by Georgia L Gilholy, Conservative Home
The office of the coroner has more than 800 years of history in England. Meaning simply “officer of the Crown”, the job’s medieval iterations had far wider responsibilities than its modern successor, but they would be recognisable in their authority to probe certain categories of deaths.
Under current rules, in every suspected unnatural death in the UK, a coroner must “inquire into the causes and circumstance of a death… where there is reasonable suspicion that the deceased has died a violent or unnatural death, where the cause of death is unknown or if the deceased died while in custody or state detention”.
The Leadbeater Bill would remove the automatic duty to notify a coroner when a death is an assisted suicide in accordance with the law, despite the fact that this death clearly falls into the “unnatural” category. Perhaps, given that this Bill contains so many other, more headline-grabbing flaws, its backers expected this issue to easily slip under their opponents’ radars?
Luckily Thomas Teague KC, former Chief Coroner, brought this to the fore last week, warning peers that the “frankly absurd” idea of excluding coroners would erase a key deterrent against coercion and cover-ups.
Dr Suzy Lishman, former president of the Royal College of Pathologists, even cautioned that under the Bill’s model, “one could argue Harold Shipman would be on the assisted dying panel.” And who can blame her?
Indeed, how can we create death-approval bodies without the threat of independent scrutiny from coroners after the death has been carried out? Surely this will simply result in rubber-stamping morally dubious assisted suicide requests? Or, poor medical practice and even deliberate foul play slipping through the cracks?