hearing the observations on this amendment, as I hope we shall, from the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, who is the doyen of parliamentary archaeologists—or should I say archaeological parliamentarians?

Proposed new Section 8A in Amendment 74 would extend the duty to report a find to anyone who came into possession of an object where they had grounds to believe that it was treasure and had not previously been duly reported. This was in the Government’s own draft Bill. The reasons for its omission from the Bill as finally published were explained by the Minister, Bridget Prentice, in Committee in another place on 24 February and again by my noble friend in his letter of 22 May, which has been copied to many colleagues. My noble friend said,

“We are not convinced that it would be practical to monitor this wider duty, and it would inundate the Coroner for Treasure with finds which are not treasure within the meaning of the Act or finds which have already been investigated”.

I add my plea to my noble friend and to the Government to think again. He says that it would not be practical to monitor this wider duty. There are duties under a great many laws that we do not monitor—if we did, we really would live under a Big Brother state. The law should establish particular duties and offences, and then it is the responsibility of the citizen to abide by them.

We need to close what some dealers and collectors unfortunately take to be a loophole. At present, the duty in Section 8(1) of the Treasure Act to report treasure rests solely with those who find the treasure in the first instance. Someone who subsequently comes into possession of an item of treasure and who may know or suspect that that item has been unreported may believe from reading the Treasure Act that they are in the clear if they hang on to the object, and indeed if they deal in it. I am advised that Section 329 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 makes it an offence to be in possession of stolen property—in the case of potential treasure, property of the Crown or perhaps of the landowner. However, the Treasure Act 1996, in contrast to most of our laws, allows ignorance of the law to be a defence. Only someone who can be proved to have intentionally broken the law is liable to prosecution. Currently, the administrators of the Portable Antiquities Scheme seek to advise anyone who finds himself in possession of unreported treasure—perhaps a dealer in antiquities or someone who inherits an object—to report it, but it is hard to reach everyone and advice is no more than advice, so it is a weak position. Some dealers may be genuinely hazy as to their legal responsibilities; others, I think, are deliberately evasive about the legal position. Either way, it is not satisfactory.

For nearly three years, the British Museum has had an agreement with eBay to monitor its site for potential treasure. Of the 302 sellers of potential treasure questioned by British Museum staff, 6 per cent claimed that the find was an old find and therefore did not need to be reported; 2 per cent said that it was the finder’s responsibility and not theirs to report; 26 per cent said that the find spot was not known—that is a very important finding; 18.5 per cent said that the find was foreign; 16.5 per cent gave other reasons why the find need not be reported; 22 per cent did not respond at all; and only 9 per cent of those questioned said that they would indeed report. It is evident, therefore, that vendors are buying potential treasure finds without carrying out due diligence. If the obligation to report were widened, as this amendment proposes, then the duty of due diligence would be strengthened, and there would be a new pressure on dodgy dealers.

I emphasise that there are wholly respectable dealers within the United Kingdom antiquities market. Worryingly and shamingly, however, a number of dealers and collectors in Britain are not respectable. I shall illustrate this from another context. We have recently read reports about illegal excavations in Afghanistan: 1,500 items are reported as having been looted there and intercepted at Heathrow. The National Museum in Kabul has put on an exhibition of artefacts recovered from Britain. It is a disgrace that there are dealers and collectors who are prepared to collude with this kind of looting, whether from sites of very important heritage abroad or of treasure in this country. We must deter such behaviour. We need to increase the powers of the police; we need to improve the practice and ethos of the antiquities trade; and we need to improve the reputation of the London market.

Those would all be benefits of Amendment 74 and they would be important benefits, even if the coroner for treasure were to be inundated, as the Minister fears. In fact, I do not think that the coroner for treasure would be likely to be inundated. If this amendment were on the statute book, dealers would be deterred from acquiring items that might be unreported treasure. In any case, dealers will not want to report where they do not need to do so. They do not want to get bogged down in paperwork, and they do not want the delays and the blight on being able to sell as an item passes into the coroner’s limbo. In practice, 97 per cent of treasure cases are reported to a finds liaison officer employed under the Portable Antiquities Scheme and not directly to the coroner. These finds are then filtered through the finds liaison officer and British Museum experts. Another amendment might usefully state that a report can be made to a person nominated by the coroner for treasure and not directly and literally to the coroner for treasure. We should also supplement the stick with the carrot and extend the existing statutory reward scheme for reporting to third parties who report.

The Minister says that, rather than have this amendment, a better course would be to improve awareness of the duties under the law. We should do that anyway. To that end, he says that his department will work with those who are involved with the Portable Antiquities Scheme—the DCMS, the British Museum, the National Council for Metal Detecting and the Council for British Archaeology. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, raised this question. Will my noble friend tell the House what the timescale for this consultation and co-operation will be? I understand that the DCMS has been saying that it cannot discuss the proposed way forward with the British Museum, which has a statutory duty to administer the provisions of the Treasure Act, until after this Committee stage debate. Why the delay? Will he commit his department to embarking on this process straight away?

The first part of Amendment 74—the proposed new Section 8A—is supported by the All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group, which consists of 135 members of all parties in both Houses; by the Treasure Evaluation Committee, which was appointed by the Secretary of State to advise the Government and affirmed its support for the amendment at its meeting on 17 June; by UK Detector Net, an online forum for metal detector users which has 2,800 members; by the Institute of Archaeology at University College, London, a foremost school of archaeology; by the Council for British Archaeology; and by the Society of Antiquaries of London. I hope that it will also be supported by the Government.

We can dispose very quickly of proposed new Section 8B, the second part of the amendment. This would give the coroner for treasure the power to require any person to hand over any object which, for the time being, the person had control of and which the coroner proposed to investigate as potential treasure. Bridget Prentice said in Committee on 24 February:

“There has never been a case under the current system where anyone has refused to hand over an item”.—[Official Report, Commons, Coroners and Justice Bill Committee, 24/2/09; col. 299.]

