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The Administration accepts almost all the recommendations of the Report. In view of the substantial legislative changes required to implement the recommendations of the Report, the Bill will have the effect of repealing and replacing the existing Coroners Ordinance. I shall now outline the salient points of the Bill.
At present, there is no legal duty to report any death to the coroner. A list of reportable deaths is now prescribed in Part 1 of Schedule 1 of the Bill. Clause 4(1) also imposes a duty on certain categories of persons specified in Part 2 of Schedule 1, including, for example, doctors, the Registrar of Births and Deaths and the Police, to report a death specified in Part I of that Schedule as soon as is reasonably practicable after the death comes to their knowledge.
The powers of a coroner are enhanced by the Bill. Clause 10 empowers a coroner to issue a warrant to a police officer to enter and search any premises where the coroner is satisfied on reasonable grounds that relevant evidence is likely to be found in such premises. Clause 1 empowers a coroner to first conduct a pre-inquest review to determine how the inquest may be disposed of in a just, expeditious and economical manner.
Clauses 13 to 19 set out the circumstances in which a coroner may or must hold an inquest. Clause 13 provides that a coroner may hold an inquest, whether with or without a jury, where a person dies suddenly, by accident or violence or under suspicious circumstances. Clause 14 makes it mandatory for a coroner to hold an inquest with a jury where a person has died in official custody. Clause 15 makes it mandatory for a coroner to hold an inquest when required by the Attorney General to do so. Clause 19 provides that the High Court may, on the application of a properly interested person or the Attorney General, order an inquest to be held into a death including, where an inquest has already been held, a new inquest into that death.
The present three-person jury will be expanded to a five-person jury. Clause 22 provides that five jurors shall be selected to form the jury at an inquest.
Clause 34(1) provides that the coroner may during the course of an inquest refer a case to the Attorney General for a decision as to whether or not criminal proceedings should be instituted against a person, and obliges the coroner to do so where the suspected criminal offence is murder, manslaughter, infanticide or death by reckless driving.
Clause 40 empowers a coroner to issue in certain circumstances a certificate of the fact of death to assist in the transport of a dead body to another country for burial, in particular where the relevant authorities of that country require official documentation that the deceased did not die from an infectious disease.