INQUEST, Grenfell United and COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice were among a coalition of more than 40 organisations writing to Prime Minister Keir Starmer this week, highlighting that recommendations are often ignored while any monitoring that exists is ‘fragmented and piecemeal’.
They wrote: ‘INQUEST proposes a solution: the establishment of a National Oversight Mechanism, which would be a new, independent body with the responsibility to collate, analyse and follow up on recommendations… and correct Elkan Abrahamson By law, organisations must respond to the coroner within 56 days. According to Oxford University’s Preventable Deaths Tracker, however, only 44% of Prevention of Future Death reports received expected responses, and only 2% met the deadline.
INQUEST director, Deborah Coles said: ‘We need a National Oversight Mechanism to address this shocking accountability gap and ensure that when recommendations are made following deaths they are not lost or left to gather dust.’
Lawyers and campaign groups hailed last week’s inclusion of the ‘Hillsborough Law’ (Public Authority (Accountability) Bill) in the King’s Speech as ‘life-changing’. The Bill creates a legal duty of candour on public authorities and officials to tell the truth and proactively cooperate with official investigations and inquiries. Failure to comply would become a criminal offence. Bereaved people would receive publicly funded legal representation.
Solicitor Elkan Abrahamson, director, Broudie Jackson Canter, who co-drafted the Bill with Pete Weatherby KC, Garden Court North, said: ‘Public inquiries, inquests and investigations often fail to get to the truth because public authorities and officials cover-up what happened to protect themselves.’
Weatherby said he hoped the Bill ‘offers some comfort to the thousands of people who over decades have been denied justice, truth and accountability by the state that things might soon change. It is because of the struggles of so many that we stand on the brink of changing the law.’
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