Since then, such a case has occurred—a 14th century silver piedfort—and that case is now in the hands of the police. However, my noble friend, in his letter of 22 May, has satisfied me that paragraph 1 of Schedule 4, as amended by amendments in this group, will provide the coroner for treasure with the requisite powers. So I think that proposed new Section 8B should be dropped from Amendment 74 if we find it necessary to retable it on Report. However, I hope that my noble friend will undertake to consider carefully the case that we have put forward and himself table on Report an amendment proposing new Section 8A, perhaps refined, as a government amendment.

First, I strongly support the government amendments, which are admirable. The Government have a very good record in this area. They have supported the working of the Treasure Act and they have admirably put resources into the finds liaison officer scheme, for which the heritage community and archaeologists are very deeply grateful.

So I think the Government have a very good record in this area. They also, in the end, supported—I am not saying that they initiated it—the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003, which is an important part of the protection of the archaeological heritage. We are therefore very grateful to the Government for the amendments which have been proposed, including the coroner for treasure. We have nothing but praise for those elements, but that makes it all the more strange—as the noble Lords, Lord Redesdale and Lord Howarth of Newport, have indicated—that Amendment 74 has not yet been supported by the Government. Indeed, we are mildly surprised that it was not proposed by the Government, since there were earlier hints that such might have been the case.

The case for that amendment has been admirably set out by my noble colleagues, so I will not repeat the arguments at length. But it is clearly a great lacuna in the present legislation that the only person responsible for reporting a treasure find is the finder. Naturally, the finder should be responsible: that is the basis of the 1996 Act. It has been demonstrated through experience, however, that that is insufficient. It is clearly the case that, if a dealer is offered an object that he suspects is a treasure find—something found in recent years and obviously a gold or silver antiquity found on British soil—there should clearly be an obligation on him to report the find. That is a serious lacuna in the present Bill.

As the noble Lords who have spoken have indicated, the matter is complicated by the existence of eBay. A lot of the traffic in antiquities, including illicit antiquities, is now conducted by eBay, so it is important to have a legislative framework, which is now lacking. So far, it has been very difficult to understand what the Government’s objections are to this admirable Amendment 74, which was clearly in the mind of the Government at an earlier stage. I hope that the Minister will give us a very clear analysis. I think the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has made very clear that it is unlikely that we shall be inundated by treasure finds, and if we were inundated by newly reported treasure finds, it would be a very brief inundation before the situation settled down. Moreover, it is the present case that coroners are assisted by the finds liaison officers, who very often, in practice, make the necessary investigations. That could happen if there were a spate of treasure reportings in the light of the acceptance of this amendment.

So, like the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, I will be listening very carefully to the Minister’s answer on this point. The archaeological community are as one on the matter. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has mentioned that there are metal detectorists who support the All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group. It is very significant that the Treasure Valuation Committee, which is appointed by the Secretary of State, unanimously supports the amendment, so it is very difficult to understand what the grounds are for opposing it. For that reason, I will listen to the Minister with particular care when he addresses us in just a moment. I hope that this amendment will be brought forward on Report once again if we are not totally convinced—I know the Minister is very eloquent—by his arguments. I warmly support the amendment.

I congratulate the all-party group on its success thus far in persuading us, along with other parties too, to change our minds, and for bringing these amendments to Committee today. When the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, started praising the Government in such eloquent terms—if I may use that phrase—it was a very refreshing change from what one sometimes hears in this House and elsewhere. But I should have known, of course, that there was a “but”—or a “however” in his case—and indeed there was. I will do my best to deal with this issue shortly this evening.

One thing I can say is that I make the following concession—though it is not really a concession at all at this stage. That is, of course, that we will meet with noble Lords and others between now and Report to discuss the first part of Amendment 74, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. We will certainly arrange a meeting; there is no reason whatever for not having one.

There are two points raised by noble Lords on Amendment 74. The amendment seeks to extend the duty to report treasure finds to those in possession of objects as well as the finders of such objects. Secondly, the amendment seeks to impose a duty on those in possession of objects to deliver them to the coroner for treasure. We accept that there is widespread support for the amendment: there is no reason to disbelieve that at all. But our conclusion, on reflection, is that it just would not be appropriate to go that far to widen the obligation to report treasure finds. Of course, there may well be finders selling treasure items and not reporting them, and those finders remain liable for offences. The real reason why we cannot accept the amendment is that we are just not convinced that it would be practical to monitor this wider duty. In spite of what has been said in Committee tonight, we feel there could be a great deal more work for the coroner for treasure, with finds which perhaps are not treasure within the meaning of the Act, or finds which have already been investigated.

Our reasoning has been put in the letter mentioned by my noble friend Lord Howarth. We believe that a better course would be to improve awareness of the existing duty to report finds among those with an interest in the treasure system. I will repeat what is in the letter: we will continue to work with the members of the various groups that were mentioned by my noble friend to try to solve the undoubted problem that exists.

This is an issue that was raised in the Dealing in Cultural Objects Act. As the Minister has very kindly agreed that a meeting could take place, there is a slight problem that if one goes to one of those internet sites, they do say that they are not actually dealing in the objects themselves—they are just information providers. Without their services, however, it would be impossible to sell these objects. Of course, it is creating a market place which is growing, and I very much hope that the Minister—though he points out that it might provide a great deal of work for the coroner—would recognise that some incredibly important item could end up on eBay and it would be almost impossible to pull it up under the Treasure Act. If the Rudge cup had ended up on eBay, there would have been an outrage, but there is nothing to stop something of such significant value ending up in this position. The recourse of the archaeological community to stop the sale would be very limited indeed.

