A former chief coroner of England and Wales expresses surprise that the important safeguard of coronial oversight has been lifted from those seeking an assisted death, in this week’s NLJ.
Under the provisions of the assisted dying bill, the coroner’s duty to investigate the death will no longer automatically apply. His Honour Thomas Teague KC, who was chief coroner of England and Wales between 2020 and 2024, writes: ‘The effect of cl 35(1) is thus to exclude assisted deaths from the posthumous judicial scrutiny that all other intentionally procured fatalities automatically attract. This represents a momentous change in the law.’
He explores the potentially devastating impact of this exclusion, including the loss of a ‘robust deterrent’ against the ‘risk of malpractice or coercion, whether on the part of medical professionals, family members or others’.RELATED ARTICLES
