28 June 2018
It’s time to replace the locally-funded coronial system in England and Wales with a taxpayer-funded national service, lawyer Veronica Cowan writes in this week’s NLJ. The investigation into deaths at Gosport War Memorial Hospital ‘has shone a troubling light’ on the system, she writes. There, the senior coroner for Portsmouth East had planned to conduct inquests in only ten out of 92 cases amid costs concerns and had warned the Ministry of Justice and Department of Health that the inquests would be a ‘crushing expense for the council’.