I take the noble Lord’s point, and it will no doubt form part of the discussion we will enjoy between now and Report. As to the second part of Amendment 74, my noble friend Lord Howarth dealt with it successfully. The bespoke duty to deliver objects is no longer necessary, given that our own government amendments will extend to the coroner for treasure the powers of senior coroners in paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 4. As a result, the coroner for treasure will have the power to issue a notice requiring a person to produce an object to him or her for inspection, examination or testing. We believe this approach will adequately address the point.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, was gracious enough to tell the Committee that he would withdraw his amendment in due course. I will try to answer at least one of his questions: why is there no duty to report a find to a franchisee on whose land an object is found? A find must currently be reported to the local coroner. Our changes will see a duty to report any find to the coroner for treasure. The franchisee will be an interested person and will consequently be kept informed of the investigation’s progress once the location of the finding is established. This area may be a matter for incorporation into the code of practice that is to be developed. We will continue to work to improve knowledge of the rules on treasure. That is all I have to say this evening on this matter.

That the draft order laid before the House on 18 May be approved. 16th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

My Lords, the Government agreed during the debates on what became the Terrorism Act 2006 that there should be a requirement for the annual renewal by Parliament of the 28-day time limit. Section 23 of that Act extended the maximum period of detention of terrorist suspects before charge from 14 days to 28 days. Section 25 of that Act says that the period of detention will revert to 14 days unless the 28 days are renewed by order for a period of up to a year. The order maintains the 28-day maximum limit for a further period of one year, beginning on 25 July 2009.

Terrorist investigations can be immensely time-consuming, and the increase from 14 days to 28 days was necessary primarily as a result: first, of the greater use of encrypted computers and mobile phones; secondly, of the increasingly complex nature of terrorist networks that have to be investigated—they quite often run through many, many countries; and, lastly, of the increasingly international nature, as I say, of terrorist networks. There are huge language difficulties and there is great difficulty in getting this evidence from abroad, which all adds to the complexity.

The potential consequences of a terrorist attack are of such magnitude that it is imperative that the police have the powers to arrest terrorists before they can achieve their goals. The current threat level remains at severe, where an attack is highly likely. Jonathan Evans, director-general of the Security Service, has recently stated that there is enough intelligence to show intent to mount an attack and that it could happen at any stage.

When a terrorist plot is uncovered, due to the likely severity of an attack, law enforcement agencies often have to intervene at a much earlier stage in the investigation than they would like. I have to say that I encourage them to do that. As a result, at the point of arrest the information that the police have available to them may be based more on intelligence than on admissible evidence. This is one of the fundamental ways in which terrorism is so different from other crimes. Therefore, unlike other forms of crime, proportionately more work needs to be done on the investigation after an individual has been arrested.

The decision to extend pre-charge detention from 14 days to 28 days in the Terrorism Act 2006 took account of these practical difficulties, and it has been justified by subsequent events. It means that we have been able to bring prosecutions that might otherwise not have been possible. Since the power came into force in July 2006, 11 people have been held for more than 14 days, and six people have been held from between 27 and 28 days; of these six, three were charged with terrorist-related offences. The last person to be held for more than 14 days was held on 30 June 2007 for 18 days, 17 hours and 48 minutes, which shows the flexibility of the length of time for which people are held.

I should point out that the existing application for an extension is a very rigorous process. Those who are arrested can be detained for 48 hours, after which the police or the Crown Prosecution Service may apply to a judicial authority for a warrant of further detention. This is to a designated magistrate for applications for up to 14 days’ detention, and to a High Court judge thereafter. A Crown Prosecution Service lawyer makes the application for extensions beyond 14 days. Defence solicitors are provided in advance of each application, with a written document that sets out the grounds for the application.

At the extension hearings, the senior investigating officer is present, and the applications are usually strenuously opposed and can last for several hours. The officer may be questioned vigorously by the defence solicitor about all aspects of the case. Applications to extend the detention period may be made for up to seven days at a time or quite often for less; it may be a matter of only a day or two. Suspects can be held only for the purpose of obtaining evidence in relation to criminal offences. They cannot be simply detained for public safety reasons. This means that once the police have exhausted their questioning of a suspect, the person must be either released or charged regardless of how many days they have been detained for.

A recently published report by Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate highlighted that the Counter Terrorism Division of the Crown Prosecution Service,

“treat the extended power of detention very carefully. Applications are only made if properly justified and careful consideration is given to the further period required to complete the enquiries”.

As I have already noted, all 28 days have been proved to be necessary, and while the full 28 days have not been needed over the past 24 months that does not mean that they might not be needed again in the near future. The threat level cannot be ignored, and it is simply not possible to predict what might happen over the next 12 months. All of us on all sides of the House appreciate the seriousness of the terrorist threat that we face and the importance of having the right measures in place to counter that threat. Terrorism is a huge international challenge, but it is a particular challenge for democracies, which must strive to protect individual liberties while ensuring collective security. It is vital to strike the balance between protecting the rights of the detainee and ensuring that an investigation proceeds properly and effectively, enabling the police to deal with the complexity of modern terrorism investigations. I hope that the House agrees that this order achieves this, and I commend it to the House.

Amendment to the Motion

As an amendment to the above Motion, at end to insert “but this House regrets Her Majesty’s Government’s decision to maintain the length of pre-charge detention at 28 days given other methods available to help to bring a charge at an earlier stage, such as a more flexible threshold test, post-charge questioning, better resources for the security services, and the recommendations of the Privy Council Review of Intercept as Evidence, published on 30 January 2008.”

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the order. At least this year we are debating it without any other confusion, such as the proposition to extend detention to 42 days. We now see that that proposition, which we on these Benches strongly resisted, was absolutely unnecessary. I am sure that even the Minister and the Government can accept just how unnecessary it was.

Today we consider whether we should simply renew the 28-day detention with barely a murmur or a question. Every time we consider these special and extraordinary provisions, we must be clear that the goal is to return to what we all accepted as normal pre-9/11: that no one could be held without charge for longer than four days. I want to highlight how different things are now. It is important to remember that we are at seven times the normal limit.

I will not dwell on some of the other details that we have rehearsed many times in your Lordships’ House. The Minister touched on a few of them, including the issue of the suspect’s access to a lawyer and what that lawyer may address. I am sure that my noble friends may touch on those issues. I should like to emphasise the importance of the steps that we make to return to normalcy. I ask the Minister to prove today that reverting to 14 days pre-detention as laid down in the Terrorism Act 2006 is neither desirable nor even, it seems, the goal that the Government seek to attain. The Minister said himself that, in the past 24 months, neither 28 days pre-detention nor anything like it has been used. In fact, the statistics in the independent assessor’s report bear out the fact that a return to 14 days is a practical proposition.

I should like to question the reasoning that the Minister laid out for the 28 day maximum. The Government should provide the evidence to back up the assertions because the statistical evidence is pointing the other way. I will take the Minister’s assertions one by one. He says that there is an increasingly complex nature of terrorist networks. He would accept the strategy—because he, with his department, wrote it—that vastly increased resources are going into counterterrorism. At the time he published the strategy the figure was £2.5 billion, rising to £3.5 billion in 2011—and a Security Service personnel that has doubled in size. The Government impressed upon us that they had a new strategy and better targeting when they launched that strategy in March this year. So, while the terrorist networks may be more complex, the tools that the Government have are increasingly more substantial.

The Minister mentioned the increasingly international nature of terrorist networks, meaning greater language difficulties and a greater need to gather evidence from abroad. I am sure that the Government maintain a good network of interpreters and translators. That is never going to be a sound reason for having such a departure from our normal rules of law and justice. I am not sure whether the Minister mentioned in the Explanatory Notes the difficulty of entering premises to search for evidence where it is suspected that chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear material may be present. Legislation allows access to premises. The technological challenges, if they are that severe, are not likely to disappear on day 28.

The Minister mentioned the need to intervene early in some terrorist investigations due to the public safety consequences of a successful terrorist attack. We had an example of that this year with the arrests in the north-east after Bob Quick inadvertently let slip information about the operation when his papers were photographed. The people were arrested early and released without charge well before 14 days. Then there is the question of the encryption of computers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, mentioned some time ago, when we were debating 42 days, that is an issue of getting more computer experts to bear on the problem. Again, it is not a sound argument.

It was very useful that the Joint Committee on Human Rights published its report today at five o’clock. We have the benefit of its views. The Joint Committee believes that it is impossible for it, or for Parliament in general, to assess whether the 28-day limit is necessary without a proper independent investigation of whether those who have been held for more than 24 days could have been released or charged earlier. That has been mentioned to the Government before. Although the report on the operation of the Terrorism Act was published in June this year, and although it contains useful statistics, it does not contain any sort of qualitative assessment to give us an indication of what we are dealing with.

This suggests that the Government do not intend to move away from 28 days at any time in the near future or, indeed, ever. Liberal Democrats are deeply unhappy at this rubber-stamp renewal. We were equally unhappy with the automatic renewal of control orders, in respect of which the Government’s approach was found wanting by the Law Lords. If the Government pursue this order today, we believe it will mean that exceptional legislation stays on the statute book year after year. Doubtless the terrorist threat will not go away for a generation. I am not underplaying the serious nature of that threat. However, given the Government’s approach, we are looking at keeping 28 day detention for a generation. We do not accept that is a desirable position. We urge the Government to develop their thinking and to return with a plan, and the actions necessary, to move us back to at least 14 days before this provision is renewed again. I beg to move.

My Lords, I am sure we are all agreed that during the past two years no one has been held for more than 14 days. I suspect that we all also agree that the fact that this power has not been used is not in itself an argument that it is not needed. However, to uphold the system of justice that we hold so dear and that we are determined, as it is crucial to our society, that terrorists and extremist will not take away from us, it is essential to be certain that that power is necessary.

This point was accepted by the Secretary of State for Justice in a recent lecture at Clifford Chance on 12 May, where he argued, I understand, that UK counterterrorism law was,

“built up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and the 7/7 attacks on London, should be reviewed and may need to be scaled back”.

He was reported as saying:

“There is a case for going through all counterterrorism legislation and working out whether we need it. It was there for a temporary period”.

This debate is important because it would be absolutely disastrous if we slipped into an easy habit of making temporary legislation de facto permanent and, thereby, in my estimation, giving the extremists a victory, which would be very unfortunate. I am one of those who believe that one of the things that we are defending in our society is our system of justice.

What is the justification for extending it to 28 days again? I noticed today that the Joint Committee on Human Rights has produced a report that raises some important questions in this respect. I wish that it had done it a little earlier. I know, because I have heard him say it, that my noble friend takes the findings of the Joint Committee on Human Rights extremely seriously. I am therefore a little surprised that he did not refer to its report. I hope that, before we conclude our debate, he will take up the points in its report and deal with them in detail.

One of the questions that the Joint Committee raises is whether the procedure by which the judge who authorises detention up to the maximum period during the 28 days provides sufficient, robust and adequate standards. Information can be withheld from the suspect and his lawyer and they can be excluded from hearing it. Another specific question that the Joint Committee on Human Right raises is whether this is compatible with the UK’s human rights obligations.

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has just said, with which I agree very warmly. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has criticised this order. It has not said unequivocally that the order is improper, but it has indicated that whichever Government are in office this time next year they must produce a stronger case if they wish to renew the 28-day detention power. The present Government are likely to be in office for at least the next nine or 10 months. Will they therefore begin to undertake the reviews that have been recommended by the committee in paragraphs 25, 29 and 36 of its report?

My Lords, last year we debated this order when the Government proposed to extend the period of pre-charge detention to 42 days, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, reminded us. Having been defeated, the Government still have on the stocks, it is important to remember, what they call the temporary Bill to extend pre-charge detention to 42 days, which they have not submitted to pre-legislative scrutiny. I note that, because it is in the background of the Government’s proposal that they should retain the 28 days. There is a desire in certain circumstances to go further.

I want to reiterate the point that I made last year; namely, that the need for Parliament to renew Section 23 of the Terrorism Act 2000 on an annual basis demonstrates that the extension from 14 to 28 days maximum is already an exceptional power, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, just said. We scrutinise it frequently because it is such a dramatic departure from normal practice. Certainly, the object on these Benches is that the period of pre-charge detention should be reduced. We have great sympathy with the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. We agree with her that other methods should be used to bring charges at an early stage; she detailed a number of them. I add the possibilities for a more flexible threshold test than already exists, the post-charge questioning possibility and the increased resources that certainly, as she rightly reminded us, have been provided to the security services.

One might legitimately ask if the power is still needed based on its use to the present date. A number of the previous speakers have mentioned the statistics. The Government’s statistical bulletin on terrorism arrests and outcomes since 2001 shows, as has been said, that in 2006-07 10 people were held for between 14 and 28 days, of whom seven were charged and three released without charge on the last day of the 28 days. In 2007-08, one person was held for more than 14 days before being charged on the 19th day. Since March 2008, no individual has been held longer than 14 days. So, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said, the statistics do not of themselves demonstrate a continuing need. That certainly shows the importance of review.

However, the statistics are only one part of the debate that we need to have. We on these Benches certainly recognise that the terrorist threat is increasingly complex. There is no argument about that. Even though the power has not been used in the past two years, that does not of itself demonstrate that the extension to 28 days is no longer necessary, as the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However, it is imperative that the Government make the case, as has been said by other speakers.

In their Explanatory Memorandum to the order, and as repeated by the Minister, the Government put forward five reasons to justify the need for extension to 28 days. These reasons are based on the evolving and ever increasing complexity of the terrorist threat and include: the greater use of encrypted computers; the increasingly complex nature of terrorist networks; the international linkages in plots and the need for putting everything together; and the difficulty of entering premises—these are all matters to which he referred. The fifth reason, of course, is the need to intervene early in some terrorist cases, which results in the investigators having less time to gather admissible evidence prior to arrest. These are all relevant considerations, as are the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller.

On thinking back to the 12 arrests in Manchester recently, I find it worrying that, following an investigation based on what was said at the time to be strong intelligence into what the Prime Minister described as a serious terrorist plot, the police have not been able to present sufficient evidence even to lay charges against any of the arrested, let alone obtain convictions. There has been no explanation for this and what happened unavoidably gives rise to questions about the procedure followed. It is also the kind of episode that has the potential for greatly increasing communal tension in this country.

We on these Benches have called on the Government to increase the range of evidence admissible in court in terrorist cases to include that derived from intelligence sources, which would help underpin a greater number of successful prosecutions. This call is reflected in the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. Yet despite the recommendations of the Chilcot review that it would be in the interests of national security to develop an acceptable way of bringing intercept evidence to court, frustratingly there is still no sign of the completion of the work of the follow-up committee. It would be helpful to know from the Government whether Sir John Chilcot, with his new responsibilities for the Iraq inquiry, will be able to find time in the near future to complete the work that has already been undertaken.

We are all agreed that one of the greatest deterrents to terrorism is getting the guilty behind bars. We should therefore not go on handicapping ourselves unnecessarily by restricting the evidence that is admissible and instead lengthen the period of pre-charge detention to increase the chances of finding other cogent evidence. That is precisely the opposite of the policies followed by common-law countries in similar situations. We on these Benches take the view that we cannot go on indefinitely like this.

As with control orders, we give the Government fair warning that our continued tolerance of extended pre-charge detention on the present basis is wearing thin, and these are the reasons. First are all the points that I have just made about the need legitimately to strengthen the hand of the prosecution in terrorism cases to reduce the resort to derogations from fundamental provisions. Secondly, there is the somewhat elderly information put into the public domain about the nature and extent of the terrorist threat. The reasons put forward by the Government for extending pre-charge detention are certainly not irrelevant, as I have already said, but they are general propositions likely to be more or less valid for a long time to come. They tell us little about the evolving threat or the current security situation and, as has been pointed out, lead to the danger of simply renewing these orders, year after year, without real examination.

The point of the sunset clause is to enable legislators to take an informed view on a periodic basis—and I mean informed. This House needs more information than the Government have provided on the terrorist threat and the security situation. As part of today’s proceedings we should be debating a report from the Government on the current threat and the security situation which informs us and the country about its evolution. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, who is not in her place, helped to move us in this direction when she gave a speech to Queen Mary College in November 2006 on the terrorist threat to the UK; her successor, Jonathan Evans, likewise did so in a speech in November 2007 and, as was quoted today, made the odd further obiter dictum. However, the assessment that we have is now getting on for two years old and these two speeches should not be the end of the information put into the public domain on a considered basis; the Minister should be willing to update us.

As I say, as part of today’s proceedings we should be debating lessons learnt from previous terrorist investigations. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has noted for many years one way in which this could be achieved. It has called for an independent review of the practice of detaining people for between 14 and 28 days, conducted by an appropriate body such as the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, to see whether those charged after being detained for more than 14 days could have been charged any earlier. Other noble Lords have made reference to this and it is an important recommendation which the Government should take seriously.

I note that the report published today states that:

“The Government has provided some statistical analysis which is helpful, but it is not enough to allow us to assess whether the extension beyond 14 days pre charge detention is needed”.

Other noble Lords have said this. There seem to me two reasons. There is certainly the need to examine the efficacy of the procedures and, as I said earlier, we need to know more about the security situation.

The Government have not really provided sufficient evidence in their Explanatory Memorandum either to support or reject their reasons for the extension. That brings me to my third point, which is the unsatisfactory nature of the legal framework surrounding the extension of pre-charge detention as it affects the rights of defendants in particular. This, I know, is something that the Joint Committee on Human Rights always looks at, and last year the committee’s report on pre-charge detention was published the day before we considered a similar order. This year it was published a few hours ago. I wish that the Government would time the debate better, when they know that a report of this kind is going to come to your Lordships’ House, so that it enables us actually to consider the committee’s conclusions and enough time to really absorb its contents.

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have contributed to the debate. I know that this House appreciates the seriousness of the terrorist threat that we face and the importance of having the right measures in place to counter that threat. That has been reflected in the excellent contributions that have been made.

To the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, I say that of course we would like to return to four days. This was mentioned by a couple of other speakers. We all want to get back to that position, but we are still in extremely unusual circumstances. I hope that over time CONTEST 2, which I will come back to, will move us in a direction that will allow us to do that. These are not measures that we use willy-nilly, though: just 11 people have gone over 14 days in the time that this has been in force. We do not just go and use this in a random way; it is tightly controlled and conducted. As I said, I would love to be able to move back via 14 days to four days, but at the moment a return to 14 days is something that the police and the agencies would be very much against, and they advise strongly against it.

The noble Baroness touched on the issue that I talked about, the increasingly complex nature of terrorist attacks, and the answer is that they are indeed more complex. Even allowing for our increased expenditure, which has been quite remarkable—from £1 billion to £3.5 billion—they are still highly complex and getting more so all the time. I have to say, too, that they are also getting cuter; they rapidly pick up all the techniques that we use. The moment that any of these techniques are exposed in any way, we find, when we are trying to track these people down and bring them to justice, that they are using their knowledge of those techniques to make it more difficult for us.

With regard to the international aspect, the real difficulty is moving through different jurisdictions. We often find, particularly with the way that computer users have been connecting, that they have gone through country after country, and going to those jurisdictions and going through the mechanics of getting hold of information takes a very long time.

The noble Baroness raised an issue that I had not raised in my opening speech, for which I am grateful to her: CBRN. That is a real issue. Luckily, I am glad to say, we have not come across a plot that has caused us a real problem, but I am sure, and I have said it a number of times in public, that in those areas it is not a question of if there is an attack of that type but, I am afraid, of when. That is why we put so much effort in CONTEST 2 into countering those. There is a real problem. Think of that incident with the polonium attack—when trying to get into an establishment where something radioactive and unpleasant has been, time is finite, and it adds time to get forensics in there.

A couple of speakers raised the issue of moving quickly. We need to move quickly; we are talking about a real danger. These are people who wish to kill hundreds or, if they could, thousands of innocent people. We absolutely cannot take that risk. When we have intelligence of a level that shows us that something is happening, we have to move. It would be much nicer to wait in the old way until there was a body and the chap who had done it had thrown his knife down and run for it. That would be perfect, and we could do it all in 48 hours—it works beautifully. That is why these systems were set up many years ago. However, we are just not in that position now. We know, from some of the plots that we have uncovered and some of the ones that we have managed to disrupt, that they are looking at killing huge numbers of people, and we just cannot take that risk.

The noble Baroness mentioned computers and suggested we need more experts. It is not as easy as that. I thank her for raising the 42-days issue; I am scarred by that particular incident and I think I have a Guinness book of records award for the defeat in it. At the time we dealt with that issue, I looked in great detail at the question as to whether we could expand our high-tech unit within the Metropolitan Police Service. But there are narrow choke points and it does not matter whether you have 200 or 2,000 people doing it, because you are tied to working your way through that one thing, and it just does not resolve that bottle-neck. All of those reasons remain and make this necessary.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Judd. He is absolutely right—it was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones—that the fact that we have not had an example for two years, does not mean that it is wrong that we still do this. Indeed, I believe the power is still necessary. Certainly, the police and the agencies absolutely believe that we need this.

The JCHR report was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Judd and also by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. As regards the timing, I am not sure how exactly this happened; I do not know how much it is due to the House authorities or to us. It is not very satisfactory. I have not had the chance to go through the JCHR report in detail.

One of its points is about better information so Parliament can decide whether to renew the power. That is a good point made by a couple of noble Lords. We already have the important independent oversight of the annual reports of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, on the operation of terrorism legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is an authoritative and objective voice of scrutiny on all these issues. He recently announced that he will be conducting a review of Operation Pathway arrests in north-west England, which was touched on. As part of this, he will look at circumstances surrounding the detention of the individuals involved; we will be looking very carefully at that report. Due to his impartiality and his unrivalled access to details, it may possibly be the catalyst for looking at further detention issues, including any individuals who are detained beyond the 14-day period.

We are considering the impact of the judgment on the question of compatibility with the right to a judicial hearing. But the Government do not accept that there is an automatic read-across to all other proceedings involving the use of closed material. Closed hearings are used very rarely in pre-charge detention extension hearings. They are certainly used less frequently in the later stages of detention beyond the 14 days

It raised the very important point of the impact on suspects and communities. During the 42-days debate, a commitment was made to undertake a review of the impact of all counterterrorism legislation. Work on the scope of that review has been ongoing and, while the review will not be specifically about pre-charge detention, it will encompass it. Extensive scoping work means that this assessment has been delayed. A broad research project on the community impact is being progressed and we are committed to deliver this research by November 2009.

As regards the presumption of innocence, that is a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider. In regards to ensuring that court cases are not prejudiced by external factors, such as the media, this already happens in appropriate cases, albeit via the Attorney-General rather than the Crown Prosecution Service.

We are addressing these issues. I am sorry I do not have a more comprehensive response, but as was pointed out, I was first aware of this at about 5 pm this evening.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, raised the issue of how important it is that we reduce pre-charge detention and talked about the flexible threshold test and post-charge questioning. These issues have been looked at in detail. The police and the CPS still do not believe that these actually meet the Bill and I have been through this in some detail. There is a dispute. There are some people who believe it does, but there is quite a large number that does not believe it does. The noble Baroness also pointed out, as did my noble friend Lord Judd, that the fact that this has not been used for two years does not mean that it does not have any value. She is absolutely right on that issue.

As regards the Manchester incident, I hope the point that I made—that it is being reviewed by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—covers it. It was another case where there was intelligence of such a level and nature that, when it was put together, we just could not take the risk. I am absolutely certain of that because I was aware of that intelligence. But, as I say, it is fleeting, and it is not the same as evidence. I cannot say much more about it because there are issues in the case that are still being followed through.

My Lords, I am immensely grateful for the detailed and careful analysis of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones. She gave us a very useful list of headlines that the Government need to address. If I had wanted to move instantly to abandon the order, I would have tested the opinion of the House tonight. However, I tabled a non-fatal amendment to encourage the Government to move incrementally backwards to 14 days. For all the Minister’s expertise, I did not hear him express an aspiration to approach that. It sounded to me as though he still felt that my aspiration was naive, because there was such a tremendous risk.

We on these Benches accept that there will always be risk. The need to balance our values of justice with the necessity to minimise risk was eloquently expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. What the Government are not doing—I did not hear the Minister say that he would be moving towards it—is producing evidence for us. This creates frustration. I heard it from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, and we on these Benches feel it, too. The Minister knows what he knows, but at the moment not enough evidence is produced—I am aware of the constraints—for Parliament to make a reasonable assessment based on what the Government are saying. Before we have the debate again this time next year, the Government must try harder and take on board the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to produce that qualitative evidence. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

In moving Amendment 75 I will speak also to Amendments 76 and 77. Amendments 75 and 76 belong together. They amend Schedule 3, which details the appointment of coroners. In particular, paragraph 2 allows the Lord Chancellor to appoint assistant coroners for an area. Before doing so, he must consult the Chief Coroner and every local authority whose area will be affected.

Our changes would make the senior coroner a consultee as well. Under paragraph 1 the senior coroner for an area is appointed by the local authority with the consent of the Chief Coroner and the Lord Chancellor. Given this deliberate interlocking of all the relevant parties, it is a curious omission that the senior coroner should not be consulted on the appointment of his assistants. It may be that the local authority is deemed to represent the views and interests of the senior coroner, whom it appointed. However, once that person has been established in the post, it would seem prudent, not to say courteous, to involve him in the process of appointing an assistant.

Amendment 77 is more important. Paragraph 3 of Schedule 3 sets the eligibility criteria for coroners. It allows for legally qualified coroners—that is to say, those who,

“satisfy the judicial-appointment eligibility condition”—

but not for medical practitioners to become coroners. This is a reversal of current practice and would rule out many very able people. In another place the Minister, Bridget Prentice, addressed the latter point by saying:

“In future it will be increasingly important for coroners to be legally qualified. Given the duty of investigations that satisfy article 2, legal qualifications will become even more essential. They will also give the coroners the skill to examine evidence and conduct investigations in the most effective way”.

She continued:

“At the moment, a small number of coroners are both medically and legally qualified, and about the same number are medically qualified only. The Coroners’ Society tells me that there are about four of each. Under the reformed system, it will not be necessary for the coroner to be medically qualified, as the medical examiners will be on hand to provide independent medical expertise. However, those who are currently medically rather than legally qualified will retain their posts under the reformed system and will simply be exempted from the legal qualification requirement. They will already have picked up forensic skills through experience and training, and that is not something that we want to lose”.—[Official Report, Commons Coroners and Justice Bill Committee, 24/2/09; col. 310.].

As the Minister admitted that the, albeit, small number of medically qualified coroners do a good job and have picked up forensic skills through experience and training, why is it assumed that newly appointed medical coroners could not do the same? I beg to move.

I support in particular the first of the two amendments, although I support both. It is important that the coroner in charge of a particular area who will know the local people and lawyers should have a say in who should effectively be one of his deputies. The current system is that the coroner for a particular area chooses his deputy coroner and his assistant deputy coroners. It is important that he knows who are the suitable people to ask. It is possible that from further afield they would have to seek the advice in any event of a senior coroner for an area. It seems that they should be asking the coroner of the area who he would recommend. They do not have to accept it, but in the areas it is important.

Taking the second point, there are members of the medical profession who have acted extremely efficiently as coroners. They have acted with enormous enthusiasm and energy to learn about the law. Lawyers have to learn about medicine; in particular, lawyers sitting as coroners need to know something about how to understand what the medical examiner is saying or about medical evidence that may be given. It is possibly unjust to the medical profession to assume that a distinguished doctor would not be able to pick up as much law as a distinguished lawyer picks up medicine.

I must thank my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss for the compliment that she paid to my professional group. I have an amendment in this group, Amendment 110. It was tabled after some discussion with INQUEST, which feels that the Chief Coroner should be a high court judge. I do not feel that its reasons are as tight as have been represented, but it is concerned that the Chief Coroner’s role should involve a High Court judge because it is a requirement in relation to the chairs of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission and the president of the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Tribunal; it should therefore involve someone of the same or equivalent standing, in view of the powers that he or she will have and the critical role that the Chief Coroner will play in the overall system. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response.

Schedule 3 provides for a clear structure for the appointment of senior area and assistant coroners. Amendments 75 and 76 would compel the Lord Chancellor to directly consult the local senior coroner as well as the Chief Coroner and relevant local authorities before making a decision as to the number of area coroners and minimum number of assistant coroners that should be in that area. I understand from the noble Lord that his concern is that the Lord Chancellor should not impose coroner quotas with no regard for what senior coroners feel is needed in their area. Our problem with these amendments is that they would add a layer of consultation that we believe is not necessary to have in the Bill.

In practice, a senior coroner’s view will be taken into account as regards how many area and assistant coroners are required, by virtue of the Lord Chancellor consulting the Chief Coroner and local authorities concerned. First, the Chief Coroner, as head of the coroner service, will want to ensure that there are sufficient coroners and resources more generally to ensure that the standards of service he or she sets can be met across the country. It is highly likely that the Chief Coroner will be appointed during the implementation period of the Bill, but it is not possible at this stage to state precisely when that will be. He or she will therefore have the opportunity to work with coroners, as all current district coroners will, as part of the transitional arrangements in paragraph 3 to Schedule 20, become senior coroners when the Bill comes into force. The Chief Coroner will gain an overview of how many area or assistant coroners will be needed as new areas are created across the country. Under the Bill the Lord Chancellor must also consult the local authority that employs and funds the coroners, when making his decision. The local authority will be best placed to ensure that any particular local factors are taken into account.

Amendment 77 would restore the existing position whereby a coroner can be medically qualified only. We understand the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, about losing medical expertise in a reformed system. We do not believe that will be the case; if anything, medical expertise will be enhanced by the Bill. The noble Lord quoted my honourable friend in another place. My arguments are very much the same as hers. We believe it is becoming increasingly important for coroners to be legally qualified. The noble Lord referred to Article 2 in that regard. Legal qualifications, together with in-service training, will equip coroners with the necessary skills to conduct an investigation into a death in the most effective way, to weigh up evidence and reach the appropriate determination. However, the case working and court craft skills accumulated by current coroners who are medically qualified only—four of the current district coroners come into this category—will not be squandered. As part of the transitional arrangements, the four coroners who are medically qualified will become senior coroners for their area when the Bill comes into force.

Another reason that it will not be necessary for coroners to be medically qualified in the reformed system is that, under Clause 19, medical examiners will be on hand—as we have debated this afternoon—to provide independent medical expertise to all coroners, especially in medically complex cases, in addition to their main role of scrutinising deaths which are not referred to coroners. This is supplementary to the expertise that will continue to be provided by pathologists. This increased local medical support—that is an important part of the Bill—together with national support from the Chief Coroner’s national medical adviser, will help ensure coroners have medical expertise to hand.

The final amendment in this group, Amendment 110, would make circuit judges ineligible for appointment as the Chief Coroner. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, may have been prompted to table this amendment by a concern that a circuit judge would not have sufficiently senior judicial status to be the head of the coroner system in England and Wales. While we, of course, agree that the person the Lord Chief Justice appoints as Chief Coroner should have sufficient seniority to head the coroner system, we believe this amendment would be unduly restrictive. The person appointed as Chief Coroner may always be a High Court rather than a circuit judge, but we would not want to put a blanket restriction on senior circuit judges being considered, which is what this amendment would do. It might unnecessarily narrow the pool of qualified candidates that the Lord Chief Justice had to choose from when appointing the Chief Coroner. The most important consideration for the Lord Chief Justice will be that the person he chooses as Chief Coroner should have the judicial and leadership skills and competencies to carry out the role. The Bill as drafted provides for this and ensures that the Lord Chief Justice can appoint the best-equipped person for the job.

In this group is government Amendment 218E, which I will move in due course. This is an important transitional provision to enable us to move to larger full-time coroner areas in as efficient a way as possible. A current, solely medically qualified coroner, or any coroner over 70, will be eligible to stay in post if their jurisdiction merges with another in the reformed coroner system.

As I have said, currently four coroners, plus a handful of deputy and assistant deputy coroners, are medically qualified. Although we cannot foresee how many coroners over 70 will be practising when their areas are merged, there are likely to be very few, as most coroners step down between the ages of 65 and 70. Despite the relatively small numbers involved, this amendment is important as it will enable us to make the most of serving coroners and the experience that they have built up.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, and other noble Lords will not press their amendments.

I thank the Minister for his response, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for their support.

The Minister drew attention to the fact that I quoted a substantial passage by the Minister in another place. I did that partly out of a sporting instinct, to put the argument of the other side, and partly to save the Minister from rehearsing it in your Lordships’ House. He made a cogent point by drawing to my attention the new regime which embraces the concept of the medical adviser. I should like to consider Amendment 77 in that context when taking a view on whether I should bring it back on Report.

However, I feel much less sympathetic to the Minister’s honeyed words about Amendments 75 and 76. As I understand it, the new system is supposed to be some ideal balance between the centre and the periphery. The Bill introduces an overarching Chief Coroner and deputy chief coroner and, under that, increasing degrees of localism. As the Minister knows, we have supported that concept. It seems perfectly sensible for the Lord Chancellor, in deciding to appoint a new assistant coroner, to consult the local authority in the area in which the new assistant coroner is going to work. However, if the local authority is consulted, why should the senior coroner for the area not be consulted as well? The Lord Chancellor is already going down to the grass roots so far as the local authority is concerned; so why is it so much more difficult for him to go down to the grass roots with respect to the senior coroner? I find that response uncharacteristically irrational of the Minister, to such a degree that I wish to test the opinion of the Committee on Amendment 75.

This is another amendment that owes its inspiration to Dr Brian Iddon, who tabled it in a debate in Committee on the Bill in another place.

Clause 24 states that the relevant authority must secure the provision of whatever staff are needed by the coroner to carry out his functions. Implicit in that is the recognition that out-of-hours staff must be provided if necessary: for example, in the context of a non-invasive MRI scan. However, it is worth emphasising that coroners may be called on at any time; and it is vital that they can function properly in those circumstances. That necessitates a substantial commitment of time, preparation and, not least, money, from the authority.

This suggests a number of questions for the Government. What role will the Chief Coroner have in helping to secure that commitment? What happens should there be a financial shortfall? What recourse would the senior coroner have should the provision of staff be inadequate? I beg to move.

This amendment seeks to ensure that coroners’ officers and other staff are available outside normal working hours.

Clause 24 already states that staff must be available to enable a coroner to carry out their functions. To do this, coroners must ensure that either they or a member of their staff are on call 24 hours a day almost entirely to ensure that a post-mortem can be urgently carried out where necessary and that arrangements are made to inform the family of the coroner’s decision. This already occurs in the best areas under the present system, and coroners in particular already have a requirement, in Rule 4 of the Coroners Rules, to ensure that they or a deputy coroner are available at all times. In a reformed system, we expect the same level of cover. Indeed, the effect of Rule 4 is likely to be repeated in rules to be made under Clause 36.

The Government fully accept that there is work to be done in the implementation stage of the Bill to ensure that coroners have the necessary support from coroners’ officers and other staff to enable them to meet the raised expectations that we have of them in the quality of service that is provided to bereaved families. I assure noble Lords that this is one of our main priorities, not least because it is the function of such officers to deliver most of the services to families, under the guidance of the coroner, which are set out in the charter for the bereaved. I think it would be most expeditious if I were to answer the noble Lord’s specific questions by letter. I hope, in view of the assurances that I have given, that he will agree to withdraw his amendment.

I am most grateful for the noble Lord’s response. I have one further question for him. I asked three questions at the end of my short intervention. Following what he said, will the answers to all three of those questions be found in regulations made under what will become the Act?

That is my understanding.

I am most grateful. In those circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.